Strawberry/Grape Wine
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NorthernWinos
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OGrav said:
I have only made wines using the steam extracted juices, so I have nothing to compare it to.
Waldo has made wines both ways, so he will be the judge on the differences...anxious to hear his judement...
Having done wines using both the Freeze and process as well as the Steam Extraction I would have to say that for me the jury is still out as I have no finished wine from the Steam Extraction method as of yet to compare. I do know that initially there is more juice obtained from the fruit using the Steam Extraction method but whether this adversely affects the final product is yet ascertained. Given the absence of the Steamer Iam definately a strong proponent of freezing the fruit prior to processing as it surely aids in the extraction of the juice from the fruit. I have only made one small (gallon) batch of Strawberry wine and it was made without aid of either freezing or steaming and it turned out a total flop. This was largely attributable to it being made very early in my learning process and I apparently ran into some problem along the way as the wine was finally poured down the drain after over a year of bulk aging and still having a strong, almost like lighter fluid aroma and a taste similiar to a diluted cough syruo.
Ok guys, right now I'm hoping I'm not going to have to dump this one out after almost a year in the making of it. Spent at least three months in the cold garage but I could never drop those fine particles I was talking about. The top half was perfect, but it never dropped any more, or closer to the bottom. I moved it back inside and added super kleer according to package directions last night. The wine is still cloudy from it. There are a few solids on the bottom, but not much. Has anyone ever fined a wine after it was sweetened or is this a no-no? Funny I only thought of that after twelve hours of fining addition and hardly any change. I hope another day or two does the trick. The weather has gotten cold again, does this fining prefer a certain temp? Should I move it back outside? If this doesn't fall, is there any rescue? It smelled great, anyway. My only consolation right now is that it wasn't a 90$ kit. Help.
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It will probably clear within the next day on it's own. The strawberry/raspberry I did last year took two days after adding Super-Kleer. I used that after it wouldn't clear on it's own. Hang in there a little longer.
I always clear after I sweeten as I use juice to sweeten and sometimes
the juice clouds it alittle. I use SuperKleer on all my wines that need
to be cleared and only two of them took more than three days to be
crystal clear but the other two took a week.
the juice clouds it alittle. I use SuperKleer on all my wines that need
to be cleared and only two of them took more than three days to be
crystal clear but the other two took a week.
I hope so, I've heard so many good things about this stuff that after it didn't start clearing within 12 hours I got nervous. It's 70 degrees where it is now, I don't know if colder temps would hurt or help the process. Another thing, the store I bought them from had them in the fridge and told me to store the packs in the fridge to preserve them longer. On the pack itself, it says to store at room temp. Any comments?
The color is probably in between the flash and non flash you see here, like reddish gold. Superkleer fell out great. Not sure if it took some color too or just looks that way. Had a bottle last week, little sweet but good, smelled great.
NorthernWinos
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Nice looking wine....are you going to show us the label too????
You've got me, NW, I've bottled about four different batches of wine over the past few months and I haven't made a label for any of them. I 've got to steal a glue stick from my son and try that with paper labels. Thanks Jobe.
It's there, not real strong but identifiable. You could probably place it from the smell first. This was made with supermarket strawberries so they probablydidn't have a lot of flavor punch right from the start. I added 3 cans of white grape concentrate to ferment out and to begin with I was afraid that it would overpower the flavor of the strawberries. The first couple times I tasted it before bottling it was pretty harsh, I imagine partly due to the alcohol content. 13.5%alc, .65 acid. Right now two months after bottling the aroma can be smelled a few feet away even when fridge cold, the harshness gone, and it is very pleasant and drinkable. If I didn't just finish a beer, I would pour myself a glass and post a pic right now. Since this batch I have bottled a cranberry and blueberry/pomegranate juice wines, gallon batches. I just pitched yeast on a gallon batch of apple wine tonight. I plan on doing two batches, side by side, same yeast, same juice. Both of them backsweetened with concentrate. One of them just juice, the other will have one can of concentrate added at the beginning. I will keep sg the same, 1.090, as well as tannin and acid levels. I have seen a broad spectrum of recipes from dilution by a quart of water, to two cans of concentrate. I basically want to teach myself what difference this will make in the finished product.
