Help! Backflavoring Gross Pumpkin Wine

Hi Forum! I made some pumpkin wine back in October 2016. After the fermentation basically finished I added Campden and transferred to the secondary containers which were a 5 gallon glass demijohn and a one-gallon "sampler". I ended up with a SPG of 1.090 when I stopped fermentation. I sampled this wine and it stinks and the taste is not what was described in the recipe as "delightful". Not even close. It is kind of neutral - flavorless with a slight tartness and it's strong. I thought about dumping the whole batch, but other than the smell and taste it is pretty potent stuff and dumping it would be alcohol abuse. I've never used flavorings before and I thought Peach or Apricot might salvage the project. The wine is a light yellow like a bowl of pee pee (YUM!) I'm leaning toward Apricot. I've seen "Natural Apricot Flavoring" advertised online 4oz for 5 bucks. My question is basically: Will that 4 oz be sufficient to flavor 5 gallons so that it tastes like apricot? My assumption is that I can just mix in the 4 oz to the 5 gallons and bottle a week later (stirring lightly to reduce oxidation). Thanks for your advice. I'll wait to hear before ordering the extract.

Hi 2Rich2Thin - and welcome. You say that the wine finished at 1.090? I wonder if that is an error. You usually start a wine at that gravity (potential ABV of about 12%. A semi sweet wine might have a finished gravity of between 1.006 and 1.010
I don't know how artificial apricot extract might taste but I think the 4 oz are designed for 5 gallons of beer (or whatever)... But you say that the wine "stinks".... Literally? It has a bad smell? Or does it simply "stink" meaning that it is no good...If it smells . what's the smell? rotten eggs? burnt matches?
It might be useful to provide us with the recipe you used and the protocol you followed (what you did)...

Hi! Thanks for your input. You wanted to know more about the ingredients. First of all, I remeasured the specific gravity tonight and the reading is 0.994 at 67 degrees. (The top of the meter is nearly completely submerged and there are only two lines visible from the top reading of 0.990) It's potent stuff. I don't remember the pre-fermentation reading. It's written somewhere. Primary fermentation with about 6 gallons boiled water in two food grade buckets, everything in nylon bags.
Recipe is :
16# of sliced up, gutted Pumpkin,
3# raisins,
Cinnamon sticks,
11# of cane sugar,
4 1/2 TBS Acid Blend,
1 TBSP Yeast Energizer
! TSP Peptic Enzyme
1 Packet Yeast (Lalvin KIV - 1116)
As for the apricot being for beer? It is listed as a flavoring for wine.I have heard of others "back sweetening or Flavoring the finished product just before bottling. I'd hoped someone on this forum might have done it.
Thanks.

From your recipe it looks as though the starting gravity was about 1.100 or thereabouts and the reading you have now tells us that the wine is bone dry so your wine is about 13% ABV.

Might have been better to bake the pumpkin so that you would have caramelized the sugars in the gourd. Not sure that raw pumpkin tastes so great but to each their own..
You don't explain how it stinks but if the problem is not a smell then it may simply be too dry for you. Why not pour a few glasses and bench test with added sugar to see if the balance of alcohol to sweetness (or dryness ) is the problem...
How old is this wine? An ABV of 13% might take a few months for the wine to come into its own...

Has anyone out there flavored a finished wine?

Take 1 bottle out, add some ground cinnamon, whole cloves (1 maybe), and nutmeg. Maybe some pumpkin pie spice too. Mix it up. Try that.

Good?

If so, scale up, and flavor the whole batch, then bottle. I ususally ferment with the spices, but what do you have to lose?

Also, if you sweeten, try 1/3 - 1/2 cup/gallon of dark brown sugar. You'll see it'll come into it's own! Pumpkin needs help; it's not exactly a flavorful melon...

Throw it out and don't look back. One day you'll realize that life is WAY too short to suffer things like this. Took me a while to know that

I'm not a quitter. I'll experiment and then I guess I'll be the expert.

I feel silly jumping in to ask this question, but how the heck did you get it to be that dry. Isn't pumpkin starchy? When I made pumpkin beer a few years ago I remember mashing and adding a bunch of 6-row so that enzymes could work on the pumpkin starches. Wouldn't 16lbs contribute some starch to it, raising the gravity.

Drop a couple more cinnamon sticks in there after boiling them for a few minutes and let them sit in there for a month. My wife and I made apple wine when we first started with fruit wines, and we did that and I wouldn't even call what we had in the end apple wine, it was cinnamon wine. Still tasted pretty good, especially when you added a splash of apple juice to it.

Really though, just dump it like passedpawn said. I feel your pain, I too have tried to incorporate pumpkin into this hobby and sometimes you just have to dump the batch, write down everything you can about what you did for future reference, and sit on it for a couple years until you forgot how it turned out and you want to try again. I'm planning another batch of pumpkin beer in 2019 or 2020.

If it smells bad, its very unlikely 4 oz of flavoring is going to change that.
I've made all kinds of experimental wines and agree with the above comment to dump it, but I also can relate to not wanting to.
You can let the wine age and see if the "gross" character mellows, but from the recipe, and your description of what you now have, I'm skeptical you'll ever get anything drinkable.

If you have the room keep it for a couple of years. I've made wine with a bad smell a few times and it often mellows. You can always sweeten later if the smell dissipates?

Sounds like prison hooch with steeped pumpkin and a cinnamon stick.

As @Kent88 said, those pumpkin starches aren't going to become sugar unless the right enzymes are put to work. Flavor contribution of pumpkin itself is very disappointing anyway, usually the "pumpkin" association is from the added spice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves.

I mashed 5 15oz cans of toasted pumpkin puree with malted grain for a 5 gallon batch of pumpkin beer. The color was beautiful orange and if anything had a slight pumpkin-ny flavor. After the boil, not much if any of the pumpkin flavor could be detected. After fermentation, maybe only slight, because I knew it was in there and was looking for it. It actually tasted best a year later, when the already subtle spicing I had used had faded away/blended even more.

Chances are the chunks of pumpkin have been rotting from the inside out, giving off the bad smell and taste. I'd cut my losses, dump it, and chalk it up to experience. Or process the alcohol.

All the guys saying to dump - don't yet. Go forward with the spices and brown sugar. Little cost and time investment. I've made several batches of pumpkin, and it's the spices that give the flavor. Pumpkin is the base.

However, if the flavoring doesn't go well, don't stress it. Dump it, and move on. But try first!

Report back!

So, we're talking about wine that's like 2.5 months old? I know Yooper's famous Banana Wine takes a year (or is it two?) to mature and get good. I'd get it off any lees and put it in a corner someplace and forget about it until next Christmas - of course, keeping the airlock topped off. It might become good just with time.

Hi Kent. I think the wine gets its dryness from the KIV-1116 yeast, at least I think I remember reading that it was what I should use if I wanted dryer wine. I'm surprised that I cant taste any cinnamon since there is some in there. I did a batch of dandelion cinnamon whichactually tasted good. Usually I have to add raspberry soda to dandelion wine to make it pleasant tasting.

Hi Luke. I agree I think I'll experiment rather than dump. Try a little of this and that. I intended to but I thought maybe someone here had used flavoring extracts to flavor finished wines. Apparently not. The stuff is advertised for the purpose if you google it, but I value an experienced opinion when it pertains to what I'm asking.

Thanks to all of you for the input. I guess I'll order the 4 ounces of apricot online and go from there. I've got 6 gallons to try this and that with. Pumpkin is probably not gonna work out. Good snowy day today (CT) to think about it.

Hi Jon. Good point about keeping the air lock topped off. I've let one run dry before on the inverted cup - type.

I don't think they'd be disappointed for prison hootch, as it can surely get you toasted. Probably a good headache the next day, though!

I would try the brown sugar and spices. I also made a pumpkin wine in october, similar to your recipe. Mine didn't turn out well either, very yeasty and tasted very bland. I was gonna let mine age a bit, i find a lot of the fruit wines get better with age.

But there IS a very big difference in a wine that is FLAVORED with pumpkin and a wine that is MADE from pumpkins. Not sure that wine yeast can ferment pumpkin without some additional enzymes being used to break down the carbohydrates into simpler sugars. You can easily flavor a wine with pumpkin but I would think that the flavor would be a little ... um... bland. Hence Kent88's question... How would a wine yeast drop the gravity of the must so low... but it may be that all that was fermented was the 3 lbs of raisins and the 11 lbs of cane sugar..

I ordered two 4oz bottles of Brewers Best flavorings - one apricot the other cherry. I thought I'd experiment with each and combinations of them. The cherry arrived with the seal under the cap missing so I returned it. I'll order another. I will post the results of my tinkering with these in the pumpkin wine. This should be around the first wek of Feb.