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Wine still fermenting?

 
steward
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Several months ago, dear hubby decided to make wine.

To me, he did not get the wine to the stage that I liked because the wine was still too dry for my taste.

I put it in a fridge and took it out tonight.  The plastic battle was blown up as in swelled and when I released the air it blew up or swelled again.

I poured it into a glass jar will the glass jar explode?

Why do you folks feel this is happening?
 
pollinator
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It's still full of CO2 gas. Did you add more sugar to it to increase the sweetness? If so, the yeast is still fermenting and will continue to create gas for quite a while. Even if it's "done" fermenting, it'll still release gas for quite some time. You can purchase a tool for degassing, it's basically just a plastic rod that you chuck into a drill and use it to stir the crap out of the wine until it stops bubbling. Ideally you'd want to put an airlock on your container, but short of that, just leave the lid on, but loose, on whatever container you're using, and it'll be fine.
 
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I'm following mostly out of curiosity! I brew beer, kombucha, vinegar, etc, not wine, so this is far out of my wheelhouse, but with the other yeast ferments I'd say it means there is still enough sugar in there for the yeast to ferment. I had this happen once with a batch of ginger beer, where I put it in the fridge to stop fermenting and... it just kept rolling along and blew up the bottle. Some yeast is more lively than others, I suppose!
(yes, keep it out of glass to avoid disasters. personally i'd leave it out and let it ferment the last bit it wants to, and then sweeten if afterward if i wanted it sweeter)
 
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i’m sure the turnaround is faster with ‘boughten’ yeast, but with my wild-yeast wines and meads they ferment for 6 months or more (sometimes much more).  

‘still too dry’ confuses me a bit - wines being very dry happens at the tail-end of fermentation. to end less dry, you (or hubby) would need to keep adding sugars until the yeast can’t handle any more, or kill off the yeast before they’re done.
 
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I make Mead and not wine so please bear with me.

When the little yeast gremlins gobble up sugars, they release gasses. This is why you will see the airlocks on top of carboys with the liquid in them with bubbles coming out.



If there is still gas being released, you are in active fermentation. By putting it in a glass container, you might be making a bottle bomb. Please be careful.

Once all the sugars are gobbled up, it leaves a dry product. I add potassium sorbate or similar product to stop fermentation and prevent more yeast growth. I will then back sweeten with my choice of sweetener to get my desired taste.
 
Anne Miller
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Thanks for the replies.

I think he made the wine sometime in 2023, maybe the last three months.

It was not sweet enough so he added more sugar, an airlock, and waiting the appropriate time.

It still was not sweet enough and I did not want to make an issue of it so after a few weeks or a month or so, I put it in a fridge that is rarely used.

Last night I took it out and the plastic bottle that is usually rectangular was round.

I put some of the wine in some small glass bottle and the remaining wine needs burping every so often.

I will probably put an airlock on the bottle and put it back in the fridge if it is not too tall.
 
Timothy Norton
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It sounds like the second application of sugar reinvigorated some yeast into turning active. You might find the wine will have a higher alcohol content. I tend to turn my mead into tasting like jet-fuel when I go too high with my sugars and it needs to age out for a bit.

A thing you can do if you are adverse to adding in an additive is a process known as cold-crashing. You are already doing it with your fridge! It is dropping the temperature of the brew in order to stop the yeast from being active. They will however still will be working so an airlock is advised.
 
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put it into a swing/spring top bottle and make sparkling wine.
swing-spring-top-bottle.jpg
[Thumbnail for swing-spring-top-bottle.jpg]
 
Anne Miller
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Now I have an even stranger tale to tell.

I got to thinking that the color of that wine was not right and I went back and looked in the fridge and the wine is still there.

So this bottle of wine that needs burping is the juice from this thread from 2020:

https://permies.com/t/145207/Juice-turned-Wine

It still tastes like wine though why did it start fermenting at this late date?  It was not doing that when I put it in that fridge when DH made the new wine. I took that juice out to put the new wine in the other fridge.
 
Tereza Okava
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did you have a power failure, and maybe the temp in your fridge went up? that would start the fermenting up again. i'd check the fridge if there hasn't been a power outage you know of, just to make sure it's cooling properly.
 
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Maybe the juice/cider had some 5% yeast and then fermentation stopped but then some of the 15% yeast made their way from the wine bottle to the juice/cider bottle and is now trying to bring up the alcohol content to 15%. Sometime all it takes is just someone opening the bottle to take a taste.
 
Anne Miller
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I feel we?I will never figure this one out.

I put it into another bottle and the air lock was too tall so I put a measuring scoop over the top as a lid.

I was in that back room and heard a tap tap noise coming from somewhere though I did not have time to check other than I thought it cam from a fridge.  I think the tap tap was the measuring scope hitting the shelf above as the wine let off gas.
 
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