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oklahoma_man777

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I started making blackberry wine little over a 6 days ago and did exactly what youtube videos did, so after about 5 days I racked it to secondary. When I took the alcohol mesurment It showed about 1.003 or 1.002 I can't remember but it was right before the finishing point. I went ahead and took a chance and added potassium sorbate and wine tannin to it then added 2 cups of sugar and some extra crushed up Blackberrys for back sweetening. I noticed tinny bubbles still within the first day it being in secondary and then the next day my airlock was about to start filling up with my blackberry wine so i degas it and it went back to normal. So now I'm worried. I tried cold crashing it for a few hours but once I Googled on cold crashing I figured it wasn't going to work so now I'm thinking I just reactivated the yeast but since my wine was literally 1 or 2 away from finishing should I worry or will the yeast kill itself off if it raises the alcohol in the wine from the extra sugar that was ment for back sweetening?
 
The short answer is ... it depends. And the longer answer is that it depends on what the starting gravity was and the tolerance for alcohol of the yeast you used. Most wine yeasts can handle 14% ABV without blinking and if your starting gravity was at a normal range for wine making (about 1.090 or potentially about 12% ABV ) then there is really no fear of killing your yeast.

Not sure what 2 cups of sugar weighs (weights are much better than volumes when it comes to wine making) or what volume of wine you were adding those 2 cups to so I cannot say how much you raised the gravity (and so the ABV). You added more berries - so that would increase both the liquid volume (diluting the ABV a touch) and the sugar (raising it a little) but again, since you don't provide enough information it is difficult to say with certainty what the total amount of sugar in your wine is and so what the final potential ABV might be... but there is a near universal law - when you want to kill the yeast through alcohol poisoning you will find that you have the most alcohol tolerant yeast batch on the planet and they just won't croak but when you so hope that your mistake won't kill the yeast you can almost bet the farm that that the yeast you have will give up the ghost sooner than you can say "boo!"

All that said, simply adding K-sorbate is not likely to be very effective. What K-sorbate does is not kill the yeast but it acts as a chemical condom to prevent the yeast from reproducing (budding). What that means is that the present generation of yeast can and will continue to ferment the sugars until they die of old age or of alcohol poisoning.

Despite what folk say on their youtube videos the only really effective way to stop fermentation is to transfer your wine or mead to your fridge and allow the cold temperature to put the yeast into suspended animation, THEN to rack your wine OFF the yeast that will tend to have fallen towards the bottom of your fermenter and THEN to add BOTH K-meta and K-sorbate. In my opinion, since after a week or so - IF you have been pitching a reasonably large enough batch of yeast to happily ferment your juice without any stress you may want to "cold crash" and rack a couple of times (or even more) before you add those two stabilizers in tandem. In other words, the idea is to remove almost every viable yeast cell BEFORE you stabilize the wine. *To try to stop the fermentation in mid flight is pretty much like trying to catch a bullet between your teeth. Penn and Teller can do it ... but they are magicians, if you know what I mean. Mere mortals usually end up in a mess on the floor. :mug:
* There are other ways to remove yeast cells that, for example, involve sterile filtering but your wine needs to be very bright and free of any particles to do that successfully otherwise you will simply clog the filters and curse the day you thought you could pull your wine through filters small enough to trap yeast cells too small to see unaided with the human eye.
 
When I first started the batch I forgot to get the gravity reading prior to pitching the EC-1118 yeast which has a alcohol tolerance level of 18% which goes against my favor lol. first thing is first I added 3 cups of sugar and probably a pound of blackberries to my must on day 1. It had a very strong fermentation for almost 3 days then it slowed down and almost to a stop by day 5. I then proceeded to to check alcohol content and it was right around 1.002 which had me thinking that it was ok to go ahead and rack/backsweeten. I forgot to buy potassium metabisulfite when I went shopping for all my home brew ingredients so I pretty much just winging it till I can get my hands on some lol. From what you have told me I think I will throw it back into the fridge and leave it in there for a couple days and then I'll just have to rack it again. Lol
 
Granted Im not nearly as experienced as some of the other members but 5 days for 1st fermentation sounds a bit short specially when adding real fruit and not just concentrate. All the recipes Ive used do at least a week. and then a second fermentation still not adding the potassium of another week or more. (the longer the better) then a 3rd rack where you can add the stoppers and backsweeten.
 
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