dried elderberry wine stuck ferment?

[yawdum]

hi guys

have been experimenting with dried elderberry and raisin , following a recipe I found (google)

any way started the ferment with good quality red yeast and it was fermenting away nicely

starting SG 1080

Following the recipe to the letter after 4 days I strained of the 10 litres of liquid into two
demijohns and desposed of the fruit

however it was supposed to carry on fermenting for several days but nothing , no bubbles

I have given it a good shake and put it in a warm airing cupboard and again no bubbles in the airlock

after 2 days still nothing so I checked the sg today and its 998 lower than I expected

what should I do from here ? any advice?

regards in anticipation

Andy

[rjb222]

First make sure your airlock is filled to the proper level and the carboy is properly topped off. Then take a deep breath and again now relax and let the wine do what is supposed to at this stage. Mature a bit then in a couple weeks move it to another carboy to get away from the yeast and crud that will drop out and then relax again for a while. Wine making as you can tell is such a stressful job that we must relax a lot in between racking's. :-)

[ToulouseLePlot]

Tricky. At .998 I hope it's got a little way to go so I can understand what you are thinking. Maybe the airlocks aren't perfectly airtight. Test it again after a week - would anyone think it worth trying to re-start?

[Cellar_Rat]

Very tricky indeed.
At .998 it is probably finishing off slowly on its own or it's gone as far as it's going to go.

The only other thing I would mention is do not rely on bubbling through the air lock as an indicator of an active ferment. it won't be the first time that the cork doesn't fit 100% and the CO2 escapes around it.

I recently purchased (for something completely different) a narrow narrow scale hydrometer .990 > 1.000. Very very very good for finishing - rubbish you what I bought it for though !!

What would I do. Wait & taste it occasionally.

[yawdum]

thanks all

i will check the air locks , there does seem to be a tiny bit of activity on the surface this morning so will leave a week or two

see if sg changes

i think it still has potential for further fermentation , as was still quite rigerous right up to point of racking
to secondary .

just out of interest , why is it important to remove the juice from the fruit must after 3-4 days , why not just
leave it to ferment out? it seemed to be doing fine upto this point.



regards
Andy

[Cellar_Rat]

why is it important to remove the juice from the fruit must after 3-4 days , why not just
leave it to ferment out? it seemed to be doing fine upto this point.

Depends on the recipe. But generally all fruit solids are removed quite quickly (there are exceptions) - to extract the best of the fruit, and not the bitter flavours that may comes from the pips/stalks. Also there is a chance that floating fruit can, if left unattended turn mouldy.

[SiSandrine]

Yes - as Brian says. Additionally you are also removing the good must/wine from the detritus caused by the carnage of early primary fermentation. Lots of dead yeast cells mixed up with used up fruit pulp in order to keep your wine 'clean'. The early gross lees (the deposit on the bottom of the DJ) can go off pretty quickly causing all manner of problems for your wine.

[rjb222]

Actually at 0.998 your wine is considered dry anything below 1.000 there is a very low residual sugar and considered dry. I would not even try a restart as you will fail as there is not enough sugar for a restart. Obvious signs of ferment are very misleading I would venture that what you see as movement in the airlock is just residual CO2 releasing from the wine after ferment. I have seen many country style wines go down to 0.992 but just as many that finish up at 0.998 any where between these two hydrometer readings is just fine for a finishing point. That is not to say there is not ferment going on here many times there is a lag phase right after racking as what we actually do is knock off a lot of the CO2 when we rack and it is the extra CO2 that the liquid is saturated with that we see going through the air lock and it takes some time to build enough CO2 to get the airlock to work again.

[yawdum]

to all who have posted

once again guys thanks for all your help and support

great site , very helpfull members