Watermelon wine

[GavinCiampa]

So I started my first batch of watermelon wine about two weeks ago. I was shooting for about 13% abv but put enough residual sugar in to have 18% I was looking to end up with a pretty sweet wine..however to my surprise,upon testing the abv after 4 days I found that my wine was sitting at 0.0 the yeast had consumed all the sugar and was incredibly dry. I added some stabilizer and racked it over to secondary. After a few days I added about 3.5 lb for back sweetener and was going to let it sit for a few weeks before I racked it into third for clarification, however yet again to my surprise...the fermentation started back up full force. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stop this and how I might be able to save this wine as a sweet wine. It's just so sharp being as it's watermelon. Btw I'm using red star Montrachet yeast.

 

[Yooper]

So I started my first batch of watermelon wine about two weeks ago. I was shooting for about 13% abv but put enough residual sugar in to have 18% I was looking to end up with a pretty sweet wine..however to my surprise,upon testing the abv after 4 days I found that my wine was sitting at 0.0 the yeast had consumed all the sugar and was incredibly dry. I added some stabilizer and racked it over to secondary. After a few days I added about 3.5 lb for back sweetener and was going to let it sit for a few weeks before I racked it into third for clarification, however yet again to my surprise...the fermentation started back up full force. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to stop this and how I might be able to save this wine as a sweet wine. It's just so sharp being as it's watermelon. Btw I'm using red star Montrachet yeast.

It's hard to stop an active fermentation. Wait until it's done, and clear, and then rack to a new vessel. Wait until no new lees drop after at least 60 days (if there are new lees then, rack and restart the time). Once the wine is completely clear, it can be racked onto the stabilizers (sorbate and campden) and then sweetened.

Once the wine hits 18% or so, it should stop on its own, though. It'll be rocket fuel for a year or two (maybe longer), though.

 

[Captive]

You can stop an active ferment with temperature. Either warm it up enough to kill the yeast or chill it enough to make them inactive. If you go the chill route, it will only stay inactive as long as it is chilled. When you say you added stabilizer, what was that? Was it a potassium sorbate and potassium metabisulfite? Adding these two in the proper amounts should have kept the ferment from restarting.