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bitter wine--aging?

Okay, made a welches concord juice wine (one Gal) added yeast

9-21-03. Sat in primary for a coulpe weeks, then moved to secondary. racked once in secondary and bottled a couple days ago. had a bit left over that wouldn't go into a bottle (okay, went into bottle, but had no way to cork it as the bottle was too small for the corks) put some foil with a rubber band to seal it (all I had at the time)

Tried some of the wine tonight from the "extra" bottle. it is really bitter. is this just an aging thing? here are the numbers I have:

Init S.G: 1.091 on 9-21-03 to secondary: 1.007 on 9-28-03 racked it at 0.990 on 10-17-03 bottled at 0.990 on 12-15-03

pH was failrly consistant at about 3.5-3.6 (a bit high I know)

didn't take any other readings.

If it is just a issue of the foil/rubber band and isn't going to cause any problems, then great. I can take this wine to christmas. I only have three bottles that are properly corked, so I don't want to open one "jus to see", yet I don't want to give away stuff that is junk.

any ideas?

thanks in advance...

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

Reply to
Dave Allyn
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Dave, I've made wine from Welch's frozen grape juice, as well as other frozen juices. Your wine is very young, and probably doesn't taste as good as it could. I've found that waiting over a year to a year & 1/2 greatly improves the taste. I'm not sure about the bitterness and where that came from. Usually the wines have a strong "alcoholic kick" to them when they're that young. I know where you're coming from. I've been debating which one of my wines I was going to give to a couple of friends who have given me a lot empty wine bottles. I decided I needed to try a bottle first to make sure I was happy about how the wine had come out. Darlene

Reply to
Dar V

You didnt mention how mych sugar you added to the grape juice. The recipe I used called for two 12 ounce cans of unsweetened Welches grape juice, 4 cups of sugar (way too sweet, 2 cups was dry, and 3 cups was just about perfect), a pack of yeast, and juice from a squeezed lemon. I put it together, made sure all the sugar was desolved, strained it into a gallon jug and filled the remainder with water. Put the lock on it and let it perk. We drank it in about 2 months, the the second one that we left for about 10 months tasted much better.

Reply to
Dwayne

Let's see, according to my reccords I added 1.5-2 cups (didn't measure exactly, went by s.g. instead. I used 3 cans of welches concentrate (the room temperature one, not the frozen) added one gallon of distilled water ( I have VERY hard water) and tested the S.G. at

1.049. added just shy of two cups of sugar to make 1.091

Didn't add any lemons, and used one packet of Lalvin K1V-1116 yeast.

Primary was a food-grade white 5 gallon bucket with a good fittng lid. (whilte leaving enough room for gas to escape)

Secondary was both a one gallon glass jug, and a WELL RINSED 40 oz beer bottle. at first racking the two got combined with about 1.5 - 2 Inches headroom.

I didn't go off of any one recipie, instead I read several, and kinda mixed and matched. maybe that was the problem too....

email: dallyn_spam at yahoo dot com please respond in this NG so others can share your wisdom as well!

Reply to
Dave Allyn

I forgot to mention that the two 12 ounce cans were grape concentrate, not just juice. I didnt use a primary, just ran it through like I said.

Reply to
Dwayne

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