Degassed wine: airlock still bubbles?

I'm making a 3gal batch of peach wine for the first time and i've just stabilized it and started degassing. I decided to use my brake bleeder because not much happened when i stirred it up (no foam or rush of bubbles or anything really).

When i got the pressure up to ~16in Hg bubbles started to rise like crazy, so i got the vac up to 20in Hg and let it rest, raising the vacuum whenever the gauge lowered past 18 or so. After a while there were no more bubbles and the vacuum stabilized.

I put my airlock back on and every few minutes it still bubbles. I'm fairly sure all of the yeast is dead (i used campden and potassium sorbate), did i just not degas it enough? I put my mityvac back on for now and its holding at 16in Hg.

what is the SG reading?

Just under 1.00, but even if there were any fermentable sugars left the campden and sorbate should have taken care of the yeast, right?

how long ago did you add campden and sorbate?? campden creates gas you need to let it sit for a couple days before you bottle it.

Not too long ago, i didnt think the campden made that much gas...

Anyway, i'll just wait it out. I'm in no rush.

if its still bubbling now then it is most likely not the campden and its probably still fermenting, whatever you do, do not bottle it if the airlock is going. I think at this point your only options are too wait it out or heat it up high enough to kill the yeast.

From what i have read campden and sorbate only really prevent the yeast from multiplying it wont kill off active yeast, so if its not completely dry it is possible that it is still slowly fermenting.

Indeed, sorbate won't stop an active ferment. You are probably best off waiting it out for now, degass again once it's definitely finished, then you can worry about back sweetening if you want it sweeter.

Or you could pasteurize.

nosmokingbandit said:

Just under 1.00, but even if there were any fermentable sugars left the campden and sorbate should have taken care of the yeast, right?

Click to expand...

056r said:

From what i have read campden and sorbate only really prevent the yeast from multiplying it wont kill off active yeast, so if its not completely dry it is possible that it is still slowly fermenting.

Click to expand...

As was mentioned, neither sorbate nor campden will kill yeast. Campden is an antioxidant, and wine yeast is amazingly tolerant of it. Sorbate inhibits yeast reproduction, but doesn't kill active yeast. So if there are lots of yeast in suspension, the sorbate won't do anything as the yeast doesn't need to reproduce.

In any case, if the wine is .990 or so, it's finished. But if it's not done yet, I'd let it be until it is. Once the SG doesn't change over the course of a week or so, it's probably done.