OK. So today my wine looked incredibly clear, and I'm incredibly anxious! So I racked it again, from the carboy (and small jug, see pic) into the clean, sanitized primary, and then back into the carboy after I cleaned and sanitized the carboy. I added 3 more crushed campden into the carboy, and moved it downstairs to age for a while. 1) If it's out of sight, I may be less tempted to play with it. 2) it gets pretty warm in the kitchen, which is probably why it fermented so fast. So I thought it might be best to age it in the basement.
Now, I tasted it tonight. It had a very strong "alcohol" smell, and tasted VERY strong! Almost like straight vodka. It also doesn't have much strawberry flavor. :'-( I'm really hoping that it will calm down a bit with age. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to use flavor drops before bottling.
I'm open to any pointers. Or maybe it's right where it should be?
It all seemed to go incredibly fast, but again, I'm super anxious. Should I have just left it alone?
Here's the details:
Started the batch on 7/7, using a can of strawberry concentrate from the wine supplier. Followed the recipe on the can. Added enough sugar to get to 1.090. Pitched yeast next day. Stirred and tested SG every day, all while it was in the primary, loosely covered in kitchen. On 7/11, SG reached 1.040 (fast?), so I removed the fruit bag, racked it into carboy and added 3-pc air lock. For the next several days I watched excitedly as it bubbled away. :-D I went from counting how many bubbles per second to counting how many seconds until next bubble. I'm tellin ya, EXCITING stuff!! On 7/20, I tested SG, and was surprised to find it had already dropped to .990. The instructions said it would take 3 weeks to reach 1.000. Now, the airlock was still producing bubbles at a rate of about every 4 seconds. But the instructions said to rack it once we reached 1.000, and here I was below that, so I racked it. There was a LOT of sediment, so I went down to a 5gal carboy. Per the instructions, I added 5 crushed campden tablets. And plugged it back up. At this point, I started getting nervous that I read the label wrong because I kept waiting for bubbles, but there were NONE. Some of you said I should be okay, so I let it sit. And like I said earlier, I racked and campden'ed it again tonight because it was so clear. (I read on here that you should add campden every time you rack to sterilize and keep from oxidizing. Right? I'll probably leave it alone now until September. But at that point, I'll be looking for advice on how to sweeten and add flavor back into it. The label says this wine will benefit from flavor drops. I'll have to ask my supplier what that is.
Still learning, and really hoping I didn't totally screw it up!