First time wine maker. Got about 23 liters in a bucket, mostly from grapes with about 1.5 kilograms of crabapples mixed in. Fermentation seemed to go very well but the bubbling has definately slowed way down lately. After two months I removed the must today and filtered the rest through a fine cheescloth into a clean white bucket. What I have left is a brownish liquid that tastes ok and definately has a kick but is not very pretty. At the moment I would be very popular in a prison setting but not among accomplished winemakers, this I know. Based on limited reading I think I need to let sit a while longer and rack into containers. I'm not sure how to clarify the liquid at this point. It will not likely turn out competely clear anyway. Then bottle and age in cool surroundings. This is easy to do in the Finnish winter, cool surroundings are everywhere. Any comments or ideas? All are appreciated. I just joined so will be lurking around to see what all you pros are doing!
Sounds like good advice, in addition fill the carboy to the very top. Once it ferments air contact should be avoided. It usually clears on it's own. Your wine may be oxidized; if it tastes a little like dry Sherry that may be all you can make it into at this point. (Brown color is usually a sign of oxidation.)
Now I got to find a carboy in Finland! This will be interesting. I was under the assumption that a layer of gas would form on top of the wine and prevent it from oxidizing. But if the fermentation is over then its over, eh?
Thanks, or as we say in Finland, kiitos (key toes)
Can you order your winemaking supplies online? I'm sure there must be a homebrew store in Finland somewhere that would do mail-order.
If you don't want to make a sherry-style wine, and you'd like to do everything you can to "save" your wine otherwise, here's what I would recommend:
- If you smell and taste appreciable amounts of vinegar or if you smell a pronounced rotten-egg smell at any time, consider throwing the batch out and just marking it up to experience.
- Otherwise, treat it immediately with potassium metabisulfite, 1/4 teaspoon per US gallon (3.79 liters)
- As soon a possible, get the wine into a carboy with an airlock affixed. Top off with wine or water to make sure the carboy is filled into the neck of the bottle.
- Once you're hooked up with a source of homebrew supplies, get an acid testing kit, and adjust the acidity of your wine if it is low. Use acid blend powder to get the total acidity level into a good range (0.65% to
0.75% is a good range to aim for). If the acidity is over 0.75%, just leave it alone (don't try to adjust it down). If the total acidity is over 1.0%, consider throwing the batch out.
- If the grapes you fermented in the bucket included the grape skins, you may have a very tannic (as well as oxidized) wine. Taste the wine -- if it tastes bitter on the back of your tongue and makes your mouth feel dry, that's tannin. I would startrt seeing what you can make of it by fining. To reduce the tannin content, you can first do a fairly heavy fining with gelatin (either from a homebrew store, or unflavored gelatin from the grocery). You can start with 0.5 gm per US gallon (1 US gallon = 3.79 liters), mix thoroughly, allow precipitate to settle, taste, and repeat once if the wine still tastes very bitter.
- To try to reduce the browning caused by the oxidation, I recommend a second fining with PVPP (a fining agent you can find online from a homebrew store). Mix thoroughly, wait two or three weeks for all the particles to precipitate, and rack (siphon off) the wine into a second carboy.
At this point, you may have allieviated some of the symptoms of your overly long fermentation (actually, if you had fermented in a airtight container, you would have done what's called an extended maceration). Hopefully the gelatin has reduced the bitterness, and the PVPP has reduced the browning and taste effects of the oxidation. If the wine is not yet clear, you will want to add a pectic enzyme and then fine it yet again ... maybe with Sparkolloid.
Since you have now fined this wine a lot, and you're dealing with oxidation that can make the wine taste flat, you want to test your acidity again and make sure it's still high enough. The acidity will add some brightness to the taste to counteract the "flat", raisiny taste the oxidation may have introduced.
At this point, you can consider adding some sweetness to the wine, assuming it has fermented to dryness before. You could add just sugar, dissolving a
1/4 cup at a time to taste, or you could add some clarified apple juice. You will also want to add potassium sorbate, which will keep fermentation from restarting once you bottle it.
You might also want to consider making this a spiced wine, by sweetening and either adding a commercial "mulling spices" mix, or adding some spices (cinnamon sticks, cardamom pods, ginger) to the wine (tasting periodically to rack it off the spices before it gets too strong). Jon
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