My first go at wine...

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brian74

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So I had gathered some Mustang grapes on 7-05 and they've been in the freezer since. During that time, I bought a fermenter and some required chemicals and planned on making 3 gallons of wine. I followed Jack Keller's recipe for Mustang wine, semi sweet red. As it turned out, my new fermenter was not enough to hold all of the water, juice and grapes. I had no other choice but to turn to my beer fermenter, which, of course, has a lingering odor. I hope this doesn't screw up the whole thing; the wine should be in the primary for 7 days, and then to a class secondary. I'm considering preemptively oaking it to possibly mask off flavors, should they occur.

Thoughts and suggestions welcome.
 
Eep.

Well that 'lingering odor' (unless you don't clean it well enough, which will up my eep to 'double eep') is almost definitely hops oils. Glass and better bottles don't absorb hop oils, a lot of other plastics do. I'm thinking 7 days in primary won't impart a whole lot of hops flavor to it unless you make huge quadruple IPAs on the regular.. Shoot, I'd taste it before oaking just to see how it is. Not that I've ever tried, but a semi sweet red with a tiny tiny dash of citra hops might be.... well I'll stop before they crucify me :-3

I think you're right on with the move to secondary asap though.
 
I use my "ale pail" fermenters all the time for wine and beer. No problems at all. If the fermenters are cleaned (I use oxiclean), and well rinsed and then sanitized, you have no transfer of odors at all.

I was a winemaker long before I started brewing, but I've never dedicated equipment exclusively to either beer or wine.
 
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