straining fruit from plum wine

[maenad]

I made plum wine successfully last year, and followed the same recipe this year. It started at 1.090 and fermented away happily in the primary but it was 1.025 when I realized it needed to go into the secondary. Here's where the problem started. I had lent someone my usual mesh bag, so I just used a clean towel (a thick one, unfortunately!) to strain out all the big pieces of fruit.

12 hours and 24 hours later in the secondary, it still isn't bubbling. When I swish it around I get a tiny few bubbles coming to the surface.

I'm worried that the towel was so thick that I strained all the yeast out of the liquid. Is this possible? It seems unlikely that I get a stuck fermentation right at the same time that I transfer it.

In any case... what's the next step? Pitch more yeast and a little yeast nutrient? Anything else I can do?

Thank you!

 

[Maylar]

No towel is fine enough to filter out yeast. What yeast did you use?

 

[bernardsmith]

I strongly agree that no towel could filter out the yeast cells BUT if much of the yeast was actually on or in the fruit and the fruit was tossed away then the cell count in the wine might be a wee bit low for a day or two while those yeast cells that are still in solution bud and reproduce. That's sometimes why racking at a gravity of 1.025 may be a little too aggressive and waiting until the gravity is closer to 1.005 may be less anxiety provoking...

 

[maenad]

You were right, guys! It did nothing for almost two days but this morning it was bubbling again!

I used lalvin D47. Lesson learnt - I won't do that again. Hopefully the towel won't affect the pectic enzyme - I don't have much of that left, and getting more is a real hassle!