Experienced winemaker, ... why has my wine a 'mecidinal' quality?

Hi there, just joined this fab website, and thought I would ask a question that has puzzled me for years.

I have lots of experience in making both kits and 'hedgerow' wine - from blackberries, sloes, elderberries etc. Been making it for years. However, the hedgerow wine is very hit and miss - sometimes turns out ok sometimes is horribly undrinkable, even after letting it mature for months and months.

Recently (last July) I did a batch of mixed fruit wine, involving black cherries, blackberries, and sloes. - this has turned out very acidic and my husband wants to throw 2 gallons of it down the sink - ive said no........not yet.... help!

I basically follow the same kind of reciepe:

4lb fruit to a gallon.
3lb sugar (granulated)
A few oz raisins instead of a grape concentrate as this works out more economical.
Pectic enzyme
yeast & nutrient.
citric acid or a bit of lemon juice.
tannin or a bit of cold tea.

I extract juice, either by boiling / straining or chop up and ferment on the pulp for a couple of days, then ferment out, rack off, and add finings if necessary.

I must say that All my wine clears perfectly, no probs there.

The main problem is that the wine is sometimes very acidic, and almost like a cough medicine - makes you grimace to drink it!, - improves a bit with adding sugar to sweeten, but isnt what it should be! - what is causing the acidity to be so high?

Any ideas??

Not enough fruit. Did you check acid before adding more? Did you check SG before adding sugar? Following recipes like this will get you hit and miss because all fruits vary depending on type, ripeness,weather and other variables. Also best way to extract berries and fruit juice is to freeze. It breaks down cell walls of fruits/berries and allows better extraction, then ferment on fruit in primary.

Hi, thanks for your reply, I sometimes check the SG before adding the sugar, but only really if I want to control the amount of alcohol to be something like 11/12% - as I think any higher will make it undrinkable.

As far as for checking the acid - this is something I have never done, so you may have a good point. I have never read anything about how to check the acid, in all the years I have been winemaking - how would I go about this? - litmus / test strips maybe?

You can get a PH meter from any homebrew store for about $50, but there are strips as well.

If your wine is too acidic, you can use calcium carbonate (chalk) to raise the PH some.

Also, you might try cold stabilization. All you have to do is freeze it for a few days, thaw it naturally and then rack it off of the sediment. Use a plastic container for this.

What WIP is talking about is called cold crashing and it will form acid crystals(wine Diamonds) in wine and you can rack the wine off them. It will work well. It does not need to freeze. It can happen at about 40 no problem

Actually, it is called cold stabilization, it is the process of dropping the wine below freezing to get the tartrates to crystallize and fall out of solution. I do this quite often and have had batches not stabilize even when frozen solid for 8 hours. Sometimes you need it to sit for a few days before thawing. Some odd flavors can be removed this way because they attach to the tartrates.

Never mind, Call it what you want, you don't need to freeze it to get acid crystals to form. Not everyone has that big a freezer

There's a whole bunch of comments.... so I will go through 1 at a time....

1. Acid. Test Total Acidity with a wine acid test kit... Don't use a PH meter. PH doesn't correlate to the amount of natural acid in the wine because the acid is a natural organic "Weak" acid rather than a "Strong" acid like Nitric or Hydrochloric.... The general direction is to add water if Total Acidity is too high or add acid blend if too low....

2. Intense, medicinal flavors... #1 cause is too much fruit. Many berry fruits - and especially those like Raspberry, Blackberry and Cherry have intensely, massively potent flavor... If you look at recipes for these wines - they usually start with less fruit (2-3 lbs/gal) rather than more, or you end up with cough syrup or battery acid.... You want the essence of the flavor to come through... Full strength, the flavors are so intense that you literally taste like cough syrup or just taste weird and bitter....

3. Other weird and bitter flavors... Yeast choice is a big one.... The right temperature range for the yeast is important too... Nutrient additions are important too... Initial primary fermentation in a big bucket where you can aerate at the beginning, and easily de-gas daily is also a big help here.... Then, rack it off into your jug/carboy for secondary fermentation and bulk aging....

4. Freezing out natural acids.... Works great with tartaric acid in grape Wine... not so much with Citric and Malic acids in most fruit... Freeze it and you will get a block of ice + thick, syrupy juice concentrate with the consistency of honey... but you won't get acid crystals usually...

Anyway, if you haven't looked at it - check out Jack Keller's wine page, and especially take some time to read through the "Advanced wine making" sections.. They answer nearly all the questions you have asked.... It's far easier to head off weirdness in the beginning than it is to try to fix it at the end.... http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/index.asp

At that point, they only thing you really have left is Blending it.... Blending can be a great method to take care of wine that is much too intense.... Blend intense wine with bland, aromatic wine to balance it out..... and viola - a good tasting combination.... Remember that nearly 100% of commercial wine is blended to get the appropriate flavor, aroma, etc....

Thanks

Cold stabilization can drop the Total Acidity by as much as 2g/L but this doesn't have a noticable influence on acidity on the tongue. It is also interesting, and counter intuitive, to note that this procedure actually drops the pH by as much as .2, instead of increasing it, which one would think would be the case.

Bitartrate Stabilization and Changes in Titratable Acidity and pH

Wines with initial pH values below 3.65 show reductions in pH and titratable acidity (TA) during cold stabilization, because of the generation of one free proton per molecule of KHT precipitated. The pH may drop by as much as 0.2 pH units, with a corresponding decrease in TA of up to 2 g/L. By comparison, KHT precipitation in wines with pH values above 3.65 results in higher pH levels, and corresponding decreases in TA. This is the result of removal of one proton per tartrate anion precipitated. The above values represent ranges seen in practice and may vary.

Click to expand...

http://www.fst.vt.edu/extension/enology/EN/37.html

So that wont help the high acid wine.
You could try the calcium carbonate method
or
blend it into cocktail drinks
gingerale wine spritzers
perhaps