I am making 5 plus gallons of pear wine and in my recipe it called for 2 sulfite tablets per gallon so I added 10 crushed tablet. Should I add more sulfite after my secondary fermentation before bottling? I have never done that before. Thanks, Mary from St. Louis.
Name: Mary Chapman
State: Missouri
Mary, normally we recommend 1 Campden tablet per gallon at the beginning of fermentation. Two should work okay though. Just make sure that you let the wine sit open to the air for 24 hours before adding your wine yeast. To answer your question, do not add any more Campden tablets until you are ready to bottle the wine. Add them just before bottling.
I recently put a few bottles of sulfited wine (homemade wine) it in the refigerator, and after a few days noticed that crystals had formed on the inside of the bottles. The wine taste really good, but I am wondering if some of the sulfite may have crystalized on the inside of the bottles. Can anyone explain to me why this is happening?
Carroll, what you are experiencing is not related to the sulfites you added to the wine. The crystals you are seeing is excessive acid precipitating out of the wine as it is being cooled down. The following article listed on our website explains this more thoroughly: "Maintaining Temperature Stability In Your Wines" http://www.eckraus.com/wine-making-stabilization/