How to get rid of the yeast flavor?

[kirr45]

Is it possible to get rid of the yeast taste/flavor from wine? Specifically, I am currently making a pomegranate wine and want to know if its possible to get rid of after fermentation? It's got a distinct smell and taste that I'm not a fan of. It's not too strong but nevertheless its there.

 

[Arne]

Have patience, it should go away with time and racking. Arne.

 

[kirr45]

I've been researching online and some places said to rack it 3 times. How long is each rack time? Is racking just to make sure all the yeast settles and its pure wine?

 

[meadmaker1]

Racking will allow you to pull clear wine off of any sediments.
Id say three times is a rule of thumb. All depends how long between each and how much stuff your variety has to settle out.
If I have crud in car boy I'll rack again. If there's Sediment in my car boy it will also be in my bottles. And if it lasts long enough I still get a bit in bottles.
Racking degasses also.

 

[mikewatkins727]

I've been researching online and some places said to rack it 3 times. How long is each rack time? Is racking just to make sure all the yeast settles and its pure wine?

That and outgassing. CO2 dissolves into the wine but in time outgasses, especially at warmer temperatures.

 

[jburtner]

If you want a rule of thumb - rack every three months. Right after AF you might want to rack once or twice within a couple weeks or so to remove most of the lee's and clean it up nicely. After that it'll take some time to drop all the sediment but time works. You can add fining agents too which can help with that process. 1yr bulk ageing before bottling. 9mos? 15mos? 15 is usually better.

Ciao!
-johann

 

[NorCal]

Yup, rack and time is the recipe.

 

[Scooter68]

Sooner = A person who jumped the gun and went to Oklahoma territory and claimed land before the legal time to do so.

Wine Sooner - Someone who cannot wait to drink their wine for the normal process of fermentation, settling and aging.

Patience pays off huge dividends in wine making.

 

[BernardSmith]

Is it possible to get rid of the yeast taste/flavor from wine? Specifically, I am currently making a pomegranate wine and want to know if its possible to get rid of after fermentation? It's got a distinct smell and taste that I'm not a fan of. It's not too strong but nevertheless its there.

The irony is that a taste of yeast in a wine suggests that you pitched too small a colony of yeast. Now that may be because the volume of wine you were making needed a larger colony of yeast or it may mean that the colony you pitched was full of non viable yeast cells perhaps because of the way they were rehydrated (the temperature of rehydrating solution; the sugar concentration; or the amount of damaging minerals in the solution during rehydration,). I believe that when there are insufficient yeast cells for the amount of sugar in solution the yeast produce metabolytes that are not then re-absorbed by the yeast during fermentation. The secret then is to always pitch with a very viable and large colony of yeast.

 

[Scooter68]

Don't see any references to how long ago the yeast was added, or when fermentation finished (Not just when it stopped bubbling) Yeast smells will stick around a while especially if, as someone suggested, the wine is not racked off the lees. At least 3 rackings after fermentation actually ends before until the quantity of lees should be virtually nil.

When did the fermentation start ?

When did the feremenation end ? (When did you add Potasium Metabisulfate to end fermentation)

 

[kiwi_uk]

I know this is an old thread but hey, same here. New to wine making and started with kits but I'm getting yeasty taste as well. And I followed the instructions to the letter.

Beaverdale Merlot - Yeasty but the taste is slowly fading (5 months in bottle)
Beaverdale Chardonnay - Really yeasty, has faded a bit but not to the point where it's enjoyable (4 months in bottle now)

And in an attempt to get rid of the flavour (thought it was maybe the beaverdale kits or bottling too early):

California Connoisseur Pinot Grigio - racked twice and left in carboy for 2 months before bottling, extremely yeasty flavour (3 months in bottle now)

 

[BernardSmith]

Definitely no expert on this but my understanding is that, counter-intuitively, if you pitch too few viable yeast cells the yeast you pitch become stressed and the result is yeasty smells and flavors. You cannot as a home wine maker pitch too much yeast (unless you are buying yeast by the pound and dumping that into a gallon of must!) but you can very easily pitch too little and if your rehydration protocols are poor you may be pitching 25% or even less of what you think you are pitching because of the poor viability of the cells you have pitched.

 

[Scooter68]

A wine properly aged in bulk, with periodic racking during the aging should be perfectly clear and free of any yeast sediment and taste. 2-3 months is NOT enough time for a wine to age. Wine Kit makers will talk about how you can have a wine ready to drink in 6 weeks.... yeah, right.
There is Drinkable wine, Good wine, Enjoyable wine, and wine that is a treasure and a joy to share. The more time you invest in the wine, the closer you get that wine that is a treasure.

You will find, as mentioned in posts above, that TIME - PATIENCE is one of the most important parts of wine making. With enough equipment you can clear a wine, by filtering and use of fining agents, but the value/importance of aging cannot be accomplished just by filtering and fining agents. Even white wines need some aging time.

 

[montanarick]

Agree with Scooter - it takes time. when i first started i couldn't wait to get a bottle open even though it didn't taste real good. now i age a minimum of 1 year and most times quite a bit longer and it really does make a great deal of difference in the taste, mouthfeel and finish....so be patient

 

[kiwi_uk]

Thanks montanarick, Scooter68 and BernardSmith for your advice.

I thought I'd post an update on the 'yeasty taste' problem at my end. I have since finished primary on a Cali conn Pinot Noir kit and this time I used filtered water (water from our Brita filter jug we use for drinking water) and there is no yeasty taste after primary! It actually tasted very good! I'm hoping that it stays this way and that the issue was the horrible London tap water which affected the yeast. This is probably a very novice mistake but I am an extremely happy man to finally get good tasting wine (I hope). Guess I'll just have to age out the yeasty taste on the other batches

By the way, since my carboy was in use I racked into a bucket with an airlock for secondary, is this ok? The airlock water is being pushed up slightly so I'm guessing there's still enough C02 in there to protect the large surface area.

 

[BernardSmith]

Thanks montanarick, Scooter68 and BernardSmith for your advice.

I thought I'd post an update on the 'yeasty taste' problem at my end. I have since finished primary on a Cali conn Pinot Noir kit and this time I used filtered water (water from our Brita filter jug we use for drinking water) and there is no yeasty taste after primary! It actually tasted very good! I'm hoping that it stays this way and that the issue was the horrible London tap water which affected the yeast. This is probably a very novice mistake but I am an extremely happy man to finally get good tasting wine (I hope). Guess I'll just have to age out the yeasty taste on the other batches

By the way, since my carboy was in use I racked into a bucket with an airlock for secondary, is this ok? The airlock water is being pushed up slightly so I'm guessing there's still enough C02 in there to protect the large surface area.

I am sure that using a bucket won't be a problem short term but you do want to keep the surface area exposed to air to a minimum. That is why wine makers tend to use buckets as their primary and carboys as their secondary and why brewers tend to use wide mouthed carboys as their primary and more conventional carboys as their secondary (I am ignoring those who use barrels to age their wine mainly because I cannot make sense for myself why the surface area inside a barrel that is exposed to air and which must grow larger as the wine evaporates through the barrel - aka the angel's share) is not a problem but the opposite.