Orange wine- heavy rind taste

[joeybudd]

All,

I made a 1 gal batch of orange wine from fresh organic oranges and it has a heavy taste of "rind" to it. It is still pretty young so I am wondering if that taste will with age? Here is what I put in the mix... 11 large organic oranges (soaked the rinds from 1/2 of the oranges overnight then removed them and added the juice of the oranges), .5 cup raisin's (chopped), 5 cups sugar to a original SG of 1.082, pectic enzyme, tannin and yeast nutrient. Final SG was .996 and added sorbate and back sweetened with a 1.25 cups of simple syrup to back sweeten to ta final SG of 1.012.

Thanks in advance for any comments or suggestions. I would like to make a 5 gal batch but I was playing with this 1gal batch to get it right.

Joey

 

[GreginND]

At first I thought you meant orange wine.

In my experience the rind bitterness doesn't fade that much. Best to avoid it from the beginning. Sorry not to bring better news. I'm not sure what the bitterness of the pith is chemically. You may try some gelatin fining to see if that reduces the harshness.

In the future, avoid using any of the white part of the skin. The zest usually is ok but it does contain some oils that could also be bitter, so taste as you go along so you don't get too much in.

 

[joeybudd]

At first I thought you meant orange wine.

In my experience the rind bitterness doesn't fade that much. Best to avoid it from the beginning. Sorry not to bring better news. I'm not sure what the bitterness of the pith is chemically. You may try some gelatin fining to see if that reduces the harshness.

In the future, avoid using any of the white part of the skin. The zest usually is ok but it does contain some oils that could also be bitter, so taste as you go along so you don't get too much in.

Thanks for the info, the recipe I was following called for the soak of the rind's........... lesson learned. I will let it sit for about 6m and see what happens. This is exactly why I do 1g experimental batches, it doesn't hurt that bad to pour 1 gal down the drain vs 5 or 6 gal.

 

[Tnuscan]

I think that was a smart move to. Wish I had done that on several myself.