Stronger than commerical

[jaymason]

Silly question is there a reason home made wine seems to effect more intense?
My Apple kiwi strawberry is smooth and kicks in

 

[Arne]

use your hydrometer to tell you how much alcohol y ou have in your wine. The other thing is keep an eye on how much you consume. Good wines go down easy, but still have a goodly amount of alcohol in them. They taste good, so you drink a little bit more, still good lets try another small glass. In the morning, what hit me. LOL, been there. Arne.

 

[BernardSmith]

Strongly agree with Arne... Commercial wine makers - the good ones - know that wine is all about balance AND when they make grape wines they -typically - crush fruit grown and cultivated to contain about 22-25% sugar with the appropriate amounts of acidity and tannin and intensity and complexity of flavor that makes the wine delightful. Country wine makers - that is folk like you and me who make wines from fruit which needs us to add sugar, add acidity and add tannins - often exhibit very little sense of "balance" and so we often make one dimensional wines. And very often the lack of balance is in part because we aim for too high an ABV - an alcohol content that the flavor and mouthfeel (the viscosity of the wine) simply cannot support, not least because the fruits we use have been grown for quantity and shelf life and not for quality and richness of flavor.

 

[user 36973]

Agree with @BernardSmith about the higher abv wines lacking balance. I've been much happier with my fruit wines at lower ABV where much of the fruit flavor is still readily distinguishable.

An example is an apple wine I made years ago that I had inadvertently taken to 13% and which had been stripped of the apple fruit character. After this I only make apple ciders that are only up to 8% and are fantastic.

 

[Rice_Guy]

we have several flavor notes which we build in our home product, if “intense” is a burn note in the back of the throat I would guess that you experience oxidized ethyl alcohol (acetaldehyd). Commercial product has an advantage since a half inch head space diluted over a thousand gallon tank has less percentage impact than a half inch on a carboy.

Watch your SO2 , head space, air exposure on transfer, etc

Silly question is there a reason home made wine seems to effect more intense?
My Apple kiwi strawberry is smooth and kicks in