Strawberry wine- smell is odd

[Downwards]

Hey all, just started a strawberry 3 days ago. Fresh berries, ~40 lbs, doing about 10 gallons of it. When I went for my yeast, I found I only had a single packet of lalvin 71B that I wanted to use, so instead I used the pasteur red that I had a lot of. I have it split between two fermenters, both are bubbling away very nicely.
Only weird thing is I'm not getting the typical wonderful fruit smells that I normally get when I start a ferment, it's kind of... I don't know, not pleasant. It could be just the large amount of CO2 that I'm not happy with?

I guess there isn't much to do about it now but wait.
Should I get it off the fruit now? Is there any information I could put in here that might help?

The strawberries were very ripe. A friend with connections with our local farmers got them for me and they were the berries that are taken when very soft for jam makers and such. Sold locally or frozen to ship. Some parts of them were so soft we cut the mushy bits out.

Sugar was brown and white about 30% light brown sugar. I sweetened to 1.110, planning to top off rackings with water so I thought high SG should be fine.

I'm step feeding with 2 t yeast energizer and 2 t DAP divided in three little baggies and adding 2 days apart.

Ferment is very active.

Any ideas or am I just worrying over nothing?

Color is beautiful! Should be a pretty vivid pink unless it changes more.

Thanks for your consideration and any advise!

 

[dralarms]

Well after 3 days, I think id wait to pass judgement until 7 or 8 days. Sometimes that yeast stinks.

 

[Downwards]

Do you mean that yeast particularly or just yeasty smells in general? I'm definitely going to let it go. Perhaps I'm just concerned because the berries were such a score and I've never made a batch this big.

Anybody ever used pasteur red with something like this? I thought I had more lalvin 71B, but I figured with the must all mixed up already, I'd better just go with what I had before the batch caught something else..

 

[dralarms]

Some yeast stinks more than others and I've never used that one.

 

[jimmyjames23]

I used Pasteur Red on a Cab Sauv with blackberries, elderberry and a little brown sugar. It smelled like a cow got drunk on Manischewitz and threw up in my carboy. A country sickly sweet smell.
When the Cab was done it was fantastic.
So everything in probably fine.

 

[Dend78]

yeah i had a pear that was smelling terrible but turned out really nice, it was bad enough i was searching on here for options to vent the smell, my wife was about to kill me hahaha

 

[Downwards]

Actually, this wine is fine. I racked it today, and I'm just now starting to see the color as the fruit is falling out. Probably 1/6 of the whole carboy was fruit mush on the bottom. I will bag my fruit from here on out.
I think I was just smelling the heavy amounts of CO2 in the primary, really sharp smell and wasn't pleasant. It smells great now, though.

 

[Downwards]

Urrgh. Be careful when giving your thread a title, lol. This strawberry does not smell weird.
But I just degassed it last night, came back to it this morning as I knew it would have cleared some. It was about halfway clear, looks red in the carboy but pinkish orange in the glass. I'm betting that the orange will pass as more yeast clears, but it was clear enough to take a taste!
I used about 40 lbs of ripe berries to 10 gallons. The flavor is not very strong, the nose is almost non existent, and the color is light.
Does this call for an f-pack? Did I not use enough fruit you think?

Suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[dralarms]

Nowhere enough fruit. I use 40 lbs for 6 gallons.

 

[wineon4]

I use 10 lb per gallon in strawberry and mine is usually a light amber color when ready for the bottle. Strawberry wine is not red but a light amber or yellowish. 40 lb should have been 5 to 6 gallon max.

 

[seth8530]

Yeah, what they said.. Not enough fruit and perhaps too high of a starting gravity.. But that does not mean the wine is ruined! An F-Pack could do a lot for this wine along with some more time.

 

[Downwards]

Thanks everybody. That's what I kind of suspected. No, it's not ruined by any means, even tastes good. Or at least it doesn't taste bad in any way I mean, no obvious faults, just not readily noticeable what kind of wine you are drinking, and really no nose to speak of. The recipe I used suggested 3 lbs per gallon, and I thought I was going above and beyond by adding another lb per..

I'll try the f-pack and see if we can make this thing taste like strawberries. How much fruit would you use in an f-pack for 10 gallons, and how would you go about making an f-pack of strawberries? (Nevermind this, I found the sticky. )

Also, yes I did make this one pretty hot, so I guess I have some room with adding juice without watering it down too much if that's a good option.

 

[Arne]

If you let it sit in the bottle for a year or more, the flavor should come out some. Takes a long time with not much fruit. You mite try sweetening it a bit with some welches strawberry breezin. Don't do a lot of it at first, just try a glass and spoon some of the breezin in and mix. See what happens. Should speed up the time before drinkin. Be aware the strawberry breezin will cloud your wine up. Takes quite a while for it to settle out. Arne.

 

[seth8530]

Yeah, I would wait around a year before you start playing around with adding sugar sources to the wine. Good wine is hard to rush. It is EXTREMELY easy to over sweeten a wine. I have done it before. not fun.

 

[Arne]

Yeah, I would wait around a year before you start playing around with adding sugar sources to the wine. Good wine is hard to rush. It is EXTREMELY easy to over sweeten a wine. I have done it before. not fun.

It is more fun to oversweeten than try and unsweeten it. LOL, Arne.

 

[jswordy]

Pardon me, but strawberry wine IS red...

Here's 25 gallons...

How it started...



How it finished...





Bottling a 119-bottle batch...



The key is to find a berry farm that will sell you dead-ripe berries. Most of the berries used in homemade strawberry wine are not ripe, and that's why people say it does not finish red. A vine-ripe berry will be red all the way through - no white.

Strawberries can ONLY ripen while on the vine. After that, the process they undergo is actually rot, not ripening. They will get softer, but the amount of red stays the same.

Find some ripe berries and you'll have red wine.

On sweetening strawberry wine, if you leave it on the dry/harsh young alcohol side and let it sit a year, it will come around. I am told it is best at 2 years and am trying valiantly to have some survive that long. So far so good...

 

[Downwards]

Actually, mine is also that color in the carboy, just not in the glass. I'll try and get two pictures for you so you can see what I mean. It's kind of an odd thing. The color is drop dead gorgeous in the carboy (as far down as it's cleared).
My friend got these berries from a farmer contact in Oxnard (where I grew up) , we're pretty famous for our strawberries I think, but actually I know what you mean about the ripe ones. Our berries that ship are nothing like what you can get direct from the farmers. These came to us topped by the pickers right off the plant because they are so ripe and normally these ones would have been frozen because they can't ship in any other condition.
I only wish we had used more..

I also appreciate the admonition about my patience. I'm still very new at this, and I think I have been told that on every single thread that I've ever reported a problem on. ME--->
You all are right I'm sure. I'll rack this when it clears and then put it in a closet somewhere and forget about it..

Let me go get photos now..

EDIT: Ok, here they are. The carboy on left is mostly clear, so I think I'm getting a good impression of its color. The glass shot is taken from that carboy. Interesting difference in color huh?

 

[wineon4]

The wine in the glass is the same color my strawberry always turns out, after yours clears out it will be a little lighter yellow than it is now. I went to a local wine comp and there were 8 winerys there and their strawberry was also more yellow/orange than red. Even when I use Vinters Harvest Wine Base it comes out in the yellow/orange color range. I have won medals for it with no faults noted in its color section.

 

[Dend78]

now here is some fun, i also have 6 gal of the strawberry/costal white going I pulled about a bottle full off for back sweetening purposes and placed it in a mason jar with the lid on it and put it in the fridge. it is the exact same color as what you have in the glass, but the 6 gal carboy is red as seen in this thread

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum...ine-competition-37454/index16.html#post422735

 

[dralarms]

Well, I've made 3 batches, 2 of them are red, even in the glass. The 3rd I used the wrong yeast ec-1118, and it stripped the color. However a small bottle of red food coloring before clearing made a world of difference. And yes it held the color after super kleer.