Puzzled Newbie

Hi Folks,

My Mistake, I actually have a bloop time of only 5 minutes so I guess the wine is still going. It went to secondary at the beginning of August. How long will it keep going? I know that yeast is known as a culture, at this rate I'll have a yeast civilisation.

Comments

Bri

If you are getting airlock bubbles (bloops?) every 5 minutes, it is probably still fermenting slowly. It will stop eventually; it will finish faster if the temp. is higher. You don't want anything above

100F, but the high end of comfortable room temp (say, 75 to 80F) will produce more yeast activity than, say, 60 to 65F. Some fermentations just seem to take longer than others. If you've added reasonable amounts of yeast nutrients and kept the temperature nice and warm, the yeast will put out their best efforts -- beyond that, you just have to let them finish at their own pace.

Doug

Bri,

Is there a lot of airspace in your secondary fermenters??? What yeast did you use???

Bob

The bubbling in your glass is probably not so much actual fermentation in the glass as dissolved gas in the wine that is coming out of solution when you pour and as it changes temperature (think of what a glass of pop will do when you pour it).

While it appears your wine is still fermenting, even after it is done, if you try to pour a glass too soon without degassing it will do the same thing for this reason.

Fizzing when poured into the glass suggests trapped CO2 gas. Whether or not fermentation has completed, it seems probable that a young wine like yours, fermented in glass, still has plenty of CO2 (g) in solution. Your wine should be sufficiently degassed before you bottle if you want to avoid fizz and potential off-flavors. Assuming you're making a dry wine, I would first make sure fermentation is complete. Check your residual sugar levels again (you may want to use a Clinitest) but it seems SG = 1.0 still has .5 - 1% RS. As Doug said, warm things up to 75 - 80F and, if needed, pitch additional yeast like Premier Cuvee to bring it to completion. Next, de-gas the wine. Usually, this is accomplished with time and several rackings but if you're in a hurry to bottle before the Holidays you might try searching this newsgroup for details on quicker methods.

Good luck, RD

Hi Bob,

The wine level comes up to the top of the straight part of the demijohn. I used a standard high tolerance wine yeast

Yes yeast is a culture but it will not reproduce in the absence of O2. Consequently it does most of it's reproduction during the first week when O2 is available. If you racked off the sediment at the wrong time (usually later than you should have) there might not have been much yeast left in the carboy and, hence, a slow ferment after that. Not enough nutrient is another cause of slow ferment. OR you may have had more sugar than the yeast could handle and it is just slowing down as it runs out. What was the beginning SG anyway?

You can wait it out and it will eventually quit. Or you could deliberately stop it to maintain the current sweetness if it is to your liking. Or you could give it a bit more nutrient, stir it good to give it a bit of O2, and see if it takes off.

Ray