I just added 1/4 tsp of K-meta to my 5 gallon cider batch. I didn't dissolve it in boiled water prior, just sanitized the measuring spoon, dropped it in, then stirred with another sanitized spoon. Then I started thinking I probably should have dissolved it in warm water before adding. Should I add more or should the undissolved K-meta dissolve and stop fermentation?
3-5 day wait before backsweeting?
Thanks
If you added the k-meta so you can stabilize and sweeten, k-meta won't do that. It's primarily an antioxidant.
If you want to sweeten, you need potassium sorbate, not potassium metabisulfite. It's a different chemical.
When you get the sorbate, either take out a sample of the wine and stir the sorbate into that, and then put that into a new carboy and rack the wine into it so that it mixes. The cider must be totally and completely clear, and no longer dropping any lees at all for this to work.
Then, once it's stabilized with the sorbate, wait a couple of days and sweeten to taste. Wait a few more days to ensure that the sorbate worked an no new fermentation started up, and then you can bottle.
If you're hoping that this will stop an active fermentation, it won't.
You can try to stop fermentation by putting the cider someplace very cold, like near freezing, to get the yeast to drop out, and then rack off of the lees once the cider is perfectly clear. That only works sometimes, though. It's not a good way to sweeten and stabilize cider, because once it warms up again the bottles could blow up.
