In a number of situations you may find it’s desirable to stop the fermentation operation prior it comes to a stopping on its own. The most popular purpose for desiring to halt the fermentation process is that you’ve discovered that the wine has has reached proper amount of sweetness which you prefer and you don’t care for it to go any further.
By stopping the fermentation then, a lot of wine makers believe that they can maintain the measure of sweetness which the wine has currently produced and if you want a extremely sweet wine, for example, a dessert wine, this is certainly acceptable. The theory with stopping the fermentation process is that if you allowed the it to finish fermenting it would lose less sweetness over time. When the wine turns totally dry, the fermentation process eventually stops by itself with no interference from you.
So consequently, there are many various techniques that home wine makers tend to use when trying to halt the fermentation process in order to preserve the sweetness but for the most part these methods work very well, however.
One of those methods is making use of either Campden Tablets or Sodium Bisulfite however you should need to noted that fermentation will not completely halt just by using these methods. You should also be aware that the prospect does exist for a few live yeast to remain within the wine, making way for the opportunity for the fermentation process to start again. In fact, it’s not unknown for the action to start again even when you have bottled your wine and stashed it away, but as you’ve probably figured out, that couldn’t be a desirable occurrence and could end in some terribly bad-tasting wine.
Another popular option utilized by some winemakers is Potassium Sorbate which is mostly used for the purpose of sweetening wine. When it is used for the objective it is frequently after the fermentation process has been done and you’re prepared to bottle the wine. The Potassium Sorbate is subsequently put in in addition to sugar and in this circumstance, it’s to keep the yeast from fermenting the sugar which has just been included. When introduce prior to the end of the fermentation cycle, however, Potassium Sorbate won’t kill the yeast, rather it just makes it infertile. Meaning that it will not reproduce but it does not end the fermentation.
If your plan is to preserve the amount of sweetness that is already in your wine, the best method to doing this is to in fact do nothing and permit the fermentation finish on its own until it is completely ended. After the yeast has had an chance to settle through a period of several weeks, you’ll then be able to siphon the wine off and then add some Potassium Sorbate with sugar.
Bear in mind that it’s very important to allow the fermentation process to finish before to add things such as Potassium Sorbate or additional sugar. If you’re not certain whether the fermentation process has finished, you can determine that by using a hydrometer. Don’t forget that this is the instrument that you make use of to check the alcohol content for the wine hence if the process has concluded, there should be a measure of no greater than one on the hydrometer.
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