Newbie Question

Hello, Could you tell us about your initial fermentation? bucket? how long? starting & ending SG? Can you tell us what color the wines are? Do they smell like bleach or vinegar? Sometimes we need a bit more info before we can offer some suggestions. I suppose if you used some old equipment which had vinegar in it then your batch could have gone bad that way. I clean with bleach too, but I rinse well and I've never had a problem. My other thought is that very young wine can taste pretty bad, which you wouldn't realize because these are your first batches; so it might be worth your while to wait a bit longer before you get worried. I look forward to your response, it might help us figure out what happened. Darlene

Three weeks is pretty early in the process to decide how a fruit wine tastes. Let the wine finish fermenting and settling... Then decide how it tastes.

I use bleach all the time with no problems. I don't see how that coulb be the cause of viegar flavor.

I'm not sure 3 weeks is long enough to assess your wine. I've had a few batches I thought were infected, but after aging and clearing they turned out to be fine.

Thanks for the quick responses. Perhaps I shouldn't go crazy and let time take it course to make judgement on the wine.

Initial fermentation usually lasting 5-6 days, Starting SG was 1.090 for both pear and nectarine. Did not to ending SG on nectartine but pear was .990, lowest hydrometer goes. Pear was off-white, creme colored, clear on top cloudy at bottom and nectarine was rustic orange color, clear at top cloudy at bottom. Pear wine smelled sour when I opened it, nectarine smelled more like a rancid beer, with a yeasty characteristic to it. Didn't smell like bleach at all. Like I said I'm new at this, so I'm quite anxious, but do not want to keep working at a wine if it is already too late by the way it tasted now. Thanks again.

Justin

Thanks I'm going to let them ride and hopefully they are more pleasing in the future. In the meantime I'll be going to market and picking up more fresh fruit.

Justin

Ah yes, and the compulsion continues...welcome to the world of winemaking. I started with 1 gallon of rhubarb wine and 1 small wine rack. Now I make about 20 gallons of wine a year, and I have a wine rack which can hold up to