FG issues after sulfiting

[Mattzak]

Okay, have some theories not sure entirely what happened... gonna post my notes and see what you think happened.

I suddenly had a loss of sugar/gravity after backsweetening. I’m leaning toward fermentation starting again, but I’m still too new to be certain. Problem is that my hydrometer broke on the day I choose to juice and sweeten. Aw dang...




Strawberry - 1 gal melomel

April 19th, Sunday. 6:30pm
**1 gal batch**
Actual ingredients:

- 2 lbs 1 oz wildflower honey
- ~3 g EC1118

• 1.25x go ferm

- .7 gal spring water
-15 oz of strawberries
- 1.25 T-spoon Fermax yeast nutrient
-initial dose of 1/2 t spoon
- SG: 1.080 smelled delicious,
-projected ABV 11.11%

Process:
*Everything sterilized per directions on Star San.
*Must aerated with stone for 10 minutes
*Yeast was hydrated at 95-105* F. Temperature was between this throughout the hydration for 45 minutes.
*slurry contained 1.25 T-spoon of fermax yeast nutrient as per instructions.
*Added 1/2 t-spoon of fermaid to must.
*temperature of must was 80-85* and slurry was 95ish at pitch
*turned jug over several times, gently, to mix in bubbles on surface and slurry throughout open mouth jug
Jug is filled to neck, left in closet with ambient air around 75ish.

April 20th, Monday. Added 1/4 t spoon fermax. Aerated, SG 1.070

April 23rd, Thursday:
added 1/2 t-spoon pectinase, gravity 1.013 thinking I may crash on Saturday.


April 25th, Saturday:
Gravity of 1.000
Tossed in the fridge. Yeet!

May 9th, Saturday:
Racked into 2/3 of 1/16th t spoon k meta
I approximated as best I could based on utensils available.
Will add k sorbate Sunday, plan to add 4 cups strawberry juice to fill bottle to neck.

This results 11.11% down to 8.3% this will be the summer sipper.
I already want to make MORE of this

May 11th, Monday:
K sorbate, 1/2 t spoon. Adding approximately 12 oz strawberry juice from frozen pressed strawberries.
What a messss... smells good tho.
Also added pectinase at 1/2 t spoon. Maybe it’ll clear up in a week

May 14th, Thursday:
Holy cow! Pectinase for the win!

May 16th, Saturday:
Wanted to rack off the fallen yuck...
Started bubbling when I opened the lid, won’t stop a few hours later... hoping it’s not fermenting again. Maybe pectinase?
Tilted the jug in hopes it will settle in one point, added airlock.

May 18th, Monday:
Racked and checked gravity 1.000
How did 12 oz strawberry juice give no gravity? Probably fermented. Tastes good though.

That’s all I got... thoughts? (Aside from my nutrient schedule.. lol) my main focus is about the lack of gravity, but I wouldn’t mind other thoughts.

Thanks in advance!

 

[bernardsmith]

Hmmm... Interesting. I wonder what the gravity was after you added the juice. My bet is that unless the juice was sweetened there would be very little sugar in that juice to increase the gravity of the gallon significantly (that's a guess), but there may have been enough fermentable sugars in the juice to start refermentation. But you say you added K-sorbate. Just K-sorbate? Normally, one adds both K-sorbate and K-meta because the sorbate will only prevent yeast from reproducing but if you have a large viable colony of yeast in the container that sorbate will do diddly squat to prevent them from eating any sugars available... That's the task of the K-meta. And that's why one typically adds them in tandem.

 

[Mattzak]

Hmmm... Interesting. I wonder what the gravity was after you added the juice. My bet is that unless the juice was sweetened there would be very little sugar in that juice to increase the gravity of the gallon significantly (that's a guess), but there may have been enough fermentable sugars in the juice to start refermentation. But you say you added K-sorbate. Just K-sorbate? Normally, one adds both K-sorbate and K-meta because the sorbate will only prevent yeast from reproducing but if you have a large viable colony of yeast in the container that sorbate will do diddly squat to prevent them from eating any sugars available... That's the task of the K-meta. And that's why one typically adds them in tandem.

I did add k meta two days before k sorb because I’ve Been finding from this forum to space them out a day (or 2).

what I’m thinking is that the pectinase allowed the sulfites to bind with all the funk and therefore lowered the ppm to a range that allowed a wild yeast on the juice to start working. But I really don’t know.