cold crashing... what am I doing wrong????

[Yooper]

Why not just use pottasium sorbate to kill the east then sweeten it to your desire?

Because sorbate doesn't kill yeast. It inhibits yeast reproduction.

In this case (and all cases of active fermentation), there are plenty of yeast in suspension and they aren't reproducing at this stage- they are fermenting. Adding sorbate to an active fermentation is like giving birth control pills to a pregnant lady. Not going to hurt much, but certainly not going to solve your problem.

My winemaking techniques are far different than the OPs, so I have no good input on the stalling/pasteurizing angle. It's far easier to start with a lower OG and ferment the wine out and then stabilize and backsweeten to taste. Of course, I don't like sediment in my wine and I don't like stalling/stressing yeast because of the potential for poor flavor results.

 

[Rickibob]

I see! Thanks for the pointer. I'm fairly new at this and only have done 4 batches! Next batch I'm gonna try to put all my sugar in at once. To max out my fermentation

 

[Daze]

My winemaking techniques are far different than the OPs, so I have no good input on the stalling/pasteurizing angle. It's far easier to start with a lower OG and ferment the wine out and then stabilize and backsweeten to taste. Of course, I don't like sediment in my wine and I don't like stalling/stressing yeast because of the potential for poor flavor results.

actually they are not tat different. I couln't agree more with everything you said as the "the best way to do it". With this batch the better option would have been to start with less sugar ferment it out dry and then backsweeten but this wine is not your normal brew. It is an attempt to modify somthing I started 10 years ago that stalled out My original attempt was misguided and I am trying to "fix" it.

Over all I don't think we are really that far apart in technique with the exception of my desire to avoid chemicals

 

[huesmann]

There are lots of ways that it is done commercially, but really only two ways I know for the home brewer to do it. Both ways involve heating it up and require a thermometer. You can either pasteurize in or out of the bottle. If you are planning on using wine bottles and corks than it must be done out of the bottle. rack the wine in to a stock pot, attach the thermometer to the side of the pot with the probe in the wine and slowly bring the win temp up to 140º once you get there cover it with a sterilized lid, remove it from the heat, and let it cool. Once cool bottle it. If you bottle it hot, as it cools the corks will be sucked in to the bottles.

if using caped bottles you can pasteurize in a pan, and bottle hot as the cap won't get sucked in. the other option is to fill and cap the bottles then pasteurize them with a hot water bath. this link tells all about that.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

The thread you linked says to use a 190º water bath. Is that just to assure that the bottle temp gets up to 140º after turning off the heat?

 

[Daze]

The basic guidelines for pasteurization are"

Pasteurizing temperatures
at 53C = 128F minimum time to kill population 56 min
at 60C = 140F minimum time to kill population 5.6 min
at 67c = 152F minimum time to kill population .56 min

I shoot for 140 because I want to insure everything is killed off, but I don't want to heat the liquid any more than I have to and "cook" it. When you bottle pasteurize you are heating the liquid inside the bottles through the glass and in most cases the liquid inside the glass will be a little cooler than the water outside the glass so that is the first reason the water-bath should be at 190. the second reason is that you turn the heat off before you submerge the bottles and the bottles will suck a bunch of heat out of the water bath so you start high so you can end up at a temp closer to what is needed. make sense???

 

[huesmann]

Yeah, that's what I thought--just wasn't sure. Is there any reason a person couldn't just keep the heat on the burner, and just monitor the temp in the bottles so that it hits 152ºF for 35 seconds, and cycle the hot bottles out and new bottles in?

 

[Daze]

First of all the temps and times are in relation to the liquid in the bottles not the liquid in the water bath so it takes time to get the bottles up to temp, that is why the 10 minute weight.

Also this pasteurization process while safe when done correctly is dangerous when done incorrectly. by keeping the heat on you will have inconsistent temperatures through out the bath and you increase the risk of breaking bottles.

 

[Daze]

I have some apricot wine, that has been bubbling away for several months. I recently checked the SG and it was around 1.025 I want to bottle it a little on the sweet side so I decided to cold crash it. Living in northwest MT all I had to do was put it out on my inclosed front porch to get it cold enough. I have a digital thermometer out there and the temperature has varied between 33º and 28º. After 24 hours on the porch the wine is still bubbling away. I realize some of that is going to be residual CO2 suspended in the liquid but it has only slowed down a little bit. It doesn't look like any yeast has dropped out of suspension at all. I know it can take days to cold crash, but I figured the cold would at least slow down the bubbling. am I doing something wrong or do I just need to continue to be more patient.

well after 4 days the wine has still not cleared so I guess I will let it warm back up ferment out and I will go from there.

 

[Daze]

unbelievable, 2 hours after I brought it in,(still very cold but closer to room temperature) it started bubbling like a fresh fermentation. I guess the yeast were hungry after lying dormant for 4 days.