New to Homebrew and Forum Decorum

[chapulincolorado]

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to this homebrew thing having only made about 20 gallons of wine/mead total. I started by watching YouTube tutorials and following recipes in old homebrewer's books. I'm not very savvy when it comes to the more technical side of wine making but I can follow a recipe like there's no tomorrow. As of late I've been trying to expand my knowledge in wine making, trying to occasionally break away from following a recipe and using fruits other than grapes. Of the last few gallons of wine I've made at home without a recipe, I've gotten okay responses from friends and family who have tried it. Despite this, a couple questions have come up on my end regarding the process:

• Why do all my, "wines" taste similar despite using different fruit? Does it have to do with water quality, the type of yeast, or something else entirely?
• How can I achieve more complex/fuller bodied flavor profiles in my fruit wines?
• How can I get a higher ending ABV? Most of my finished fruit wines that aren't from a previously established recipe reach around 10% ABV and have some/little residual sugar
• How long on average should I let homemade wine age, if at all?
• When is it recommended to let homemade wine age?
• How do I get started with effectively using yeast nutrients in my fruit wines?
• Is there any helpful beginner/intermediate/advanced learning material I should be reading or looking into?

Lastly, I'm new to posting in forums so I'm not sure if this is the proper way to ask these questions or if this post is too long winded. My apologies if this isn't how forums are meant to be used. I'd appreciate some help with answering these questions. I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can and being a part of this community. Thanks!

 

[passedpawn]

You're doing great. It's a lot of questions, but that's fine. I hope you get some answers - this is mostly a beer forum, but there are many wine makers here as well (I have dabbled, but I don't have good answers for you).

I'm going to ask a moderator to move your post to the wine area... you'll get better answers there I think. @doug293cz

 

[chapulincolorado]

You're doing great. It's a lot of questions, but that's fine. I hope you get some answers - this is mostly a beer forum, but there are many wine makers here as well (I have dabbled, but I don't have good answers for you).

I'm going to ask a moderator to move your post to the wine area... you'll get better answers there I think. @doug293cz

Thank you very much!

 

[Rish]

Hi everyone, I'm fairly new to this homebrew thing having only made about 20 gallons of wine/mead total. I started by watching YouTube tutorials and following recipes in old homebrewer's books. I'm not very savvy when it comes to the more technical side of wine making but I can follow a recipe like there's no tomorrow. As of late I've been trying to expand my knowledge in wine making, trying to occasionally break away from following a recipe and using fruits other than grapes. Of the last few gallons of wine I've made at home without a recipe, I've gotten okay responses from friends and family who have tried it. Despite this, a couple questions have come up on my end regarding the process:

• Why do all my, "wines" taste similar despite using different fruit? Does it have to do with water quality, the type of yeast, or something else entirely?
• How can I achieve more complex/fuller bodied flavor profiles in my fruit wines?
• How can I get a higher ending ABV? Most of my finished fruit wines that aren't from a previously established recipe reach around 10% ABV and have some/little residual sugar
• How long on average should I let homemade wine age, if at all?
• When is it recommended to let homemade wine age?
• How do I get started with effectively using yeast nutrients in my fruit wines?
• Is there any helpful beginner/intermediate/advanced learning material I should be reading or looking into?

Lastly, I'm new to posting in forums so I'm not sure if this is the proper way to ask these questions or if this post is too long winded. My apologies if this isn't how forums are meant to be used. I'd appreciate some help with answering these questions. I'm looking forward to learning as much as I can and being a part of this community. Thanks!

Try this forum:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/forums/winemaking-forum.25/

Good luck!

 

[bernardsmith]

Much of what folk on Youtube present, they present with very little real knowledge and with very little experience as competitors in wine making competitions. In short, they may have never exposed their wines to objective assessment.
Every country wine SHOULD taste very different: wines made from apples taste nothing like wines made from raspberries or wines made from mulberries or plums or mangoes.
Not immediately obvious to me why a cider maker or a maker of wine from wine grapes uses ONLY the juice of the fruit. It takes about 12 lbs of apples to press 1 gallon of juice and about 14 lbs of wine grapes to produce 1 gallon of grape juice... but "recipes" on Youtube routinely talk about using 3 lbs of fruit and at least 7 pints of water to make country (fruit) wines. I guess if you enjoy drinking diluted fruit juice then making wines at such dilutions may be fine... to increase the body of your wines, you may want to use a lot less water and a great deal more juice.
Most common or garden fruit is low in tannin, and tannin is what gives red grape wine structure and adds to mouthfeel. Mouthfeel is the result of the wine coating your tongue and not simply washing over it like water. You can get tannin powder from your local homebrew store, or boil a cup of black tea and let it steep for 15 minutes or longer.
Another factor that most people look for in a wine is appropriate acidity. This is not the same as pH. pH is a measure of the STRENGTH of the acids. What a wine maker looks for is not so much the strength but the AMOUNT of acid. That's measured in grams/liter and called TA (titratable acidity). Your tongue is an excellent tool for assessing the amount of acid, though you CAN use a pH meter to determine the TA. If a wine does not taste bright on your tongue, it needs more acidity. If it tastes too bitter, you may need to neutralize some of the acidity.
Every yeast imparts characteristic flavors and masks flavors. You want to read the spec sheets published by the labs that grow and sell wine making yeast. For example 71B has an affinity for malic acid - the dominant acid in apples. If you use 71B to make apple wine (or cider) and allow the wine to age for about a year, about half the malic acid in the wine will have been converted to the far less sharp lactic acid, and the apple wine will taste incredibly smoother.
Last point: despite what you may have learned from some folk on Youtube, it is very difficult to balance any wine with an ABV higher than about 12%. Wine making is all about balance: the wine maker's task is to balance the amount of alcohol in a wine with the depth of flavor, the acidity, the tannins, the mouthfeel AND the perceived sweetness. Fruit , typically, when juiced possesses the equivalent of about 1 lb of fructose/sucrose/glucose in every gallon (an SG of about 1.045 - 1.050). You want to increase this to about 1.090 - 1.100. That is never a problem for any wine yeast, so there should be absolutely no residual sugar left. That wine is then brut dry. You want to stabilize the wine and then back-sweeten. Stabilizing, prevents the yeast from treating any sugars you add as subject to fermentation. Back sweetening helps bring flavors the alcohol tends to mask, to the front, and the added sweetness also tends to make the wine more viscous, increasing its mouthfeel.

 

[Maylar]

If you use 71B to make apple wine (or cider) and allow the wine to age for about a year, about half the malic acid in the wine will have been converted to the far less sharp lactic acid,

Bernard, I thought you had learned this lesson: 71B converts malic acid into ethanol and CO2. It's called malo ethanolic fermentation. MLF can only be done by MLB bacteria, no yeast can do that.

Otherwise, your post is spot on, thank you.

 

[passedpawn]

Man I hope the OP comes back for this expert advice.