Home made wine flavour

[Pete Franklin]

I need some advise.

I have been brewing beer and wines from scratch for a couple of years- the beers almost always turn out great exactly how you would expect a decent pint to taste. The wines have been good but often have a strange flavour which makes them taste different to commercial wines (not unpleasant just different).

I recently put together my first kit wine (Beaverdale Rioja) expecting the flavour that i normally get with my hedgerow wines to be omitted but it seems that it is still there (only just bottled by the way).

Does anyone know if the flavour disappears over time? (i have left some of my blackberry wine for ~8 months but the flavour is still apparent)

does anyone know why the flavour is different or am i just doing something wrong?

Thanks

Pete

[kiteless]

Are your wines (hedgerow & kit) "star" bright in their bottles?

Sometimes, despite a good dose of finings and pectolase, the wine will still have a very slight (and I mean very slight) haze to it. This means there is still a little of the fermenting lees left suspended in it, which does give a slightly strange background flavour to the wine. We only found this out with our Victoria Plum batch from last year, which even now still has a light haze to it.

On another note: this year's first batch has now started! Dandelion! Fingers crossed it produces as good a glug this year as last.

[Simpo Two]

Rioja tastes like creosote anyway!

My father used to make wine, both from natural fruit/veg and from kits. The 'real' wine was very good but the kit stuff always tasted flat by comparison.

[Wadeski]

make lots of sangria??

[Pete Franklin]

The beaverdale kits are suposedly meant to make a wine of £5-6 supermarket quality if you believe what people on the internet tell you. they cost enough so should produce stuff of a decent quality. the wine seems fine (very young) except for this flavour, which is difficult to describe. its funny as i have ruled out the brewing vessel (used glass and plastic for different wines) the yeast makes were different in each as well. maybe it will dissapear with age.

Kiteless: All my wines have been crystal clear so far so i dont think it is suspended material from the fermentation. on a side note- your dandelion wine sounds very intriguing. care to share the recipe?

[kiteless]

Pete Franklin said:

The beaverdale kits are suposedly meant to make a wine of £5-6 supermarket quality if you believe what people on the internet tell you. they cost enough so should produce stuff of a decent quality. the wine seems fine (very young) except for this flavour, which is difficult to describe. its funny as i have ruled out the brewing vessel (used glass and plastic for different wines) the yeast makes were different in each as well. maybe it will dissapear with age.

Kiteless: All my wines have been crystal clear so far so i dont think it is suspended material from the fermentation. on a side note- your dandelion wine sounds very intriguing. care to share the recipe?

I must admit, the few kit wines we've made were very good indeed so I'm a little bemused by this "flavour" issue. Are you making sure that all your kit is sterilised before fermentation (i.e. fermenting bucket / demijohn / funnel / siphon pipe / stirring implement etc.)? As an aside, WRT stirring spoons and such, never use wooden stuff - always use plastic. In fact, all our stuff - except the demijohns and bottles - is plastic.

The recipe for the dandelion wine is easy. Most if not all of our hedgerow stuff is made using recipes from the 1950's by Dorothy Wise.

Ingredients:
1 gallon of dandelion heads (dry by volume)
1 orange
1 lemon
2lbs of suger
1 gallon of water
2 teaspoons of normal yeast (maybe 1 of good Burgundy yeast)
Method:
Put the flower heads in cold water and bring to the boil (you'll need 2 good sized saucepans for this)
Simmer for 10 mins (hold your nose, it's not a pleasant smell )
During this time, put all your sugar into a fermenting bucket with the rinds of the orange and lemon (don't peel any of the pith off the fruit - very bitter)
After the liquor has simmered, strain it through a sieve onto the sugar and peel
Leave to cool to tepid
Add the juice of the lemon and orange
Add the yeast
Cover the bucket, and leave in a warm place for 2 days
After 2 days, strain the liquor through muslin into a demijohn and airlock it
Ferment to a finish
Rack into bottles
Leave for 6 months at least

Amazing that an ingredient that smells so vile when preparing can produce a wine so appealing.

[Pete Franklin]

cheers for that Kiteless - found a field absolutely crammed with dandelions on the cycle to work this morning so i'll go and pick a load tonight on my way home. maybe make a few demijohns worth.

What is the yeild of that recipe? I assume over a gallon seeing as there is 2llb of sugar added to a gallon of water.

I sterilise everything properly so i dont think its that to be honest.

Edited by Pete Franklin on Friday 15th April 11:47

[Pete Franklin]

Double Post

Edited by Pete Franklin on Friday 15th April 11:49

[Lady Summerisle]

I sometimes find a strange taste if I stabilise with sodium metabisulpite or campden tablets. I find using potassium sorbate is better. Finings can cause funny tastes too, I find it best to leave it to settle naturally if possible.

[kiteless]

Pete Franklin said:

What is the yeild of that recipe?

Bearing in mind that once fermentation in the dj has stopped there is quite a lot of sediment at the bottom, so that recipe would give at least four bottles worth.

[Pete Franklin]

Lucky I have a lot of demijohns then!

[Simpo Two]

Is something of twice the volume called a 'john' I wonder?