Apr 2015
Help - My wine is not fermenting!
April, 2015 Filed in: Wine making
Lately we are getting a lot of phone calls from panicked winemakers, saying their wine hasn’t started and they see no foam or bubbling going on inside their pail. Long-time winemakers will go on to say they remember batches that would be so active with bubbling that they could be the basis of a low-budget 1960’s Sci-fi horror film. Perhaps named the “Attack of the Killer Yeast”.
Well, you know us well, we always answer a question with a host of questions, like, what is the temperature, how did you add the yeast, and most importantly what is the specific gravity reading of the hydrometer. Silence, on the end of the line, well, um, I didn’t check that is the common reply. After checking the specific, lo and behold the wine is actually fermenting.
So, what is going on?
Well over the last few years, our suppliers have been choosing yeast strains that have the desirable characteristic of not foaming and bubbling a lot. Sensibly, people don’t want to head in to their wine making area and find the wine is escaping the primary pail and going all over the floor. The yeast may still be the all-popular EC-1118 species (Saccaromyces cerevisiae for the wine geeks), as an example, but it is a strain of EC-1118 that produces less foam and bubbling, but yet maintains the desired alcohol and taste profile. That’s science for you.
At the end of the day, we will always reiterate our statement, never rely on visual signs of fermentation, rely only on the hydrometer reading. That is why we recommend leaving the hydrometer in your fermenter at all time, so you can easily record daily readings to insure your wine is fermenting and to tell when it is “ready” to transfer to the carboy.
Well, you know us well, we always answer a question with a host of questions, like, what is the temperature, how did you add the yeast, and most importantly what is the specific gravity reading of the hydrometer. Silence, on the end of the line, well, um, I didn’t check that is the common reply. After checking the specific, lo and behold the wine is actually fermenting.
So, what is going on?
Well over the last few years, our suppliers have been choosing yeast strains that have the desirable characteristic of not foaming and bubbling a lot. Sensibly, people don’t want to head in to their wine making area and find the wine is escaping the primary pail and going all over the floor. The yeast may still be the all-popular EC-1118 species (Saccaromyces cerevisiae for the wine geeks), as an example, but it is a strain of EC-1118 that produces less foam and bubbling, but yet maintains the desired alcohol and taste profile. That’s science for you.
At the end of the day, we will always reiterate our statement, never rely on visual signs of fermentation, rely only on the hydrometer reading. That is why we recommend leaving the hydrometer in your fermenter at all time, so you can easily record daily readings to insure your wine is fermenting and to tell when it is “ready” to transfer to the carboy.