1. Home
  2. Winemaking Craft Forum
  3. use of sorbistat

use of sorbistat

#1.....I am pretty new to this....my parents have been making wine for years,and their wine always had a "taste" to it,regardless of the variety of grape.I believe it may be from the sorbistat they have always used to stop their wine. They always liked sweeter wines,but I like dry wines,so my question is,if I let my wine go completely dry,say to .995 SG, do I even need to sorbistat it to safely bottle it ? What if I get to a taste that I like that is higher in sugar...can it be bottled without treating it with sorbistat? What about sodium benzoate...does it have a "taste" to it,and how do you use it? My end objective is to intervene as little as possible when it comes to additives.Thanx.

Reply to
treetoad
Loading thread data ...

No. In fact I highly recommend _against_ it. I don't like the flavor of sorbate either.

What

You certainly should use sulfite in your wine, but that won't prevent refermentation by itself.

I've never used benzoate, so I don't know if that's a good way to go. Making sweet wines as an amateur pretty much forces you to one of three choices:

1) Sorbate/sulfite combo, 2) Maintaining the wine refrigerated after clarification and bottling, and 3) Sterile membrane filtration.

Those are in _increasing_ order of desirability and difficulty. OTOH, if you really get serious about winemaking I recommend that you pick door #3. Sterile filtration isn't really all that difficult. It does require some equipment and a bit of technique though, and the filter media is a bit pricy - but you can run a _lot_ of wine through a filter cartridge before you have to replace it if you adequately clarify the wine beforehand so as to not load the membrane too quickly.

Perhaps I'll write a few chapters on the subject one day when I have time.

Tom S

Reply to
Tom S

Thank you for the reply.My interest isn't in making sweet wines,(prefer dry) as much as it is to make one that won't potentially turn into a hand grenade after it is bottled.Is this a valid concern with dry wines? My folks sorbate everything, and I'm guessing that is the source of the funny taste to most of their wines. I recently made a kit wine (mezza luna from brew king),and one of the ingredients was sorbate. I got it really dry,tastes good,etc,but was hesitant to go against their directions in the use of sorbistat.I understand about the importantance of using sulfites,just not sure how critical the use of sorbistat is in dry wines. Thanks again

Reply to
treetoad

Sorbate with sulfite prevents wine that has stopped fermenting from restarting. If this happens in bottle it can turn into a grenade. If there is no sugar in the wine, then it cannot restart. Therefore there is no reason to sorbate a dry wine. It cannot turn into a grenade due to refermenting.

Sulfite by itself and in proper doses is still advisable to give your wine a long shelf life so it will not oxidize and it can age properly.

Ray

Reply to
Ray Calvert

DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.