Elderflower champagne - can I speed up fermentation?

[StefanS]

My first post here.

I am making my first brew ever. 2½ weeks ago I started ~25 litres of elderflower champagne with an SG of 1.069 and 11 g of Nottingham yeast.

It is however fermenting really slow. I get a bubble in the air lock every 8 seconds or so and it has reached 1.059 in the 2½ weeks it has been in the bucket. Temperature ~21C/70F.

From the very beginning I closed the lid on the bucket. I can see that many recepies says to cover it with a cloth for the first couple of days. I guess this is for the yeast to get going?

Can I somehow boost my fermentation process by adding more yeast now or is that too late because of the small amount of alcohol in the brew? Any other recommendations or should I just be more patient?

 

[Hoppy2bmerry]

Welcome to the forum. The key ingredient to most all fermented beverages is patience. Where is your fermentable sugar coming from? Grape juice? And, how did you decide on using Nottingham yeast? Unusual choice for champagne.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi StefanS - and welcome.
The reason for fermenting in a loosely covered bucket is so that you can add nutrient and you can remove CO2 by stirring (this also helps keep the yeast in full suspension AND allows a small amount of additional air be incorporated into the must. Stirring also ensures that leaves or fruit are kept in full contact with the yeast... So my suggestion would be to stir and add nutrient*
Counting bubbles in your airlock is fun but tells you not a thing. The only effective (low tech) way to know what is going on is to take hydrometer readings. There may be a poor seal between the lid and the bucket so CO2 will use that to escape rather than exert energy to push through the airlock - so few or no bubbles AND there may be a poor seal between the airlock and lid - so ditto... .

* If you cannot find lab made nutrient you can take a tablespoon of bread yeast, proof it in a little sugar water and then boil the yeast solution to kill the yeast. The yeast cells will provide your yeast with metabolites and organic chemicals and sterols the yeast need to transport the sugar inside their cells and to ferment that sugar.

Bottom line - I suspect that elderflowers do not contain enough nutrients for your yeast AND if you boiled the water to make an elderflower tea you may have boiled off all O2 in the water. Whipping air into your must even at this stage will help the fermentation take off...
Elderflower wine can be delicious. It's my wife and my favorite wine...

 

[kh54s10]

Fermentation takes as long as it takes for the yeast to consume the fermentable sugars.

I too am unsure of your recipe. You usually use a champagne yeast for champagne. Nottingham is an Ale yeast.

Nottingham is considered a pretty fast yeast when used in making beer. It would take a 1.069 beer to 1.010 or so in less than a week. I don't know when in a wine.

A wine should go less than 1.000.

You might need to get some champagne yeast to get this batch to finish properly.

In general higher temperatures will speed up fermentations but that is not a good idea for the flavor of the beer or wine.

 

[StefanS]

Thank you Hoppy!

The sugar is just regular table suger (4.5kgs) that I dissolved in boiling water. The brew was cooled down to 30C/86F before I added the yeast. I did however accidently swirl the water and yeast immediately after dissolving it in water (I did not read the instructions clear enough), which may have killed some of the cells.

As a newbie I just asked for yeast in the brew store. The guy there recommended the Nottingham yeast. He told me it would not ferment as dry as with champagne yeast and that many were using it successfully to brew e.g. cider.

 

[StefanS]

Thanks Bernard! I can see that my local shop has this nutrient available:
www.whitelabs.com/other-products/servomyces

Would that be okay to use?

Should I just use a whisker to get some air into the brew?
---
Thanks kh54s10!

Originally I would have used champagne yeast but was convinced to try the Nottingham yeast as stated above.

Would you recommend adding champagne yeast now?

 

[Maylar]

1.069 is within the range of Nottingham if you treat it well (temperature and nutrients). Keep it below 70°F else you risk fusel alcohols.

 

[StefanS]

I just bought some nutrients after work today. Will put them in and give it all a good stir in a couple of hours. Hopefully that will work.

 

[bernardsmith]

Yeast - whether ale or wine - will ferment simple sugars - Generally speaking you choose a yeast for its cultivated qualities - some yeasts produce better mouthfeel (making the wine more viscous), some yeasts produce complex esters (fruity flavors) and some yeasts don't stand center stage and allow the flavors in the fruits or flowers to shine, some yeasts have no problem dealing with very low pH musts, while still other yeasts are able to handle very high concentrations of sugar.

Champagne yeast is known as a killer strain which does not play nicely with any other yeast present and it can happily tolerate being asked to work in a wine which is already fully fermented - In other words, if you wanted to bottle prime a wine you had aged for several years then you might add champagne yeast with a small dose of fermentable sugar. The Champagne yeast will not be hamstrung because it is added to say a wine with an ABV of 12 % - unlike most other yeasts. So , in commercial wine making "Champagne yeast" is often the variety of yeast used to make a wine sparkling AFTER it has been aged.
Bottom line? It's good to experiment with yeasts to see how they might enhance or diminish identical batches of must. Next time you make elderflower wine you might try using 71B , 47D, a saison yeast, to see how each affects the flavor and the mouthfeel. Labs publish spec sheets that describe their strains of yeast. Always useful to read these.

 

[StefanS]

Makes good sense Barnard!

Yesterday I added the yeast nutrients and gave the whole must a good stir. Will see if that changes anything within the next couple of days. I also bought another packet of the same Nottingham yeast that I will add if nothing changes.

The elderflowers are gone here for this year, but I will definitely do some more experiments next year with this. I am already totally hooked on all of this brewing stuff.

 

[bernardsmith]

Rather than pitch a fresh batch of yeast onto what may be a problematic must you want to upend that procedure and make a small starter with the new yeast (IF - IF what you want to do is add more yeast) - say a cup of warm water mixed with a little sugar - and when the yeast is clearly active you add 1 cup of your must to this starter. And when the 2 cups continue to show strong activity you then add 2 more cups from the problem batch, repeating this process until the entire batch of problem wine is now in the starter.
What this does is a) helps ensure that the new batch of yeast is not immediately exposed to any problem that is in the must AND b) does not dump yeast that you are arousing from their torpor into a bath filled with alcohol and all kinds of other chemicals that can stun and possibly diable if not kill the fresh batch of yeast cells...

 

[StefanS]

Thanks again!

I will look more into that process. So I should make a new starter in a smaller container and gradually add small amounts of the original must? And when the small container is almost full I put it in the fermentation bucket (I have two buckets) and gradually add more of the original must?

 

[bernardsmith]

Why not simply start the starter in the bucket? Saves having to sanitize more containers than you need and saves having to clean more vessels at the end of the day...

 

[StefanS]

Started a new packet of yeast yesterday which looked very active and formed a thick slurry. I mixed it with a little bit of sugar solution and finally gradually mixed it with a cup of the original must to adjust temperature and put it all in the fermentation bucket. Will see how it goes for the next few days.

 

[StefanS]

Absolutely no activity when I just checked. When should I expect it to start producing bubbles if everything is okay?

 

[bernardsmith]

Not clear where in the process you are. You started a new batch of yeast and this is not active... or this was fine and you added the same volume from the stalled batch and that is not active... or ???
If you can I would check the gravity of the stalled batch and check the pH.

 

[StefanS]

Sorry if I was unclear.

The new batch of yeast was very active to begin with. I mixed half a cup of yeast slurry with half a cup of soluted sugar water. After a few hours I gradually added the cup of the original must. This has now been in the bucket for two days and does not look very active to me anymore. Will see if I can check the gravity and buy some pH sticks.

 

[StefanS]

Just checked the SG of the new bucket. Guess what?

0.998 and had a strong smell of alcohol. Added some more of the original must which will hopefully wake it up again

 

[bernardsmith]

It won't wake it up but it will provide the yeast with more sugar from the stalled batch which is precisely what this process involves...

 

[StefanS]

Bad news. I tried to add more of the original must which gave a little activity (comparable to the activity in the original must).

I have been clueless until I today thought about the ingredients I used. I added about a cup of white wine vinegar to my batch of 26 litres / 6.9 gallons. 5 minutes ago I took a look at the vinegar bottle which unfortunately contains sulfites.

So I guess that this rookie mistake is what is causing the fermentation to stall?

 

[bernardsmith]

It's possible - but I wonder if the amount of sulfites in the vinegar would be sufficient to stall the fermentation. I certainly have no idea why many of the folk recipes for elderflower wine include vinegar. I , for one, would never add a drop of vinegar to a wine for fear of contaminating my wine making vessels and equipment. What is the reason for using vinegar and not say citric acid or tartaric acid or even , acid blend?

 

[StefanS]

I have no clue why the recipes include vinegar, but I learned from this and will never add that again!

Will leave the must for a few more weeks before I will have to throw the towel in the ring. I get bubbles in the air lock every ~6 seconds and the must has lots of CO2 in it, so something is happening even though it is extremely slow.

 

[bernardsmith]

I've once had a very slow fermenting elderflower. What I did was add a liter (quart) of apple juice that I had started to ferment and the elderflower finished on target.

 

[StefanS]

It is now down to 1.040 so it is slowly progressing. I had a little taste yesterday, and it tastes good - but obviously too sweet at the moment.

 

[StefanS]

1.030 today. Taste getting better.