a question about sweet white wines

Well, there are a couple of muscat varieties as a heads up. They sterile filter for the most part.

If you want to terminate an active fermentation the best way to proceed is keep the yeast weak to begin with, maybe consider adding no nutrient. Then ferment as cool as you can to keep the ferment slow and maintain fruitiness. Chill it to stop fermentation and fine and filter with as tight a filter as you can get. I am going to experiment with hot bottling, I can post the details but I got the idea from Birds book on winemaking. I'll post the title for you.

I have always wondered why no one uses beer yeast to ferment sweet wines, you would think they would give up well before any wine yeast.

Joe

Yes, French AOC muscats are fortified - same method as port, the alcohol as you mentioned might be lower although probably higher than

Given that, if you use a regular white wine yeast with alcohol tolerance 12-14%, you should be able to get it to a stage where the yeast dies off and the sugar and alcohol are at good levels using regular fermentation. You'll get a different flavour profile than with fortification but the result should still be pretty good.

Joe, interesting idea about the beer yeasts, maybe they're not strong enough to get to a decent alcohol level for wine? Different flavour profile?

Pp

Lee

For the little guy that can't sterile filter and sterile bottle, there are generally three approaches to this.

1. The "Port" method: Monitor SG(RS), and when it gets down to the level you want, add enough alcohol to kill the yeast and thus stop the ferment.

1. The "Old fashioned" method: Add more sugar than the yeast can ferment before the alcohol kills the yeast, thus leaving you with the remaining sugar as RS.

2. The "Chill/Sorbate" method: Monitor SG/RS, and when it gets to where you want it, chill the wine to make the yeast go dorment, wait until the wine falls clear, rack the clear wine away from the lees (while still cold), add Sorbate to inhibit any yeast that may not have precipitated while chilled.

Never cared much for the number 3 method. Seems I always had to add sugar anyway to insure I had at least 10%ABV for stability. Just seemed more trouble than it was worth. HTH

Frederick

Or 4. Ferment to dryness, let clear, and back sweeten to taste using sugar or reserved juice and add sorbate. This is a variant of 3 and usually easier to manage because dry wine clear faster and better than with with some RS, plus you don't have to keep it chilled all the time.

Pp

Hi Pp

Yup - but the OP already mentioned that so I only listed some alternatives. That is what I would term the "Modern" method.

Regards

Frederick