Is my wine ok

[Jnay]

Hi

I made elderflower wine last year.

I have left it in the Demi johns from then till yesterday.

I bottled it and it was bubbly but didn't smell nice really

Should I leave it a bit in the bottles and see if it gets any better or throw it away?0

It was lovely and clear too

Thanks

 

[sour_grapes]

Did you add k-meta before aging? Did you top off the demijohns (i.e., leave minimal headspace)?

 

[Turock]

If it's bubbly, it has CO2 in it unless you sweetened it and didn't use sorbate. A wine with CO2 in it shouldn't be bottled.

I've never made a wine like this, but maybe it needs more time in bulk aging. Some wines can have offending esters, bitter components,etc. in them that will fall out of the wine if given enough time. The closest thing to this that we ever made was a paw paw wine. It took a full 3 years of aging for it to smooth, mellow, and be rid of its astringent components.

 

[Jnay]

Hi
I don't know what k-meta is , sorry
I left about one inch space at the top of the Demi John.

What. I did was syphon it off I to a big white brewing bucket, then used a funnel to bottle it cos I'm clumsy and I didn't want to make lots of mess.
When I was pouring the wine from the funnel to the bottle it has lots of bubbles but they were vey short lived, maybe 2 to 3 seconds, then gone, it wasn't gassy like coke or lemonade, you know what I mean ?

I have stored it in a cool dark cupboard , is this ok ?

Many thanks

 

[sour_grapes]

K-meta is potassium metabisulfite. It is a way to get sulfites into your wine, which does two things for you. It prevents bacteria from growing, and it acts as an anti-oxidant to preserve your wine. It is widely available at, say, a brew shop. [You sometimes see a related product called "Campden tablets" whose active ingredient is potassium (or sodium) metabisulfite.]

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Jnay, I frequently make elderflower wine. In Britain it is often bottled while still full of CO2 and drunk without aging but I prefer to let mine ferment dry and age for at least six months. You say that it does not smell "nice". What does it smell like? Elderflowers are flowers , not berries or fruit and the taste and smell is quite unique, but not unpleasant. Yours smells unpleasant? Can you describe the smell? Have you made this wine before? What was the recipe? Where did you get the elderflowers? Some kinds of elderflowers smell like cat pee.. What yeast did you use?
The bubbles from carbon dioxide (CO2) are not going to last long - If you think of beer and the kind of head beer typically has - beer has a lot of protein and the protein molecules trap the CO2. (It's the protein in the flour when you make bread that makes the bread rise by trapping the gas when the yeast converts the sugars into CO2 (and alcohol: but in bread making you evaporate off all the liquid including the alcohol. In bread making you want the CO2) There is nothing in elderflower wine to trap the CO2 and produce a head so they rise up and burst almost immediately. But if the wine has a great deal of CO2 dissolved in it then unless you remove that carbon dioxide it is going to escape into the bottles and may - depending on the volume of CO2 still in the wine - be enough to explode the corks out of your bottles treating the necks of those bottles like rifles or cannons. . Remember that half the weight of the sugar that the yeast converts to alcohol is converted into CO2 and that CO2 is either still in your wine or has escaped into the air. Half the weight of the sugar that you used to make this wine was converted to gas. But to prime a gallon of wine you might use only 1 oz of sugar. To prime 5 gallons you might use 5 ozs..