Making an off-dry wine.

I think you are on the right track with the yeast idea. Different yeasts finish differently. Whitelabs has a sweet wine and mead yeast you might want to try for what you are after. It is a liquid yeast and a bit tempremental.

There are a couple of good ale yeasts that might give you the finish you want, but ale yeasts tend to have a malty flavor. You may or may not want this in a wine. (Nottihinham is good, and I think might give you the results you are after.)

After these two, it might depend on what your brew supply store stocks. They might have more suggestions. You might want to have a lenghty conversation with one of the clerks there.

hope this helps,

roland

Been there, done that.

Cold.

Definitely not guaranteed to work. At best, the SO2 will slow the yeast down but you would have to add way more than you want to actually kill the yeast.

The latter is a very definite possibility.

According to a major wine yeast company, no such thing exists. At least not one that will reliably stop around a certain ABV. It depends on too many other conditions whether the yeast will stop at 16% or 12% or 8%.

Pot. Sorbate in addition to the Pot. Meta. is another option.

I've been looking into this for a few years since German style Rieslings are a favorite of mine.

The best procedure I've been able to come up with is to chill the wine almost to the freezing point right before you reach your target SG. I say right before your target because the yeast will still consume sugar while the wine is cooling down unless you have some method of really quickly cooling it.

The cold will slow the yeast down to the point where they will become inactive and settle out. The cold is not a reliable way to kill the yeast, only temporarily inactive them. One the yeast have settled out sufficiently, either filter or use sorbate.

The sorbate will prevent the remaining yeast from reproducing. Don't use it without Pot. Meta. Riesling tends to be high in acid (including malic) and MLF is not really in style plus can cause some off aromas if sorbate is present. The Pot. Meta. will prevent the MLF.

Andy

I do not trust any yeast to turn off at a particular point. No yeast company is going to say his yeast will stop at 11% when there is enough sugar to go to 12%.

Two suggestions:

1) Aim for the alcohol level you want and make it dry. Let it clear, rack and stabilize with sorbate, and then sweeten to taste. This is the method I use. You might even consider sweetening with a mild honey rather than sugar.

2) Ferment it to the sweetness you want and then put it in a fridge or freezer to stop the fermentation. Keep it cold until it clears, then remove it, rack and stabilize with sorbate so the fermentation will not restart.

The second method is used by some, I just do not have the cold storage space to do it.

Ray

Thanks for the replies so far.

Just out of curiosity, is the cold then sorbate method how it is done in commercial wineries ?

I prefer Ray's 1st method - Ferment to dry and then re-sweeten with sugar and add sorbate (and sulphite). I've made a couple of real nice Rieslings this way. With a little bench testing with small samples before sweetening the whole batch, you can get the sweetness right where you want it.

Haven't tried the cold method, but it seems to me it might be difficult to hit your target sweetness -you'd have to keep testing all the time to make sure you didn't go past the level you wanted - then you'd have to chill very quickly to make sure you kept it where you wanted it. Easier to ferment dry and resweeten imho.

I prefer Ray's 1st method - Ferment to dry and then re-sweeten with sugar and add sorbate (and sulphite). I've made a couple of real nice Rieslings this way. With a little bench testing with small samples before sweetening the whole batch, you can get the sweetness right where you want it.

Haven't tried the cold method, but it seems to me it might be difficult to hit your target sweetness -you'd have to keep testing all the time to make sure you didn't go past the level you wanted - then you'd have to chill very quickly to make sure you kept it where you wanted it. Easier to ferment dry and resweeten imho.

No! most typ for commercial production is sterile filtration with "fantastically" expensive equipment and sanitation.

btw .. many here in the ng will say ferment to dryness, clear, sweeten to taste and then sorbate/bottle. It's simpler! Good Luck!

Charlie

CJ wrote:

Usually the cold, then filter or in some cases cold, followed by cold.

Some wineries in Germany are reported to literally throw the doors to the winery open when the wine is coming close to their target. Of course in this day and age, it's probably done more with jacketed, stainless steel fermentors.

The wine is kept cold for months until the yeast have died and/or settled out. Some filter, some don't. It's also common to have a slight fizz in many German Rieslings. This usually disappears after the wine is poured.

It can be difficult for use to keep the wine that cold for so long. In my cellar, the temp usually bottoms out around 50 F which isn't really cold enough and keeping 5 or 10 gallons in the fridge for 6 months really isn't an option.

Andy

Alright. Next (related) question.

Seems like ferment to dryness is the most popular method.

Now, what if I were to say that I'm looking to make an icewine come late December/January from juice I'd buy from Niagara, so I'm more interest in using a method that will be practical (and practice) for the icewine (i.e. re-sweeten is probably unfeasible here as I'd need to hold back at least half the juice to re-sweeten to 10%+ residual sugar).

I live in Ottawa, where freezing temps usually start to by early november--i.e. it should hover around freezing out in the garage by then, so space in a fridge isn't a necessity for me in order to cool it down and leave it there for months.

Thus, if I want to use this method, I'd need my residual sugar to be where I want it no earlier than early november.

Can someone suggest a yeast and fermentation temperature that would result in a slow enough fermentation that this would work time-wise ? (I'd pick the grapes up in late Sept or Early October--lets say I start fermentation Oct. 1).

Thanks.

I would go with ICV-D47 and a cool fermentation to slow it down. It still may be difficult to make the fermentation last a month, but this yeast is pretty sensitive to temperature. Even if it doesn't get cold enouh in the garage when it's time to stop it, you could probably find a way to chill it enough for a couple of weeks. Fridge, freezer or even an ice water bath.

Keep in mind, if your eventual goal is to make a very sweet wine, you may need to kick up the acid a bit to keep the wine in balance. IMHO, a lot of the Niagra wineries don't balance the wine correctly and they end up very cloying when compared to their German counterparts.

Andy

Thanks.

For this first batch I just want to practice stopping the fermentation with residual sugar left.

I realize I can't directly apply what I do here to my future icewine attempt, but I'd like to get a little practice in (timing it, etc) so that I don't totally mess it up. Don't really want to go into the $15/litre juice blind.

Another option is to reserve a small amount of juice, or else pull out some of the partially fermented juice, either of which you will refrigerate, then add back after the other part has fermented dry. Then sorbate.

Gene

I live a bit south of you in Pittsburgh and I think you need to consider different ways of cooling. I will be freezing 1/2 gallon plastic jugs with tap water and placing them in the fermentation pail this year; I can let you know how it works out.

Joe

Ok, here are some examples that show why you should not aim at making a sweet wine by using a yeast. I started two meads back in March. One was a straight mead (honey only) the other a Melomel with honey and Niagara grape juice. One was started at SG 1.094 and the other at 1.098. One finished at

1.004 and the other at 1.008. Both sweeter than I wanted. I used adequate nutrient in each and I used Lalvin 71B-1122 in each. This is my yeast of choice and I use it a lot. It has a tolerance of up to 14% and should have had no trouble finishing each of the meads dry. Two meads and neither finished. If I was really trying to finish the meads at 1.003 a semi-sweet finish then, with this yeast I probably would have started it at well over 1.100 and I would have ended with a very sweet mead.

My point is -- don't trust the rated alcohol tolerance of a yeast. It is a ball park number only.

Ray

I didn't see the original message & only one response; however,....

Using sorbate (or something) to stop a fermentation is very tricky. Commercially a wine (such as a port) is monitored 24 hours a day every few minutes as it nears the target sg. I doubt you really want to do that.

Today, in my store, I racked two kit wines that were started 7 days ago from primary. One was at 1.000, the other was at .993. Very tough to hit an exact point.

The best method is... Ferment to dry. Sorbate. Sweeten to taste. BUT sweeten LIGHT. You can always add more.

Steve

You are correct, sorbate is not designed to stop a ferment, it is designed to prevent a ferment that has stopped from restarting.

Ray