Why does my beer smell like wine?

Hey guys, I just bottled my first batch today, It was a Coopers Australian Draught Kit, The fella at my LHBS picked up the kit as well as an additional can of something that said "American ale blah blah blah" on it and said "Here use this in place of your sugar and you'll have a great beer.

So, me not wanting to sound too "New" into the hobby I said sure, ill give it a try. When I came home and started puting together the kit, I notice that the can of stuff he gave me was an additional can of un hopped liquid malt extract. (I was expecting a can of powder like substance to use in place of sugar, maybe like corn sugar, or DME or something of powder form...) Soooo, at that point I thought to myself... crap, the guy game me the wrong stuff.. So, I added it anyway to the coopers kit, and to be EXTRA safe, I also added 4 cups of sugar (5 gallon batch) and hoped for the best. LOL

Welllllll..... now it has been 10 days, and I cracked it open, and it REAKS of good wine... but no beer smell or taste! I went ahead and bottled it up hoping time heals all wounds... Let me know what ya'll think!

Original Gravity : 1.062
Final Gravity: 1.012

You should be fine. Give it some time.

It smells like that because there's booze in thar! Fermentation can be a stinky process (sometimes it smells like sulfur, bananas, etc.) Sounds like its fine. Cheers!

Rdwhahb!

what temp was the beer fermented at? as said above, fermenting can cause some weird smells, and I think warmer ferments might cause even more smells.

and next time I'd leave out the table sugar if you already have the extract to replace it with. sugar does bump up the alcohol, but it can also cause a cidery taste, and cause the beer to be dry and thin. that usually only happens if you use too much sugar, so if 4 cups was was the kit originally called for, you should be fine, but there's no need for it since you had the extract.

Was the 1.062 a measured gravity, or what the kit said. A 3.3 lb can of LME will increase the OG by .023 in a 5 gallon batch.

Was the sugar part of the recipe. 4 cups table sugar is 2 lbs.

Hogarthe said:

Next time I'd leave out the table sugar if you already have the extract to replace it with. sugar does bump up the alcohol, but it can also cause a cidery taste, and cause the beer to be dry and thin.

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Have you ever used too much sugar and had a beer that tastes cidery? I've used lots of sugar in many beers and never had one that tastes cidery. Some Belgians have up to 30% sugar; I wouldn't call them cidery.

I think the cidery taste is a thing of the past, and was probably due to poor ingredients coupled with way too much sugar.

What kind of wine? Do you know what was the grain bill of the kit?

I once overdid acid malt in one of my brews, and it smelled like a merlot even after aging a month.