Americon Connoseur Potassium Sorbate question

[faeyd]

Guys,

I'm on th efinal leg of my Pinot Grigio journey but had a final question.

The Potassium Sorbate you add before the finigs is an additional set of preservative that the instructions say we *may* omit if going for a dry wine, which I am.

Just making sure that folks have omitted this in the past and that there is no detremantal effects to doing so. Anyone usually omit this packet?

[maxashton]

Potassium sorbate is a stabilizer type preservative. It stops the yeast from reproducing. It shouldn't have a detrimental effect on your product, other than there being potential for continued yeast growth, and thus CO2 production.

If you're already using campden tablets to kill off yeast population it shouldn't be a problem.

[faeyd]

Thanks for the info... it's a second dose of stabilizer, it had it's yeast killing dose 2 days ago, so I think that is why they say it is OK to leave out if you aren't going to sweeten the wine.

As I have seen zero activity for 2 days and the wine is flat as a witches booby from the de-gassing I think I am going to be ok.

I tend to like black and white I don't like these grey areas

[lockwood1956]

Potassium sorbate is a stabilizer type preservative. It stops the yeast from reproducing. It shouldn't have a detrimental effect on your product, other than there being potential for continued yeast growth, and thus CO2 production.

If you're already using campden tablets to kill off yeast population it shouldn't be a problem.

Campden tablets will not kill the yeast off.....
it will stun them, for sure, but if sugar is present, or the sulphite becomes bound (not free....only free sulphite is effective) they will spark back into life.

sorbate will prevent any new yeasties being born and so will bring an active ferment to a stop, but will not kill yeasties, the current live ones will keep eating available sugars, but they will expire once all the sugar is eaten up, or the alc level kills them.


If you ferment the wine to completely dry (0.990) then all the available sugar is gone, and so the yeasties will expire, and sorbate would not be neccessary, the kit manufactirers are just taking a belkt and braces approach, I dont normally use the sorbate in the kits, but if i have a ferment that has stopped at say 0.994 then i will, just to be sure.

[maxashton]

Good info, lockwood. Thanks

[faeyd]

It stopped at .992 DAMN! I am stuck in a grey area again!!

I left it out - it's letting the finings work for 6 days now before bottling so I if I see the slightest hint of the bung water moving even a millimetre I may add the sorbate

[lockwood1956]

At 0.992 you are very close to totally dry, if it stays at this SG for three consecutive days you are done, you can always stabilise after the clearing stage if you are concerned.