yeasty wine

16 years ago

We started making wine last summer - Blackberry, blueberry, and 2 different pears. We have bottled the blueberry. We like it and so have folks and family that have tried it. I think it still takes yeasty. It does have a good alcohol percentage. (We still have not figured out how to read a hydrometer!! We heard you added beginning and ending and then we heard you should subtract them! Compared to other drinks they must be around 12 - 13% We generally add sugar more than once during fermentation, taking readings each time, but none of it makes sense to us.)

Anyway, my husband thinks they are fine - he is used to his father's grape wine from concentrate when he was growing up and they taste the same. I would prefer to get rid of the yeasty taste. The other wines also have this flavor/flaw; depends which one of us you are talking to!

Does someone have a suggestion on how to clear up this taste?

Thanks!

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Comments (4)

fedup321
16 years ago
Your explaination leads me to believe that you are not letting the wine finish fermentation.From what I read from your post ....does not indicate that you have actually read the hydrometer propertly before bottling any of your wine.
If you let the wine ferment to a low reading on the hyro. 0.96 and properly rack the lees off the bottom, there should not be a yeast taste.
giantvision20
16 years ago
I'm not good at wine making but I think fedup321 is right.
Finishing the fermentation is really an important process to do especially in wine making. That would be the thing that makes the finished product taste good.
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All sounds yucky to me. I add sugar to up the alcohol. Cheap vodka and brandy would ruin a wine to my taste. I try for about 12%. Higher alcohol could be had from a port yeast. I never add sulfieds. This has caused a bottle to leak from the cork or be a little fizzy from fermentables stirred up during bottling. Not a show stopper in my book. The wines turn out clean and drinkable. The finest wine I've ever drank in my life has come from my own carboys. Not that store bought wine is all bad but homemade is so much cleaner in taste. So all my wine is dry and I sweeten it at drinking time if I so desire with soda pop or fruit juice. Water is also very excellent mixed with wine turning it into an adult koolaid. My wines stay in the glass fermenter for a year and then are bottled and mostly drank within a few months. I've had bottles for 7-8 years that were still drinkable when uncorked. With homemade grape wine as with most wines getting the all the seeds out before fermentation greatly improves the flavor. I even squeeze them by hand so as not to crush the seeds... squeezing the fruit is the hardest work in wine making. So anyways I wouldn't go adding any vodka... ewwww! Sulfieds or whatever if your kit says so. Why spend the money on a kit and not get the product intended? At some point you will probably form an opinion about sulfieds and when to use them. One of the great things about making wine is you get to do it your way.
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Without seeing the recipe, it's a little tough to tell. A couple of things though; How long are you waiting after the wine is finished before you are tasting? Wines can take a few months to mellow out some of the harsh alcohol taste. Some of the fruits you mention may not contain the amount of acid necessary to give the wines sufficient body and when the wines are thin, the hot taste is accentuated. If you can spare some, take a half glass or so of the wine and add a drop of lemon juice, swirl to mix and see if it makes a difference. It could just be that there isn't enough fruit in the recipe (or too much sugar) that there is enough flavor / non-fermentables left when the yeast is done working (assuming you're using a decent wine yeast).
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sandy0225
15 years ago
also, I've noticed that if you let the wine breathe for a while before you drink it, it really helps a lot. I made some pumpkin wine and it's really good if you pull the cork about an hour before you drink it, otherwise, YUCK! try this and see if it helps.
sheryl_ontario
15 years ago
I agree, I think maybe it's not finished. There is a formula for using the hydrometer to figure out what percentage of alcohol your finished wine has, but that is not the way to use the hydrometer. Test your wine must when you start. Add all the sugar and test it to see if it is at the 12-13% alcohol mark. That's where it should be for a dry wine. There's no math involved. It's a clear reading on the hydrometer.

Test it again when you think it's done. It should read at the 0.9... mark, somewhere less than 1.0. That tells you that it is finished.

Then you can bottle it. After that point you have to let it age. Most homemade wines need to age in the bottle at least a year, some two years (dandelion).

If you drink it early, it might have a "jet fuel" flavor! I do drink wines early, when I run out. I'm getting used to the "jet fuel" flavor. lol!

yeasty wine

Comments (4)

fedup321

giantvision20

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sandy0225

sheryl_ontario

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