ACID BLEND QUESTION

You can add it any time, but before fermentation is usually better. I never add it before fermenting mead as a heads up, the increase in acid is too unpredictable. A lot of country wines are like that.

I'm not sure more acid will help bitterness, are you sure he did not crush some seeds or something like that? If you do add it measure out the expected amount and put it in in small increments; you can always add more.

Joe

thanks for your reply. i ll give it the acid blend and see how it is. best regards,lucas

As another poster mentioned, acid blend on its own won't balance bitterness. You might want to taste the wine again to make sure it's bitter you're tasting ... pick up a bit of grape tannin from the homebrew store, mix a bit with some water, and taste that. Or brew some really strong tea and take a tiny sip. These are bitter things ... then (after eating some bread and drinking some water to get the previous taste out of your mouth) retaste the wine.

If you're still convinced that what you're tasting is bitterness, I recommend trying a fining with PVPP fining like Polayclar VT

810). This will either do nothing or work miracles. I made apricot meade with pureed dried apricots a few years ago which turned out very bitter (since I actually pureed the reconstituted dried apricots, skins an all, in a blender) and dark. A fining with PVPP removed the bitterness, lightened the color to a nice amber, and left just a wonderful wine. So, I would try this first. Some sources indicate that you need to filter your wine after fining with PVPP, but I just let it settle and racked, and had no problems.

If you think the wine is still bitter after fining with PVPP, you could try fining with gelatin. You can either use unflavored gelatin from the grocery store or by gelatin sold by your homebrew store specifically for fining. Gelatin fining will also remove tannin from wine, and tannins are bitter. You need to add the gelatin to the wine while it's still warm, and mix well. Don't forget to bump up the potassium metabisulfite a bit to compensate for the air exposure.

If even after the gelatin fining, you still think the wine is bitter, you can either try some additional gelating finings, decide the wine is good enough and leave it alone, or discard and start over. One other option would be to try adding some spices (cinnamon/cloves/ginger) and both acid blend and sugar to mask the bitterness, but you'll end up with a very different wine of course.

It's also worthwine to reflect back a bit and try to determine where this bitterness came from. Were there a lot of seeds or stems included, or were these pureed in a blender?

In any event, good luck!

Jon [Check out my winemaking homepage at