Having trouble getting secondary fermentation

[acy]

I am attempting wine making for the first time. Using a recipe for plum wine from a Jack Keller website. Made two gallons using exact recipe. Everything worked well for primary fermentation. Must started at specific gravity of 1.100. Recipe called for 5 to 7 day primary. Split the difference at 6 days. When I removed the skins/solids and put in one gallon bottles the specific gravity was 1.010. That was before topping off with water and adding more sugar, per recipe. I put one quart of water (boiled & cooled) per gallon to mostly top off. Got to thinking that was too much water and since there was still room, I boiled more plums, strained and added one cup of pure cooled plum juice to each gallon. S.G. now 1.060. Added the stopper with airlock and....nothing. Decided to try the whole thing again with only one gallon. Followed same recipe, but checked S. G. of must because another recipe I found said to go to secondary when must was 1.040. Went to secondary last night, using boiled and cooled mixture of three parts plum juice to one part water, plus sugar per recipe, to top off and it is bubbling happily on the new gallon. Back to original two gallons. They have been in secondary bottles since last Fri. I talked to owner of small shop where I bought supplies, she advised adding new yeast. Had me use Lalvin EC-1118. Added it per instructions Mon. evening and .... still nothing.

My wife and I tried a small sample and both agree that the taste is pretty good but it needs to smooth out(not sure if that is right term). Any ideas would really be appreciated. Thanks, Al

 

[Yooper]

When you add more fermentables to the wine, sometimes you go over the actual alcohol tolerance of the yeast, and end up with a sweet wine. I don't usually follow recipes that have you add that much in the way of fermentables in secondary. If you added fermentables to take you from 1.010 to 1.060, that's a LOT of sugar to add. You may have overwhelmed the yeast. You already had 13% ABV, which is pretty high. Adding more fermentables might work (EC1118 can go up to 18% if conditions are good) but that's a huge jump. That wine could be 18% ABV with plenty of residual sweetness.

Without seeing the recipe, I can't give much in the way of advice. I guess at this point, I'd see exactly what you put in there, and how much you varied from the recipe. The EC-1118 should get started soon- it's only been a day or so.

 

[acy]

I don't have the recipe here at work. By cutting with the water after primary, should the wine still have enough alcohol content to be ok? If it does'nt start again should I just keep it air-locked and rack a couple times then bottle it and see how it goes? Thanks, Al

 

[mmadmikes1]

PATIENTS , leave it alone for a while. messing all the time will not help, could just make it worse. Wine takes time

 

[acy]

I'm trying to be patient, but it's hard. Al