yeahbittern
New Member
Hi everyone
New poster, hoping you can help me out.
I've been making blackberry wine for the past 3 years with a crop from our allotment - using a C J Berry recipe, no issues so far and really nice results. also made various other wines, hedgerow brews etc. In the past month I've tried two batches of the blackberry wine which have both gone wrong on me in the first few days of fermentation. Most recent batch went as follows:
Sunday - made must, added pectolase
Monday - added yeast and nutrient
Tuesday - looks normal, vigorous ferment started
Wednesday - ferment slowed/stopped, wine surface largely covered in white layer with signs of lacing/spiderweb type patterns - must underneath full of blobby clumps of... Something
pic: http://picpaste.com/brewpic-EFUhoCb1.jpg
So I'm assuming there's some kind of infection (from the pics I've seen online, the surface looks most like the pictures of lacto infection I've seen on beer). But wondering how this has happened so quick - most reading I've done seems to suggest that the likely infections (flowers of wine, lacto etc) would be more likely to occur when fermentation has slowed/stopped so there's not CO2 being produced? Interested in what is causing the infection to happen/spread so quickly. Things to note/possibilities:
1) the house is pretty warm right now, probably about 24/25c in daytime
2) something has made its home in the fermenting bucket and isn't being killed by sterilisation?
3) wild somethings on the blackberries? (I confess that I didn't add sulphites to the must but haven't had any issues with that before - the recipe involves chucking a gallon of boiling water on the blackberries which I'd figured would kill most stuff)
4) fruit flies getting in unnoticed?
5) duff yeast?
So any thoughts on what I need to change are welcome - also, is there any scope for saving/restarting this batch or should I just chuck it and start again?
Thanks in advance
New poster, hoping you can help me out.
I've been making blackberry wine for the past 3 years with a crop from our allotment - using a C J Berry recipe, no issues so far and really nice results. also made various other wines, hedgerow brews etc. In the past month I've tried two batches of the blackberry wine which have both gone wrong on me in the first few days of fermentation. Most recent batch went as follows:
Sunday - made must, added pectolase
Monday - added yeast and nutrient
Tuesday - looks normal, vigorous ferment started
Wednesday - ferment slowed/stopped, wine surface largely covered in white layer with signs of lacing/spiderweb type patterns - must underneath full of blobby clumps of... Something
pic: http://picpaste.com/brewpic-EFUhoCb1.jpg
So I'm assuming there's some kind of infection (from the pics I've seen online, the surface looks most like the pictures of lacto infection I've seen on beer). But wondering how this has happened so quick - most reading I've done seems to suggest that the likely infections (flowers of wine, lacto etc) would be more likely to occur when fermentation has slowed/stopped so there's not CO2 being produced? Interested in what is causing the infection to happen/spread so quickly. Things to note/possibilities:
1) the house is pretty warm right now, probably about 24/25c in daytime
2) something has made its home in the fermenting bucket and isn't being killed by sterilisation?
3) wild somethings on the blackberries? (I confess that I didn't add sulphites to the must but haven't had any issues with that before - the recipe involves chucking a gallon of boiling water on the blackberries which I'd figured would kill most stuff)
4) fruit flies getting in unnoticed?
5) duff yeast?
So any thoughts on what I need to change are welcome - also, is there any scope for saving/restarting this batch or should I just chuck it and start again?
Thanks in advance
