update on my wine

[billy]

hope i have not done something wrong but heres an update so far.. my wine as some may know from other posts has been racked and is clearing.. i didnt sweeten before racking it and took advice to dissolve sweetener and gently stir in. i did this but think the sweetener ruined the taste slightly ( splenda) im going to look for some proper sweetener from a homebrew store .
( thinking back with my tc's the sweetener hasnt really done it any great favours)

anyway i got a head on me and gently stired in some grape juice , tastes nice now albeit quite warm to the taste . i can smell the pears which come through slightly on tasting and then quite a large warm sensation coming through which i presume is the alcohol.

i was very careful not to get too much air in , when i syphoned i put the hose at the bottom of the empty dj and let it fill that way so there was no sloshing and poring from hight to cause bubbles ect. i filled dj up within an inch of the top of the bottle. i presume all yeast has gone as there is no activity at all in the bubbler ,doesnt seem to be any pressure at all in it..

i didnt add a campden as i made sure all was clean and sterile and its not going to be kept to long.. does this sound as if its going to be ok ???

2 questions..

1,is sweetening it with juice ok for a still wine as long as i have no yeast in suspension which i hope has all gone.

2, will this warmth subside and how long will it take ?

im going to get a couple of books so i can do some reading so i may not have to ask so many questions..

cheers billy

[Mitchamitri]

Over time the alcohol heat will dissolve into the drink as it melds together, as will the harshness (chemical sweetness) of the splenda – but only because of the wine smoothing so don’t expect the level of sweetness to decrease. I am not sure, but it may be worth checking the ingredients of splenda against a wine sweetener – as they may be the same. Be cautious – add too much sweetness and you’ll never recover the drink!

Once you have fermented you will never remove the yeast from suspension unless you have millions of quids worth of filtration equipment down to ppm, so the only way you can guarantee it wont restart is to either pasteurise the drink or pitch a campden per gallon. If I was sweetening with juice I probably wouldn’t use a campden (or stabiliser) as it wouldn’t guarantee stopped fermentation – you need non fermentable sugars (hence the sweetener).

Generally, as I have said before, I don’t bother, I just let it ferment out to the very very end before bottling (so – months), and don’t let the bottles get warm in the summer. If you add juice to sweeten you are supplying food for the yeast and in the right conditions it will restart.

Couple of thoughts to play with – get pressure (champagne or beer) bottles and look up “Keeving”, and “Milk stout” on Wikipedia – different ways of getting sweetness.

[billy]

thanks for that.. it tastes ok now i have added juice. i will just leave it for a while now ..


cheers billy ..