Strawberry Wine Help

[pulabula]

I made 3 gallons of strawberry wine.
I used 10lbs of strawberries,
336 oz of water,
6 lbs of sugar,
3 tsp acid blend,
1.5 tsp pectic enzyme,
3 campden tablet,
1 pack yeast,
3 tsp yeast nutrient,
3/4 tsp tannin

I mixed everything together in a covered bucket, stirring twice a day, until primary fermentation was complete.
Then racked off of the strawberries to the carboy.
Where it sat until it stopped bubbling and desired clarity, and the hydrometer reached my desired readings.
Racked it off of the settlement twice during that time frame.
Then I sweetened with 4 cups of sugar.
Then I added potassium sorbate and waited a day before bottling.

We bottled ten bottles and one gallon sized bottle in that order.

Now the issue is. We drank the gallon sized bottle the next day and it was perfect. It tasted correctly and had the perfect amount of flavoring. Five days after bottling, we opened a normal bottle, and it was lacking in flavor and alcohol tasting/content. It seems like there light pressure when the cork is removed.
Any idea why this happened?

This isn't our first time doing this. Every other time this has not happened. The bottling process was the exact same as each time before.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi pulabula - and welcome. I am guessing here but if the last thing you bottled was the gallon bottle and all the other 750 ml bottles you bottled first, I wonder if perhaps the 4 cups of sugar (whether made into a syrup and then added or added as dry sugar dropped to the bottom and even if you stirred the sugar/syrup up and through the wine you failed to really mix it and so all or almost all the sugar was left in the bottom. You added sorbate so the yeast remaining could not bud (reproduce) but they could still ferment (we normally add both K-meta and K-sorbate to prevent refermentation) so you drank the sweeter gallon before the yeast really got under way and the less sweet 10 bottles you opened after the yeast had munched through the smaller amount of sugar they were left with... But that's a guess. Am I close?

 

[Jeff Wilson]

I might second the previous comment on yeast munching on the available sugar. Regardless of a little extra sugar sediment making it into the last bottle, if yeast got munching on the sugar, it would have more time with the second, third, and beyond bottles. 5 days is enough for it to make a difference (think of the initial 6lbs eaten during primary). Sounds like you've had success in the past but typically one would add both potassium sorbate and sodium metabisulphite, potassium metabisulfate, campden tablets - and do so before backsweetening.

The potassium sorbate only makes the existing yeast unable to reproduce. The k-meta makes the environment inhospitable for yeast to live. If you make the existing unable to reproduce, they are still eating the sugar. Further, if the potassium sorbate didn't completely do its job, it is possible some yeast could continue to reproduce - especially if you just gave it a healthy dose of fresh food (your back-sweetening sugar).

You want a clean environment before you back-sweeten. Next time try to add both additives and let it do its job for a couple days before you back-sweeten. This ensures that the existing colony can't readily reproduce and dies off before you add the sugar. Even if a few manage to reproduce, even they dwindle before getting a shot of fresh food.

Hope that helps.

 

[Yooper]

Right- next time, stabilize first. Then a few days later, sweeten. Then, a few days later, if there is NO indication of further fermentation, then you can bottle.

Adding the sugar and then later adding the sorbate is like, well, putting a condom on after the main event. The sugar feeds the yeast, so the sorbate would do little to nothing adding it afterwards I'm afraid.