I'm new to winemaking. So far, I've made two kits, one red (merlot) one white (piesporter). I made the red first, and it's just been sitting in a carboy for about three months since the last racking. Then I made a batch of white, decided to bottle it fairly quickly after the kit procedures were over, and it actually turned out to be reasonable, I've been using it as drinking wine while I wait for the red and make other kits.
Next was an attempt at making just pure alchohol and make my own liquors from this. I mixed the alchohol in the same plastic pail that I had done both the red and the white wine in (for the initial week of fermentation). I did make sure to clean the plastic bucket thoroughly after each batch....but for some reason....now that I'm racking off what should be just straight alchohol....it tastes like very diluted white wine. I'm wondering if maybe it would be smart to have separate plastic pails for white, red, and straight alchohol? Or perhaps it's normal for this alchohol mix to have a slightly sweet taste? Other then the degassing, fining steps that I went through with the wines, I treated the alchohol mixture in the same way as the wine kits. One week of fermentation, rack into a carboy, let it sit there for 3 weeks with an airlock in place. Today I racked it off, just to get rid of the junk at the bottom and prepare to rack it off later into gallon jugs.
The alchohol mixture was 23 liters of water, 11 lbs of sugar and the yeast and chemical mix that came with the kit.
Thank you in advance for any ideas you might have.
Ian