Hello fellow home winemakers!
In case you haven’t been following my posts, my latest issue in my home winemaking adventures is a seemingly slow or stuck fermentation with my Cellar Craft Sterling Chardonnay. I had set up the primary fermentation according to the letter, but six days later, the specific gravity had gone from a 1.100 to a pathetic 1.080. Just as the name sounds a stuck fermentation is a fermentation that is not doing anything when it should.
I had mentioned to you that I’d been using the air conditioning a bit more during this time and had not closed the vent to the winery room, making the room a lot colder than it had been previously.
In a panic, I tossed in some yeast nutrient and yeast energizer, stirred it up, and then got out my heating pad. I plugged that in and set it under the fermenter, then crossed my fingers and went straight to my computer to ask the pros at E. C. Kraus to see if they could tell my why I had a stuck fermentation.
Here was their response:
“When I see this happening in this way with a wine ingredient kit, it normally points to one of two things:
1) Either the room temperature is too cold — which I’m sure you know, already;
2) Or, some of the yeast cells were killed through the rehydration process. See this article:
“Pros And Cons Of Yeast Rehydration”
It doesn’t hurt to add more nutrients, but I doubt if this will help. Wine ingredient kits, in general, are packed with a lot of nutrients, already. I would go ahead and add another pack of yeast to the wine must. Be sure to just sprinkle the granules directly on top. They will soak in and dissolve on their own.”
So, it sounds like I may have wasted some yeast nutrient and energizer in my little panic, since wine kits usually contain plenty of nutrients themselves, but that’s OK. I suppose it shouldn’t hurt the wine.
I did add some new yeast to the mix, though I decided to try and rehydrate them first instead of just sprinkling them on top. I don’t really know why I did this – in retrospect, this was probably another bad decision on my part, but I was in a slight panic and wasn’t thinking totally straight.
After a bit of waiting, I FINALLY hit 1.000 on the wine hydrometer 19 days after starting fermentation. I have no idea how having a stuck fermentation affects the quality of the finished wine, but so far the wine looks OK and smells OK. I’m not going to keep my hopes up with this wine, but I think it might still be salvageable.
A couple things I learned this time around: 1) check on the wine every day or two instead of waiting so long (I waited 6 days instead of peaking my head in to see if things were moving) and 2) always monitor the temperature of the wine with a thermometer, particularly when the weather outside is in flux and the heat or air conditioning is being used differently than it had been previously. Doing these two things would have helped to keep my wine from being prey of a stuck fermentation.
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Can you tell me when to add water to my wine, is it during fermentation or after? I make wine using Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel grapes mixing 50 /50, but it always comes out very strong,  I like that smooth taste, any suggestion?
Thanks Joe,
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Good Morning Joe,
Both of the grapes you mentioned are normally made using 100% grape — no water added. This isn’t the case with all grapes, just with wine varietals such as these. They will produce a wine anywhere from 11% to 13% depending on how the growing season went that particular year.
If you want to lower the alcohol level of your wine with water, the optimal time to add it would be before bottling. The wine is clear and stable and can easily be blended with water.
It is important that you use distilled water at this stage of the winemaking process. Tap or bottled drinking water has oxygen saturated in it. The oxygen in this water can promote oxidation in the wine if it is added.
How much distilled water you add is entirely up to you, but I would suggest that you keep the wine at an alcohol level of 8% or above. Wines below this have a harder time protecting themselves from spoilage. For the same reason, I would also urge you to add sulfites to the wine before bottling. This could either be by way of Campden tablets or potassium metabisulfite. Either of these will help to protect the wine.
The only way to know with certainty how much distilled water to add and still keep the wine above 8% alcohol, is to start by knowing how much alcohol is in the finished wine. This will require the use of a wine hydrometer. The hydrometer will allow you to determine how much alcohol is in your wine. You will need a reading taken before the fermentation and another one after the fermentation. By comparing the two hydrometer readings you can calculate the alcohol level of your wine.
To know how much distilled water to add to get from your finished alcohol level to the one you desire. I would suggest you use a tool called the Pearson Square. It is a method of calculating ratios when blending two different wines. In your case you are blending wine and water. Use the Pearson Square in this way. The distilled water is 0% alcohol.
Lowering the alcohol level of a wine with water is something that is not typically done, however rested assured that if you use the methods above you will have no problems with getting your wine safely to an alcohol level you prefer.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.