Pogo

Recipes 

Did you check the OJ for preservatives?

Had any of the wines you added to the olio been stabilized?

Add some yeast nutrient, and re-pitch every other day until it takes off.

Pogo

LastKnight

Recipes 

This just... doesn't sound pleasant. =/ Best of luck, and I hope I'm wrong.

pizzaman

Recipes 

No preservatives, no previous stabilizations. I'm gonna stick to my hurry up and wait method unless someone comes up with a good reason not to. Again though, thanks for the replies.

paulthenurse

Recipes 

I feel like I'm driving past a high speed wreck on the highway with dead, mangled bodies strewn hither and yon, and I just can't stop myself from slowing down to get a peek...

No offense but adding a bunch of bad wines together doesn't give you a better wine, it just gives you a whole lot of bad wine. You don't blend to cover up flaws, it doesn't work. You rather blend to bring out the best of what you are blending. And adding a bunch of stuff to already finished, not very good wine is just throwing away more money. I'd STRONGLY recommend going to Jack Kellers site and reading up there. Wine really isn't hard, it's a LOT easier to make than beer. The one thing that is very different from making beer is that wine takes a LOT more time than beer. Even the kits that advertise being ready in XYZ weeks will taste a lot better if you double, triple or more the timeframes. But a kit is a good place to start.

PTN

pizzaman

Recipes 

I'll probably give a kit a whirl the next time swmbo wants me to make a batch. This "hippie-wine" experiment was just that, an experiment I decided after a day of brewing and maybe one too many beers. If it doesn't work out I'm out like $6..and a few bottles of bad wine. On another note, there is airlock activity and active fermentation now three days after pitching.

giligson

Recipes 

Actually for failed alcoholic beverages this is what I recommend.

Building a World Class Home Distillation Apparatus - Home Page

__________________
We who are about to Brew, salute you!

paulthenurse

Recipes 

Someone I know and love built the model on the left. If NASA ever runs short of fuel they should give me a shout and I'll make the referal. They could probably get by with a much smaller solid rocket booster.

EvilTOJ

Recipes 

No it doesn't. The wiki says that a starter isn't needed with dry yeast, not that it'll kill it. When you make a starter, you're pitching yeast into a volume of sugar water for the yeast to propogate. When you pitch directly into the wort or must, you're pitching the yeast into ....... a volume of sugar water. It's the same thing, just different volumes.

__________________
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

pizzaman

Recipes 

From Yeast Starters: - Home Brewing Wiki "Making a starter with dry yeast can be detrimental to their performance because they can use their nutrient reserves before pitching."

Either way it's fermenting now, so waiting was the best option in this case.

pizzaman

Recipes 

Gravity is down to 1.03 today, it already tastes better than any of the individual wines originally did. The bread-doughy smell that was apparent is gone and it actually has a rather smooth and clean taste. Obviously too sweet to rack today, I think I'll rack onto some campden and potassium sorbate when it gets down to about 1.015 and let it clear. Hopefully it'll be there by friday when I brew my BlackberryWit.

With my new cornies on the way I'm trying to decide whether I should bottle or keg this...it does taste a lot like a champagne or a strong wine cooler that would be great carbed and chilled, maybe I'll do half and half.

The bad part is that if this is really good it'll be impossible to replicate exactly as I didn't keep any notes about the original wines...