Critique my process

[agdodge4x4]

Im posting here because Im getting frustrated with the way my wine turns out.

Here is what I made:
5 batches of various Welch's
Mustang grape
dandelion
loquat
tomato
pomegranate
several strawberry batches
and probably a handful of others.

ALL 1 GALLON BATCHES

Here is what I do:
Extract juice either by boiling the berry or just fermenting it on the pulp
I adjust sugar to sg1085
Add campden
I ferment in primary for a week or until fermentation slows a little...sometimes I take a hydro reading...both methods seems to do OK.
It sits in the secondary fermenting until its dry
I take that and add ksorb and finings
Add a campden
I siphon off the sediment after its clear and dump a little into a pot where I add 1/2 C of sugar until it just dissolves.
I put that back in the secondary and let it sit and settle out any last bits
I add a campden or two sometimes...not sure if either affects anything
I bottle

My problem is that a lot of my wines are just blah. The loquat wine is very boring...got some flavor and you can get a decent buzz, but thats about it. I find myself saying that about just about all my wines...."its OK or its bearable...and hey, I can get a buzz off of it".

Thats not what I want. The only wine that came out really really good was my mustang grape wine. Its got a nice fruity taste and then it has a kick of tart at the end thats nice...and it feels 'dry' in the mouth although its a sweet wine.

Its just pleasant. The others have some sort of 'off' taste, or a bitter aftertaste or something like that. Is there something Im doing wrong or is it just likely the juice thats not quite appropriate or the recipe thats lacking or what????

Ive been doing this for 2 years now hoping for something outstanding, but its all just 'meh'. Maybe I need to try a kit wine or something where its controlled a little better.....I dunno. Pretty frustrated.

The strawberry was frickin awesome...until it aged for a year. Its got a funky taste and a subtle aroma of a fresh fart that really sucks.

 

[captainl]

i dont' know man but if you made mustang taste good your doing something right. I dumped mine last year. I have some blueberry going right now that is from a local houston pick it yourself farm and its really good. I think a lot depends on the quality of your fruit???

I think you might want to look at the acid. More acid will help bring out the fruit flavor and/or make it taste more like wine. Acid test kits are $10 or so. Could be part of the problem.

How much fruit are you using?

Are you following any known recipes or just winging it?

 

[agdodge4x4]

I generally follow recipes from jack Keller with a massive increase in the amount of fruit. I made loquat out of pure juice, no addition of water. Mustang grape may have taken a little water but this year I'm making it pure juice too.

Sometimes I modify recipes but usually not if it's my first go at it.

 

[gordini]

You haven't mentioned adding nutrients to the ferment. Do you do that? That will clean up the ferment a bit. Also, try different yeast strains, especially ones that produce more aromatics. I don't normally boil my fruit, I find there are off flavours and you can sometimes get a cooked character. Especially strawberries. Perhaps find a strong "mashing" pectolytic enzyme that will break down the fruit in primary. You could also try freezing the fruit before beginning the primary. Good wines need a balance of sugar,tannin and acid. Experience tells you how much of each needs to be present according to what style you want. Strawberries stored for a while, without enough Kmeta will go aldehydic on you and give off aromas and flavours.

 

[DomR]

captainl has me thinking. What type of water do you use. I have well water with a softner and was told that if you use a softened water it can buffer the acids causing problems with the wine.

 

[BobF]

In general, based on your list, I would pay very close attention to getting balanced acidity/sweetness/tannins with a close watch on sulfite levels.

Your descriptions sound like you're getting results closer to alcoholic fruit juice than wine, and it sounds like the strawberry could have used some added tannin and sulfite.

I realize I'm really out there guessing on this, but balance is really the difference between blah and good/excellent/awesome.

You could take a bottle you're almost happy with, measure the acidity and gravity and make small adjustments to measured amounts with lotsa tasting along the way. See if you can improve it. Make final acidity/sugar measurements when you're happy with it and make these your targets for another batch.

There is a liquid tannin product out there that makes it easy to make small additions a drop at a time.

Sometimes a seemingly small acid and/or tannin addition will bring a boring wine to life. Play. Experiment. Take notes along the way. Scale your successes up to larger batches - larger batches are more forgiving and 5 gallons lasts nearly twice as long as 1 gallon (Berry)

The most important thing is to have fun with it!

 

[captainl]

captainl has me thinking. What type of water do you use. I have well water with a softner and was told that if you use a softened water it can buffer the acids causing problems with the wine.

I don't know for sure with wine, but with beer you should NEVER use softened water. It's loaded with salts that will affect flavor.....most likely negatively. As far as the acid problem, I think it would make for a lower ph, therefore high acid wine. Can you pull dome water off before the softener? I would.

 

[southlake333]

My problem is that a lot of my wines are just blah. The loquat wine is very boring...got some flavor and you can get a decent buzz, but thats about it. I find myself saying that about just about all my wines...."its OK or its bearable...and hey, I can get a buzz off of it".

Thats not what I want. The only wine that came out really really good was my mustang grape wine. Its got a nice fruity taste and then it has a kick of tart at the end thats nice...and it feels 'dry' in the mouth although its a sweet wine.

Some fruits don't provide much body to the wine and some are such mild flavors that the resulting wine won't have much of a sweet, flavored kick. Have you tried sweetening with juice concentrates rather than just sugar? Or have you tried adding an fpack? Either of those would enhance the fruit flavors.

Its just pleasant. The others have some sort of 'off' taste, or a bitter aftertaste or something like that. Is there something Im doing wrong or is it just likely the juice thats not quite appropriate or the recipe thats lacking or what????

Most wines I make end up with a bitter aftertaste or something like that early on. But its just the young wine taste that fades after a couple weeks. Could this be what you're tasting?

 

[Turock]

I'm sympathetic to your problems,as it took us a long time to learn how to make totally awesome wines that knock your socks off. Here's some of the things we learned to do that might help you,too.

Use as high a poundage of fruit per gallon as you can. On strawberry,blackberry,blackraspberry, red raspberry,etc. we are using about 10 lbs/gallon. We never add significant amounts of water. If we DO use water, it's pints not gallons.

Buy a PH meter and use it on ALL musts. The best practice is to understand where your PH should be because on some fruits, the PH really affects the flavor. We ran some PH tests on Niagara grapes one year--the intitial juice tasted like dishwater until we got the PH to 3.2 At that PH, the flavor just BLOSSOMED. That proved to us that PH has real impact, and sometimes affects the flavor more than one would suspect. Be sure to get your pectic enzyme in the must on the first day. Second day,before pitching culture, stir up the must and take a PH reading. If the PH is too high, add acid and if too low use calcium carbonate. The pectic enzyme breaks the fruit down and gives you a more accurate PH reading.

Your wines are DESIGNED at the primary. Adjusting and adding the proper chemistries here gets everything integrated and produces a more balanced wine. So don't be in a hurry at the primary---it's more than just pitching sugar and culture.

Be sure to use yeast nutrient. You can get severe H2S problems if not using it.

Blah wines, seem to me, to be the result of your PH being too high,and/or not enough fruit. White style wines are better with lower PH. Some wines have delicate flavors and are better with a little lower PH and not a lot of backsweetening which can tamp down the flavor. A very basic guideline for PH is red style wines should have a PH of 3.4 and white style wines a PH of 3.2 This is not written in stone, but is intended to help you get your PH's more inline. Thru experience, and other's ideas of PH, you'll get a feel for where your PH should be depending on the wine and your tolerance for acid level. SO2 levels depend on what the PH is--so that's another reason for knowing the PH of your wines.

When working with grapes, nothing will help you better than a crusher and a press. A crusher gives you so much juice that there is never a need to water down grapes.

Be sure to do cool ferments on white wines---this retains the volatiles and increases the flavor. Red grape wines are much better with warm ferments of about 80 degrees. Gives good intense color.

We never boil or steam our fruits. Steaming seems to be successful for many people but feremnting on the fruit works so good for us that we never tried the steam technique.

Some fruits with small seeds can give bitterness to wine as they age in the secondary on some of the seeds. Either bag the fruit or strain the seeds out as you rack the primary. We use Leggs knee-high hosiery for bags.

Be sure to age the wine long enough in the secondary. White wines are ready in 6-8 months. But reds and red-style wines can take a year or more. Proper aging affects flavor tremendously. Don't be in a hurry.

All these things are very simple, but very often it's the simple things that can trip you up. Understanding the fermenting process, and WHY you're doing WHAT your doing is very important to success. Maybe some good winemaking books would also help firm up your process.

 

[gordini]

Yes, a pH metre is essential, but also, watch out exactly how much acid you add or remove to get the pH down to acceptable levels. Citric and Malic are quite sharp. A good guide is to take a sample of juice before primary and add measured amounts of sugar to it until you get a balance you are happy with. After fermentation replicate the sugar addition. It's a start and it's not foolproof as acids and flavours will definitely change during ferment, and it a fun learning thing to do anyway.

 

[Julie]

Turock and BobF have given you some excellant advice. I would like to stress the point of measurments. You really need to take hydrometer readaings and checking for Ph and acid. If you are not doing this, then how would you know how to make a wine better?