Other Hangovers

[Billy8998]

Is it my imagination; or does anyone else get a worse hangover from drinking kit wine to a comparable volume of commercial? Don't get me wrong I'm not ploughing through the stuff but last night I had half a bottle of white winexpert NZ sauv blanc and just under a half bottle of the winexpert stags leap merlot. Today my head is pounding.

Previously I notice the white does A: get you drunk quicker and b: hurt the next day. My starting gravity was 1080 and nothing extra added

 

[TonyP]

You say nothing extra added, but I'm wondering what you did with regard to k-meta. Some people have a reaction and you may be sensitive.

Tony P.

 

[Rocky]

Billy, I think TonyP may be on to something. I know that when we were in Italy, I remarked to a winemaker there that I seemed to be able to drink a bottle or two of wine a day with no ill effects. He said that it was largely because of the amount of sulfites that had to be added to wine that was exported. These wines had to endure storage temperatures in warehouses that could range from near freezing to above 100 degrees F. I try to use very little sulfite in my wine here and many people have noticed that the wine does not have the deleterious effects that store bought wine seems to have on them.

 

[DirtyDawg10]

I feel it less with my homemade wines including kit wines. I have heard of sulfites being an issue as well.

 

[Billy8998]

I use the k meta that comes with the kit then use the quarter t spoon that is recommended for ageing. I actually use sodium meta at this point because k meta is hard to get hold of in the UK compared. Maybe mixing the sulphites? Ivan drink shop bought wine until the cows come home but my kit wine knocks my socks off and I can feel it the next day.

If you cut out the additional sulphate (recommended for ageing beyond six months) does the wine last up to about a year. I.e is it rssential

 

[JohnnyRico]

My first Malbec is almost 2 years old and still drinkable. Its not the best Malbec, but it’s not vinegar either. I only added the k-meta in the kit, and didn’t add the extra ¼ teaspoon. I also bottled it at only 3 months old, so you can see “stuff” floating around in the bottles. I’m confident that if I bulk aged the wine I wouldn’t have any sediment in the bottles, but it may have gone bad by now without the added sulfites.

 

[Tom_S]

The few kit wines I've tasted seemed to be pretty low in alcohol. I attended a wedding reception where homemade wine was being served, and I noticed that I couldn't hardly taste the alcohol in it for one thing, and secondly I could drink glass after glass and not even get a buzz. If I drink several glasses of my own homemade wine I'll definitely feel it. The lady who supplied the wine for that wedding is a local home wine maker who makes all her wine from kits, and I've sampled a few other wines from her which I've come to call "Kool Aid" wine, because they're very sweet with very little alcohol flavor. I don't know the brand of kits she tends to buy.

 

[deboard]

sulfite allergies are very very rare. They do happen, but you would be in a very small group if you have one. You're more likely to be sensitive to tyramines, which are compounds that occur in aged wine, cheese, and a few other things.

If you have a sulfite allergy, you would have reactions to almost any juice, most commercial canned foods, and so many other things that use sulfites. This is one of the unstoppable ideas that you find with people who drink wine, somehow it has gotten around that sulfites == bad.

 

[Tom_S]

Well I'm going to go out on a limb here, and this is just a hypothesis and not a scientific conclusion, but I'm wondering if red wine headaches are caused by something in the oak? The only batch of wine I've oaked tended to give me a headache the next morning, though other, non-oaked red wines I've made don't give me headaches. The only other time I got a headache after drinking wine was from drinking a commercial red Concord wine, but honestly I don't know if it was oaked or not.

I haven't used oak in my wines ever since I got the headache from the oaked batch, and haven't been bothered by them. However, it could just be something with that particular batch and totally unrelated to the oak.

 

[deboard]

Tom_S, you could have a tannin sensitivity, oak imparts additional tannins to a wine.

 

[Tom_S]

That could be it. Hard to say what causes all my headaches, though. I've gotten them since I was a kid, though luckily I don't get the blinding, debilitating headaches I used to get back then. These days I either get migranes which last for a couple days, or I get those not-so-severe-but-nagging headaches. Hard to say what sets them all off, but you could be onto one cause for them. Luckily, though, I don't often get red wine headaches, which made me take note when I got one from those two red wines I drank.

 

[wookey]

Well, I, normally, do not have any problems. I presented 2 bottles of Pacifica White to my friend and he said it was definitely worse for him than a commercial one.
As for me. I never have headaches and very rarely hangovers, but the worst I had recently were from Whole Foods Organic Spanish wine (can't think of why, but I tried it 3 times and felt bad 2 times next day) and my own Elderflower sparkling wine (it is quite light, actually about 5.5%, but something in it gives a lot of troubles next morning).

Wookey

 

[Billy8998]

With a glass in hand all i can say is "who cares; that's why they invented paracetamol, chin chin"

 

[Tom_S]

I don't get hangovers but I try not to drink that much. I'm not 20 years old any more. Usually two or three glasses of wine or maybe a couple of beers is good enough for me for an evening.

 

[roger80465]

The one that consistently gets me is CC Showcase Amarone. My word - a glass or 2 of that and I am sloshed. I generally don't have a hangover the next day but I certainly can't drive and can barely talk. Gotta be careful with that one. The MM Impressions version doesn't seem to hit me like that.

 

[Tyroneshoolace]

A good way to see if it is a tannin sensitivity is to make make yourself a good strong black tea. I swear those have twice as much tannin as a glass of a big cab.

 

[Tom_S]

Tea never seems to bother me at all. I usually drink a cup or two every morning.

 

[Billy8998]

Well. Weirdly some days it effects me others it doesn't. I'm thinking that mixing wines hurts and I have been a bit run down. I don't think I'm sensitive to tannins or sulphate.

Overall I do think our homemade wine gets you more drunk than commercial but I don't suppose that's a bad thing

Thanks for all the comments and info

 

[wineon4]

I have a sever allergy to sulfur and sulfites. Several years ago I had a chain saw accident and my leg became infected from the stiches so the Dr put me on Bactrim which is a sulfur based antibiotic. After taking a few capsuls I had a reaction so bad I ended up at the hospital. I was told the next reaction will be stronger and may even be fatal. My Dr told me to avoid sulfites and especially wine, well that was not going to happen so now I make my own wine as low in sulfites as I can. I don't use the kits because the juice contains sulfites and I try to avoid the canned bases because they can contain sulfites. I try hard to make my wines from fresh fruit and only fruit that I pick. Some fruit growers spray sulfur on the fruit to preserve it until it is sold. Commercial wines may contain as high as 350 PPM where the average is 150 PPM, natural fermentation creates around 10 PPM. If I drink a commercial wine I get a headache within the hour that will last up to 3 days. I was told by my Dr that my sulfur allergy will build upon itself and get worse with each reaction. So some people are allergic to sulfites, it is not a myth.

 

[deboard]

It is absolutely not a myth, but it is a very rare and very unfortunate allergy, since so many things, including wine, use sulfites as a preservative. You were diagnosed by a doctor, so I have no doubt you have this allergy. The problem that I was referring to was the huge amount of people "diagnosing" themselves with sulfite allergies just because they get a headache when they drink wine. This has led to the myth that sulfite allergies are common, when they are in fact rare.

So I guess I'd say the best thing to do if you think you have a sulfite allergy is to go to your doctor.

Tyramines are a more likely culprit, I have a friend who got a headache every time he drank wine or ate aged cheese, tyramines were the cause.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyramine