Wine getting fizzy in the bottles.

[xoltri]

I'm new to homebrewing / winemaking. My first attempt was a Gewurztraminer from a concentrate kit, starting gravity was 1075 and final gravity was .997. At this SG I added the s-metabisulphite and the potassium sorbate, then degassed with a cordless drill as well as a vacuum pump. Once degassed I added the fining agents and it cleared nicely. After a week I filtered with a buon vino minijet then bottled and at this time it tasted great.

Now it's 3 days later and I opened a bottle and to my disappointment it tastes fizzy. I opened another and it is also fizzy. It's fermenting in the bottles. So what could I have done wrong? I have a Red wine in primary fermentation bubbling away beside me as I type and I don't want to have the same problem with this one.

I'm confident my sanitizing process was good. I made a peach wine around the same time and it has not started to ferment in the bottles. I have a vinator and used starsan to sanitize the bottles.

As for this Gewurztraminer we are going camping this week so I am going to take it and make mixed drinks with it so the 30 or so bottles don't go to waste...but it still kinda sucks.

 

[Clayton]

i dont know crap about wine , but i do know that one reson why some wines and ciders imporve with age is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malolactic_fermentation and it ofton happons after the yeast fermentation , infact some some winerys and brewers add the bactera to make it happon

 

[shelly_belly]

How much potassium sorbate did you use? From 'The Home Winemaker's Manual", by Lum Eisenman...

"The normal dose is about one gram of sorbate per gallon. One gram per gallon is equivalent to about 2 level teaspoons per 5 gallons of wine."

 

[xoltri]

Thanks for the replies. I posted this question on another forum and got a bunch of advice. I think I made some or all of the following mistakes which resulted in this problem:

• I didn't wait long enough after stabilizing (adding potassium sorbate and k-meta)
  
• I didn't degass enough
  
• I dumped the powerded k-meta and sorbate into the carboy instead of mixing it in a bit of wine first, possibly meaning that it didn't get mixed in.

Anyway we emptied all of the bottles into a carboy with 1/4 tsp k-meta and 1 tbsp of potassium sorbate. I bought one of those brake bleeder kits and am going to use this to degass in the future. It has a gauge on it so there is no guessing if the wine is degassed. I used it last night and found that it works best if you pump it to 20 inches hg and then shake the carboy. Did this a bunch of times until the gauge stayed steady at 20" hg.