Ok so I may have ruined 10 gallons of 2 different wines. I have a wild grape and a peach wine that I started on 8/30/09. I added isinglass to both to clean them up a bit I wouldn't have used it on the red but it had pieces of grape floating around. Anyways, I added the isinglass right before a long trip and now it has been approx 6 weeks that these wines have been sitting on the isinglass residue and both of them are incredibly bitter. Acrid is the term that comes to mind, it tastes like there is alum in there if anyone's ever tasted alum used for baking. Is this my fault for leaving it sit so long? Is there anything I can do?
Wine tastes bitter.. did I screw up?
- Thread starter RyanK2
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boo boo
Well-Known Member
I think everything is OK. What I would do is to add some wine stabilizer/sweetner to it and see how that tastes. I leave my Blueberry wine on the lees for months ( I brew cold, usually around 62*f ) without any worries.
It's not on the lees. I added the finings to to the secondary. It smells good, like wine, but tastes like a double IPA. I'll rack it off the gunk and just let it sit for a long time and hope for the best. I've never experienced this before.
I have noticed that most of my batches start to smell good before they start to taste good. I agree with boo_boo, you're probably OK. Rack it off the isinglass and age it a while longer. If it still needs a little help maybe try some wine conditioner. Or you could pull a sample and test out some conditioner/sweetener now; it might just need the edge taken off and bottled.
The only thing that really makes me wonder is that I've tasted it in the past, like 2 months ago, and it tasted much better than it does now. It was like rocket fuel, but at least it wasn't bitter. I'll follow the advise received here and hope for the best.
