homemade wine question(s)

[andym]

I know there is a homebrew thread here somewhere, but figured I would ask in a new thread.

A while ago I made some white wine from a kit which fermented and cleared within 5 days and didn't taste too bad.

So I figured I would go for a 14 day red wine kit, which took 3 weeks for the first fermenting, and even at that I had to add stabilizer to stop it, with the stabilizer it said something like 1tsp per gallon, which sounded a lot to me so I added just under 2 spoons to 23 litres. I added the finings about 24 hours later.

That was 3 days ago now, last night I took a sample glass out and it has a strong after taste of the stabilizer. So I was wondering, if I leave it to settle for the week like it says (or longer), will the after taste die down? If not then what would I need to add to it to change the flavour?

Also, it tastes extremely dry, so can I just add a little bit of sugar (or even some grape juice) in a couple of days?

And while I'm here, anyone tried making alcoholic ginger beer? How easy is it to make?

[Benson_JV]

The trick in the future is to stop the fermentation before it ferments all of the sugar out, and takes the Specfic gravity below 1.000 as that'll get drier & drier. You can pop a splash of grape juice in as you serve to counter this.

I've not used stabilizer before but I'd just leave it be for now and try another glass in a week or so. Get another brew on though just incase + then if it does work out fine, you can get a rolling stock going.
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[andym]

Hey thanks Benson, I've been closely monitoring my plonk and the chemical taste is all but gone, if nothing disturbs the bucket then I get a clear glass of wine, I've added about half a pint of concentrated grape juice and now it tastes like wine again, fermentation has stopped, I've racked off the top 20 litres into another bucket to finish settling, the rest I've put into 2 litre bottles and taking off the top and leaving as much sedament as possible....

I've decided to give alcoholic ginger beer a try next... got everything ready, but forgot to bring the fermenting bucket with me... but I'm aiming for 10% ginger beer

[Benson_JV]

Sounds like a recipe for awesomeness.

The chemical taste could be what you added, I doubt it though seeing as you added less than what it called for. Could be a mild infection possibly although doubtful as you'd know.
Do you remove chlorine from the water before using it or just straight out of the tap? Depending on your area that can have a huge impact on the taste. I use campden tablets to do this, cheap & easy.
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Previous Bikes: '96 Bandit 600, '96 GPz305

[andym]

Just a quick update here...

all chemical taste has gone from the wine.... still knock you on yer arse strength though.

I put the finings in there, but since I moved it into another bucket the clearing has stopped, tonight I added half an egg white and hopefully that will drag down the restof the shit.

Alcoholic ginger beer has been the most aggressive fermentation I've seen so far.... <1 hour for fermentation to start and cause air lock to bubble.... less than 36 hours into fermenation and I have an inch of foam (ginger, lemon and lime) on top of the liquid, half filled air lock spraying water over the top of the bucket, 5-10 bubbles every 2-3 seconds.... and that's at about 20 degrees..... luckily I only used 3kg of sugar in 23 litres... so at this rate it should be ready in 3 days, I've tasted the 1 day brew and it's perfect canned ginger beer... but I have sweetener and caster sugar for when the fermenting stops (or I stop it).... Strange... none of my friends like ginger beer though, I've been told to try alcoholic lemonaide next

[Ariel Badger]

this
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[Walloper]

Don't know if you know these few basics for brewing:

All stuff that touches the brew must be sterile. Bleach can leave a taste so a citric acid and sodium metabisulphate is used. (I think from memory) There is no taste or smell using this.

You need a thermometer and an tool to measure before and after S.G. which allows you to determine the alcohol content.

I use camden tablets (Which Boots make) to stop fermentation.

Use good quality ingredients. No bad fruit or cheap concentrates. If you start cheap you will only end cheap.
The quality of the end product is partly down to preperation and care during fermentation and after when it is bottled.

Temperature fluctuations can hamper the progress too.

I recently made 20 liters of cider from 20 cartons of apple juice, 4lbs of sugar and about half a cup of bakers' yeast. All poured into a 5gal water jug with a rubber glove for an air trap. (As we were in the desert where there is no brewer's yeast.)
Bottled up (with a teaspoon of suger) and left to sit for a day or two in the fridge to 'mature'.
The end product was 'interesting with a lot of character' we were really only interested in the character as it's a dry country.

As mentioned, once you get a rolling stock working it becomes easier. It is better to keep some sort of record as to what is in it, when it went on and the S.G.

I read that hoying in a couple of Vitamin B1 tablets can help the yeast to work too.
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[Benson_JV]

[mistergixer]

[Ariel Badger]

My dad made ginger beer in the shed but he put too much sugar in it once it was bottled and it turned into unstable hand grenades that kept on blowing up in his shed, In the end he shot all the bottles with an air-rifle to stop any injury.
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[andym]

I thought this thread would have died on its arse since my last post was after a few glasses of my wine....

Anyway thanks for all the useful advice, I try to make sure everything is as sterile as possible, usually start off with crushing some campden tablets and putting them in the bucket with boiling water and put anything I'm going to use in there too, then give it all a damn good rince off afterwards.

With the wine, I've been mooching bottles from anyone I know that drinks it, and adding to the collection myself, so now I have space for about 15 litres of the wine, which with samples *hic* should be close to enough.

With the ginger beer, that's still bubbling violently (I added an extra pound of caster sugar and a tea spoon of yeast additive... oh and another 3 teaspoons of ground ginger last night), but it seems the flavour has dropped to almost zero (even though I boiled the ingredients for half an hour as said in the recipe), but I'll keep an eye on it. As for the storage, I've heard a few stories of exploding bottles etc, so I'll experiment on the amount of sugar in the bottles (plastic soft drink bottles of course), but it seems half a spoon of sugar is fine, and I have some artificial sweetener to add too.

At the moment I only have 2 buckets, so can't really have much on the go at the same time (although £10 for a bucket and £13 for a barrel and the rest of the equipment is about £5-10 each... it's cheap enough to buy more things).

I am thinking of trying a lager kit next, but not sure if the sugar would work for adding the fizz to that too, or if it does need the Co2 (is that right?).

At the end of the day, I'm not expecting everything to turn out perfect, trying to get the red wine to clear properly is being a complete pain, even though the white cleared in 24 hours.

Anyway, again thanks for the advice.

Oh on a little side note, with the distilling... I did think about having a little bash at that with a kettle, copper tubing and thermos... among other things

[Walloper]

[mistergixer]

My Dad always had a massive supply of brown ale* bottles which came courtesy of my Grandad.
I used to love putting the caps on the bottles with the little capping press-thingy.

*He also used to bring us the Amber ale, which sadly isn't available here any more. I loved the Amber ale, but find brown ale a bit too sweet.
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