Must killed my starter

[BrowserUk]

Hi,

Having had a lucky experience with making some wine the wrong way, yesterday I brewed up 8 litres of must using a whole fresh pineapple, 200 gms of raisons, a tablespoon of lemon juice and 1.8 kilos of sugar.


I sprinkled 1 1/2 heaped teaspoonsful of Young's super wine yeast compound onto the must and put the lid on the fermenter. Today, absolutely nothing. Not a sign of any activity.

Long story short: I'd used a tablespoon of commercial lemon juice -- it said it contained suphites, but that's basically Campden tablets, so that's okay right.

What I hadn't noticed was the E211; which turns out to be Sodium Benzoate otherwise known as wine stabilizer. Basically kills yeast (Or at least, powerfully suppresses it.) D'oh!

I just knew it would all go wrong as soon as I tried to do it the right way

Buk.

 

[oldbloke]

Sorbates stop yeast reproducing, so you can get round them by building up a powerful yeast colony in a starter (basically water/sugar/nutrient - but your yeast has nutrient mixed in I think) and then pitching it.
Dunno about benzoates though. The temp at which they decompose is higher than the boiling point of your must so I don't think you can boil it off. A strong starter might work.

 

[BrowserUk]

Dunno about benzoates though. .... A strong starter might work.

When I saw the yeast I'd added yesterday had done nothing at all by this morning I looked on-line and found Jack Keller's yeast starter method.

I started a starter using 1/2 cup of grape juice, a teaspoon of sugar and a heaped teaspoon of the Young's yeast mix. It went off like a rocket. After 2 hrs I added another 1/2 cup of grape juice. After 4 hours it was very vigorous, so I thought I'd better start acclimatising it by adding 1/2 cup of the must. It killed all activity in the starter stony dead within 15 minutes.

It was only then that I went looking for the cause and found the E211 reference in tiny print on the back of the bottle of lemon juice.

At that point I decided there was little point throwing more yeast at the problem and ditched the must. About £3 of ingredients in all, but I guess I learnt a valuable lesson: Look very hard for and read all the small print.

Or, stick to fresh ingredients. Or buy some proper citric acid.

I'll have another go just as soon as this sensation of overwhelming stupidity starts to fade a little :)

Buk.