Chilling to Stop Fermentation

[PaulyWally]

I did something wrong with my last batch of cherry wine. I still have to discover what went wrong (I'm still very much a novice), but essentially it kept fermenting after bottling.

Less than a week ago I back-sweetened and bottled, and now opening the wine results in quite an explosive event. I want to try to save the wine. So I am re-racking it. I want to kill the yeast, back-sweeten (again), and re-bottle. I was thinking of chilling the wine in the refrigerator to kill the yeast. One thing I don't understand about this, won't the yeast reactivate after it is removed from the refrigerator? If I kill the yeast by chilling, then bottle and store at 60-70 degrees F, won't that awaken the yeast as the wine warms back up? What am I missing here?

 

[Raptor99]

Any time you backsweeten, you need to stabilize with Kmeta and Potassium Sorbate. Otherwise the yeast will just consume the new sugar.

Refrigeration will slow the yeast down, but it will not stop them completely. It certainly won't kill the yeast. Yes, they will re-activate when you remove the bottle from the refrigerator.

If your batch is small enough, you could keep the bottles in the fridge and drink them all over the next few weeks. But since you already had an "explosive event" I would be concerned about the amount of CO2 building up. If that gets too high, the bottles could explode ("bottle bombs").

The other option is to empty all of the bottles back into a carboy and let the fermentation finish. Then bulk age it for at least 3 months. After that you can stabilize and backsweeten.