Unfermented Wine - What to do?
I had a real problem with this years Zinfandel. It got delivered at 29 brix which I think is the source of the problem. I added 13% water to try to get it down around 25 brix at the 72 hour mark after pitching yeast on day one.
It fermented its way down to 2 brix. I tried 3-4 different yeast starters (apple juice, highly effective yeasts, space heaters, etc) to get it down to fully dry, but none of it worked.
Now it's 9 months later after fermentation and I have a lot of 2 brix wine. It is very sweet to the taste. I don't have access to other dry wine to blend with in this quantity. So what should I do? Are there any other products I could try to alter this into? Port? Sherry?
Does anybody have any experience in really under-fermented wine? I would love to hear what you did and how it turned out.
Thanks!
Further Information The comments below were asking about my yeast selection. So here's more info. Initially, I used a blend of BM45 and BDX yeast. Towards the end of fermentation, when it was really slowing down. I did my first yeast starter. I used 60g of Uvaferm 43 and followed this eckraus tutorial. Basically, I took a small amount of must, added water and sugar, and poured them in the main jugs after 24 hours.
After that didn't work, a couple weeks later, I did another yeast starter. I pitched another 60g of Uvaferm 43 into 1 gallon of store-bought apple juice and added and additional 30% water. At the 12 hour mark. I added another 30% of the wine. Then at the 24 hour mark, I added all that back into the main jugs of wine.
None of that worked. You can read the whole story on my journal blog here. It's now 9 months later and I need to bottle soon. Can I still do a yeast restart? Any reason to think that doing it again would work on the third try?
Topic sweetness stuck-fermentation wine homebrew
Category Mac