Disappointing strawberry wine, 3 mistakes is too many.

Just tasted my strawberry wine that I started on 7-6-2011, it's got the dreaded rubber taste. Not overwhelming, but definitely noticeable.
This is disappointing because of the amount of work and expense of this 5 gallon batch. And the color is an unbelievably beautiful clear red!
Following my notes, I've made 3 beginner mistakes.
1) I didn't make sure all the sugar was dissolved in the very beginning, making my gravity readings actually increase as the sugar dissolved over the first few days. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f25/sg-going-wrong-way-256260/ While this is a beginner mistake I don't think this caused the rubber taste.
2) Except during the daily stirring of the must, I kept the lid on the bucket with an airlock, instead of just covering my bucket with a cloth to allow for oxygen absorption. Again, beginner mistake of not remembering all the instructions.
3) I transferred the wine into a carboy after 7 days in the primary bucket, immediately the bubbling in the airlock increased dramatically. This was my first sign that something was not as expected. Then I racked it after 27 days. After this racking I let it sit undisturbed for 46 days (which was yesterday). I now read that I should have been stirring it weekly. I believe this is where the off flavor could have been prevented.

So after the sinking feeling of having ruined this batch, I still stirred it in the carboy and put the airlock back on.

So where do I go from here? Will any time and additions help this wine?

You don't want to stir in secondary- so don't beat yourself up about it. You didn't do anything wrong.

A couple of things to do- one, is to simply wait it out and see what happens. It might just be an off-smell from the lees and since you've racked it, it might improve dramatically. If it doesn't seem better in a few weeks, you could try "splash racking" to see if the aroma dissipates. I suggest adding campden tablets (one crushed per gallon) which work as antioxidants. The sulfite binds with the wine so that oxygen can't, so the splash racking won't oxidize the wine.

Aside from stressed yeast, I don't know of anything else that could cause this off taste. I'd top up appropriately, and wait it out as a first step, making sure the sulfite level is appropriate (one campden tablet per gallon at every other racking).

Jack Keller disagrees with you regarding stirring in the secondary, and since I’m a beginner I’d love to hear an open discussion on what people think.
From Jack Keller’s wine making site:
“It is perfectly ok to leave the wine on the lees for three months. Beyond that and the wine enters a danger zone caused by dead yeast cells breaking down—rotting. While this can cause off flavors and odors if allowed to go on too long, the bigger danger is the formation of hydrogen-sulfide gas, which smells like rotten eggs and can be the death of the wine. But if the lees are stirred every week or so, neither the off flavors, off odors nor hydrogen-sulfide gas form. Indeed, the wine is actually improved by extended contact with the lees as long as they are stirred frequently.”

Yooper, I always appreciate your input that helps us beginners. I have a mead that I started about the same time as the strawberry wine and it is coming along nicely!

Since I just stirred it yesterday, I think I'll wait a week for it to settle, then rack it again and add a campden tablet, then wait it out for another month and taste-test it again.
I appreciate your active feedback Yooper!

Jason - Jack is talking about stirring in the primary.

david_42 said:

Jason - Jack is talking about stirring in the primary.

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It's hard to put it together from the snippet, but he's actually talking here about H2S and off flavors, NOT the best practice for winemaking.

Jack states you should never stir or aerate the secondary, actually, in a number of places. But in this snippet, he's talking about what happens when racking isn't done. To avoid H2S and autolysis, he's describing sur lie, when the wine IS stirred in secondary, but only to resuspend the lees to avoid rotten flavors. This gives some wines a certain "something" but usually is avoided to to the likelihood of off flavors.

If you're not experienced with aging sur lie, the best practice is rack every 45-60 days or whenever there are lees 1/4" thick. Keep racking until no new lees fall after 60 days. Use campden at every other racking to avoid oxidation, top up and airlock.

Read Jack's snippet again, recognizing he's talking about aging on the lees, and I'll bold some of the "ifs" in it:

“It is perfectly ok to leave the wine on the lees for three months. Beyond that and the wine enters a danger zone caused by dead yeast cells breaking down—rotting. While this can cause off flavors and odors if allowed to go on too long, the bigger danger is the formation of hydrogen-sulfide gas, which smells like rotten eggs and can be the death of the wine. But if the lees are stirred every week or so, neither the off flavors, off odors nor hydrogen-sulfide gas form. Indeed, the wine is actually improved by extended contact with the lees as long as they are stirred frequently.”

So, you can see he most certainly doesn't suggest stirring the secondary!!!! ONLY in the case of leaving it on the lees for over three months, and to avoid rotten flavors as a result!

Ok so it sounds like I misinterpreted the passage. I'll give it a week to settle then rack again.
I really appreciate the help and will update this thread when I have new info.

I racked the strawberry wine last night and added a dissolved campden tablet and 2.5 teaspoons potassium sorbate, here is what it looked like 12 hours later.
It has been about 60 days since its last racking, and about 90 days since fermentation.
You can see the sediment that hasn't settled out yet which doesn't concern me as much as the rubbery/band-aid flavor it has.

Aw, geez, it's too late now since you did it, but you don't stabilize the wine until it's done! You wait until it's done, clear, and not dropping any more lees. THEN you add the sorbate by racking into it to get ready for sweetening. Your wine isn't even close to ready- it's not clear, it's got a ton of stuff in it, etc.

The only thing I can advise is to wait. Wait until it's clear. Wait until there are no more lees. Then rack and wait some more. Then if you absolutely feel that you have to muck around with it, it'll probably be more likely to be ok.

You have a 90 day old wine. Let it be until it's at least 5-6 months old before doing anything else to it. Rack every 60 days as long as you have new lees forming, and add 1 campden tablet (as an antioxidant) per gallon at every other racking.

Oh well, at least I only stabilized my mead too... ****! I hate this ****ing hobby! Could anything be more confusing, or more accurately, could there be more conflicting information out there about any topic in the entire world? Not one single source for wine making information agrees with any other source.

I suspected this when I first got into this hobby so I stuck with Jack Keller's site for my go-to information source. Screw that! Obviously I need a more clearly stated process for beginning wine making.

What a sick feeling I have right now.

Yooper, you've been most helpful. Where do you recommend I go from here as far as a definitive, step-by-step source for beginning wine making?

Change thread title to "4 mistakes is too many"

I've been in this hobby for less than a year, and I screw stuff up all the time. The good news is, it gets better. I haven't really screwed up a batch in quite a while now. And fortunately, winemaking appears fairly forgiving. My 2nd batch (strawberry, as it were) that I screwed up pretty bad has turned out to be quite tasty 6 months later.

If there's one thing I've learned from Yooper's posts, it's "give it time and leave it alone."

I started making beer as a time filler because wine making is so slow. In the 6 months since I started I've made 5 pretty good beers out of 5 tries.
During that same period I've made a pinot noir (kit) that is ok, an apfelwein (Edwort's) that is ok, a mint wine that failed, a mead that failed, and now a batch of both strawberry wine and mead that I stabilized way too soon.
The wine making costs WAY more $$$ and takes WAY longer than beer making. But I don't have the personality to quit either. It's just hard to accept the loss of $$$ and work that went into processing all those strawberries.

I'll be ok and get back on the wine horse, just need to vent a bit.

If it makes you feel any better, I thought it looked pretty.

And Ill drink just about anything with booze in it, so if you absolutely have to get rid of it you can ship it to me ;-)

I started making beer as a "time filler" too, because of my impatience with wine! I've made wine far longer than beer, unless you count the "Beer Machine 2000" attempts years ago!

The good new is that it's really hard to screw wine up totally. When in doubt on what to do, the answer is almost always, "Wait".

Jack Keller's site IS really the most wonderful resource. It's hard to navigate, but if you look at the area you're in, you won't get mixed up. In the example above about stirring, that is in the "off-flavors" area. He's talking about solving a problem, and how to go about it.

I'd start with this page: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/basics.asp and read thoroughly the "step 1" and then the "step 2" and so on. He's a great resource, and I'm sort of a "Jack Keller Groupie".

From now one, remember that if you do two things- have the wine topped up to within 1.5 inches of the bung and airlocked, and rack when the lees are more than 1/4" thick after 45-60 day- then nothing else is important and it can wait. Even the racking can wait, but if there are lots of lees after 60 days you want to get to it sooner rather than later. In fact, winemaking is a great hobby for procrastinators!

Stabilization can always wait. Bottling can always wait. When in doubt, do nothing!

Thank you for your words of encouragement. The strawberry wine and the mead is now back in the storage room in the dark. We'll see how it looks and tastes in 60 days.

UPDATE:
It's now been 75 days since stabilizing this wine prematurely. As I pulled the carboy our of the dark it looked exactly the same as it did in the previous picture... beautiful red clarity on top, cloudy on the bottom.
It stills smells and tastes rubbery but I think it diminishing. To prove how impatient I am I decided to rack the top 3 gallons (the clear stuff) off into 1 gal carboys and discard the cloudy 2 gals.
I'll now wait another 60 days minimum before sampling again. I think I've calmed down enough to try to make another wine. Now I need to decide if I want a kit or try real fruit again.

JasontheBeaver said:

Now I need to decide if I want a kit or try real fruit again.

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Do both! The kit wine will usually be bottled in 4-6 weeks, while the fruit wine will be more like 4-6 months. That way, you have plenty to do, but have results sooner!

I have a mix of 6 week kits, 10 week kits, homemade fruit wines, and grape wines. It means that I have lots of different wines to sample, eventually! But I can drink a kit wine early, and that's very gratifying while I'm waiting for the others.

As usual you are the voice of reason Yooper. What brand of kits do you prefer? I've done a Pinot Noir from Grand Cru and it seemed fairly simple.

Sorry about the Packers' loss.

JasontheBeaver said:

Just tasted my strawberry wine that I started on 7-6-2011, it's got the dreaded rubber taste.So where do I go from here? Will any time and additions help this wine?

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I've gotten that "rubber stopper" taste a few times; I'm convinced they were from fermenting at too high a temp, which caused the formation of fusel alcohols. The good news is that "rubber stopper" flavour will age out. It might take a year, maybe longer, but it'll age out.

Just keep racking as needed; sulfiting might strip some color, but it'll protect the wine from oxidation when racking.
Regards, GF.

JasontheBeaver said:

To prove how impatient I am I decided to rack the top 3 gallons (the clear stuff) off into 1 gal carboys and discard the cloudy 2 gals.

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Oh wow, the Scottish part of me nearly died when I read this! Don't post stuff like that, you're going to do me in!!! lol

If you'll excuse me, I've got to go mourn the loss of 2 gallons of wine that pass away before its time!

It was more than just cloudy. It was soupy-thick. You're not missing anything. Trust me, wasting alcohol is NOT on my preferred agenda.