2016 Wines - Chapter 9 - Elderberry

I'm only making one 3 gallon batch of straight elderberry wine this year. The rest will be either cofermented with other fruit or used in experimental rosé wines. Nothing new here except for a new yeast. The Pasteur Red proved to be a little troublesome.

We started with 15# of elderberries, thawed.

The berries were simmered in 10.5 qt of water. When the berries were thawed, but not yet too hot, I hand crushed them in the pot.

Initial SG was 1.058. Roughly 6.5# of sugar later it was 1.090. The pH started at 4.60. Although I initially used less acid than last year, I overshot the pH and drove it down to 3.29. I don't like this wine that sharp, so I added 2t calcium carbonate to bring it back to 3.53. Opti Red, Booster Rouge, and pectic enzyme were added, then I covered the surface with plastic wrap and put the bucket in the fridge for a 3 day cold maceration.

After 3 days I warmed it up and pitched a starter of Pasteur Red. I step fed as usual and removed the skins and seeds on fermentation day 4.

Now normally I don't have any trouble moving this wine right through the primary fermentation. And I understood Pasteur Red to be a strong fermenter, with no unusual H2S tendencies or nutrient needs. But this wine stalled around 1.020. Around day 5 it got a slight off odor. I added another pinch of Fermaid K and warmed it up a bit, and that did the trick. The odor cleared up, and at 1.004 I racked it to secondary. Three days after that I racked it off the gross lees.