Fixing VERY tart wine

[Kbradt]

I've made several kits before but I'm relatively new to making fruit wine. My goal is to make a lemon wine with a light raspberry finish so I took the basic 5 gallon skeeter pee recipe and added 5 lbs for raspberries to the primary fermentation. All went well and it's clear but the TA is 1.45% (3.1 pH) and it taste like sweet tarts minus the sweet so..tarts?. So here are my questions:

1. How can I lower the TA to the .75% range without destroying my wine for ABV?
2. Can I water it down by half then referment?
3. Can I make a sugar wine low in TA and blend it?

I appreciate the help, everyone!

 

[Alan tate]

No matter what you do to your wine the alcohol level will stay the same. Watering it down will. I have never tried refermenting. Your main problem is acidity, try taking a sample and adding a little chalk, calcium carbonate, if after settling it tastes ok do the same to the big batch.

 

[Stressbaby]

Typically you wouldn't want to use calcium carbonate post-fermentation because calcium tartrate takes a long time to precipitate. Potassium carbonate is preferred post-ferment. However, that may be too much of a TA drop to achieve with potassium carbonate; calcium carbonate is better for larger drops in TA. Further, the main acid in this wine is probably not tartaric, it is probably citric, and from what I know calcium citrate is pretty insoluble in water. Therefore I'd expect it to precipitate out better. Finally, calcium carbonate doesn't move the pH as much as potassium carbonate and your pH is what I would consider to be "in range" for this particular wine.

All that said, you basically made Raspberry Dragon Blood. DB is a pretty solid formula so before I started messing around with the TA/pH, I'd backsweeten a sample and see how it tastes.

 

[Kbradt]

Typically you wouldn't want to use calcium carbonate post-fermentation because calcium tartrate takes a long time to precipitate. Potassium carbonate is preferred post-ferment. However, that may be too much of a TA drop to achieve with potassium carbonate; calcium carbonate is better for larger drops in TA. Further, the main acid in this wine is probably not tartaric, it is probably citric, and from what I know calcium citrate is pretty insoluble in water. Therefore I'd expect it to precipitate out better. Finally, calcium carbonate doesn't move the pH as much as potassium carbonate and your pH is what I would consider to be "in range" for this particular wine.

All that said, you basically made Raspberry Dragon Blood. DB is a pretty solid formula so before I started messing around with the TA/pH, I'd backsweeten a sample and see how it tastes.

Thanks! I looked into the DB and you are definitely right. I made DB with double lemon juice. I've messed around with potassium carbonate before with negative results. I followed the instructions and it had 3x the effect as expected (yes, i used tsp and not tbs...that was my first thought too).

So watering down and fermenting again isn't a good option? I've never tried it before so I'm a little leery.