Vintners Best Elderberry fruit wine base

[winemaker81]

I have absolutely no activity. Nothing is giving this puppy any get-up-and-go.

I know that when feeding sugar, we can't simply add up the deltas in SG to get the final total -- but now different is the reality from what adding up the delta's indicates?

Adding the deltas from the initial and second fermentations, the wine should be at 13.9% alcohol. I used EC-1118 (several times) so I should be able to get ~18%. I went from 1.078 to 1.000, then up to 1.030 and back to 1.002. To refresh everyone's memory, I bumped the SG back up to 1.032 and it's stayed there.

Could that produce enough alcohol to overwhelm EC-1118? It's either that or I got the underachiever of all yeasts.

It any also be that I fermented a juice blend and something about the formulation is inhibiting continued fermentation. The world may never know ...

In any case, I'm going to stabilize it, fine it, and bottle as-is. It's sweeter than I intended, but will be fine.

 

[winemaker81]

I bottled batch #1 today. It's been crystal clear for a month so it was time.

The "right" way to do sweetening is to do a series of bench mixes and taste them side-by-side.

This time I did it differently. I poured a glass of the base wine, then mixed 1/2 cup sugar into the 3 gallon batch. Took a sample (using a wine thief) and tasted against the base wine. We tasted each successive sugar addition against the base wine. This method relies upon my experience in sweetening wines, and have the potential for significant error, e.g., it's rather difficult to remove sugar from the wine. But I felt like risk taking today.

The base wine is tasty, but a bit sharp. It's definitely one to sweeten slightly. [I have batch #2 which is more a port style, so I want #1 fairly dry.]

My elder son was helping me, which allowed me to get another opinion. [Like me he's a dry red wine guy.] He liked the addition, but thought it was still a bit sharp. So we added 1/4 cup more sugar, stirring well. [Love my drill mounted stirring rod!]

Even that small amount of sugar changed the wine again. We compared it to the sharpness of the base wine, and my son thought we should add more sugar. I tasted again and decided to sit pat. This wine will mellow in the bottle and in my experience it will settle nicely in a year, and be even better in two.

Metheglin

Then we bottled 5 gallons of metheglin (mead with cinnamon, cloves, and allspice). We did the same thing -- poured a glass of the base wine and then sweetened the bucket with 1/2 cup sugar, stirring well.

The base wine has too strong a clove taste. The addition of a small amount of sugar softened that tremendously. It still doesn't have as much cinnamon as I was targeting, but I like the result anyway (next batch will have more cinnamon stick). But the taste wasn't quite right so we added 1/4 cup more sugar.

I liked the taste much better, yet decided to add yet another 1/4 cup sugar. My son argued against it -- the cloves was much reduced with 3/4 cup sugar and he thought we'd lose it if we added more. So we tasted the base against the current, and I agreed with him.

One thing I keep in mind is if either wine needs more sugar after aging, I can keep a small container of sugar syrup in the fridge and sweeten to taste.

Bottling with a companion is always better than solo ...

 

[winemaker81]

I opened a bottle of the elderberry batch #1 to see how it's progressing. I was pleasantly surprised as it has already mellowed nicely.

My choice to not sweeten it more panned out. The wine has a bit of sweetness and definitely shows fruit -- more sugar would have missed the target that I aimed for (dry red wine). I won't open another bottle for at least 6 months.

Next time I do elderberry I will do 6 split bottles bone dry. It will be interesting to see how that progresses. If the wine is too sharp? Sangria ....

 

[winemaker81]

Update on the elderberry:

The lightly sweetened elderberry turned out really well. It's been a hit with everyone who's tried it, enough so that I have only 2 bottles left ...

The port version never fermented. In hindsight I realize I hit it with too much sugar at once. So I stabilized it and bottled. It's far too sweet (IMO) for a table wine, but it's a tasty dessert wine, even if the alcohol is low.

As I stated in the first post, I was concerned that the main ingredient on the label was apple juice. However, I'm happy with the final product.

The metheglin I mentioned is aging nicely. It's been in the bottle just short of 2 years, and the 2 bottles I've opened were very good. Wine-level mead takes time to age and I'm hoarding this one to allow it that time.