My strawberry wine is quite odiferous!

[UBB]

It's almost offensive. I'm used to the fermenting aroma's you get from most wines when starting them. However this particular batch is different. Now I used a fruit base from Vintners Harvest and tweaked the recipe a bit. Yeast used was Red Star Cote Des Blanc so perhaps that may be contributing to it as well.

First attempt at doing a strawberry wine so perhaps the 'strong' odor is normal IDK. The wife has noticed a difference as well.

Anyone have ideas why this might be?

 

[Auburn-Bob]

I am currently working on a strawberry wine I made from Smuckers preserves. It's still in the primary. I'm going to rack it to the carboy tonight. It actually has a rather mild smell, though it might smell stronger if I had started from the fruit.

My experience is that even if a wine smells bad, it usually mellows out.

 

[midmoboy]

Interesting. I have a batch in the primary from frozen strawberries and it smelled really great for the first two days. Now it smells like it is fermenting well, but not nearly as stinky as the potato or cherry wine I have in car carboys now.

 

[UBB]

I'm wondering if it isn't the kind of yeast I used. I used the same kind on a batch of peach and it's giving off the same aroma.

 

[RLWinemaker]

I made some Pear Cider a few months ago, and I also used cotes des blancs, and every time I took a hydrometer reading or snuck a sample I noticed a horrible smell too... it was... fecal...

As off-putting as that was, it is now an amazing wine, and I even put the recipe up on my website. It's really fruity and has a mild, very-pear aroma to it. My advice: just give it time.

 

[winemaker_3352]

I have never had this issue - but I have always used the lalvin 71B-1122 yeast. Maybe it is just the fermentation smell that comes with the cote des blanc yeast.

 

[arcticsid]

I made a peach wine earlier this summer that was beyond obnoxious. If it would have been winter and I would have to have my door closed, I think I may have had to dump it!

When I went to rack it, the siphon became plugged!

Damn, somehow I had managed to drop an old sock in the primary bucket!!

LOL

Just kidding, of course. But sometimes they really do reak, I am not exactly sure. I remeber someone saying once that the lack of proper nutrients can contribute to this.

But, somehow, they do seem to mellow out.

This has been a discussion in here on several other occasions. I dont have time right now to searc out the links.

I hope some of the others may be able to contribute to this and help explain why some musts can get so "funky".

PS, the peach wine turned out fantastic once I removed the sock.