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Before you backsweeten or bottle, most wines want stabilising: sulphite to protect them, and sorbate to keep the yeast from waking up. Put in your batch size and it gives you the doses.
As powder that is about 0.39 g of potassium metabisulphite instead of the tablets. Only add the sorbate if you plan to backsweeten or you are protecting a sweet wine: it stops the yeast breeding but will not stop an active ferment, so add it to a clear, racked wine alongside the sulphite. These are typical home doses, so follow the instructions on your own product.
Sulphite is your everyday protection, added as Campden tablets or metabisulphite powder, at around one tablet per gallon for a standard 50 ppm. Potassium sorbate is the one that lets you sweeten safely: it stops the yeast reproducing, so it needs to go onto a clear, racked, finished wine, always together with sulphite. On its own, sorbate will not stop a ferment that is still bubbling.
Once a wine is stable you can backsweeten it to taste without worrying about the bottles building pressure.
Two jobs. Sulphite (Campden tablets or metabisulphite) protects the wine from oxidation and stray spoilage organisms. Potassium sorbate stops the yeast from breeding again, so if you backsweeten the sugar stays sweet instead of restarting the ferment.
The usual rate is one Campden tablet per gallon, about 4.5 litres, which gives roughly 50 ppm of sulphite. That works out to a bit under a gram of potassium metabisulphite per gallon if you use the powder instead.
No. Only add sorbate if you are going to backsweeten, or you are protecting a wine that is already sweet. Always use it alongside sulphite and on a clear, racked wine, because sorbate stops yeast multiplying but will not stop a ferment that is still going.
One to know: if a wine goes through malolactic fermentation, the bacteria can turn sorbate into a geranium-leaf off smell. So only sorbate a wine that is finished and will not be doing any malolactic work.
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