Please help with wine

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luke36

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Hi, I'm new with home brew but want to get into it and honestly don't have a clue lol,
Basically my friend gave my a few gallons on plum wine he made a few years ago (about 3-4) and forgot about, I have drank some and it seems like its about 30-40% but tastes horrible so here's the question.... I don't want to waist it so was wondering if there's a way to flavour it, Ide like to lob a load of berries of choice into it like strawberry's or blueberries but don't know how to go about this, should it be re-fermented or what? Any help would be appreciated thanks in advance
 
Hi Luke36 - and welcome. If it's really wine then it's not going to be much above 13 or 14% alcohol by volume. If you think that it tastes as if it is 30% or more then very likely it is either too acidic or is not sweet enough for you.
What I might do is take a few samples (say 2 fluid ounces) and add known quantities of sugar to each sample. If you find a sample with the added sweetener that you like then you can calculate the amount of sugar you need to add to each gallon (64 times that quantity of sugar since there is 128 Fl ounces in a US gallon ). BUT...
since your friend gave you this wine and since you don't know whether it was stabilized you should add an appropriate quantity of K-meta and K-sorbate to this wine BEFORE you add any sugar to the containers (carboys?) . You can add sugar to each glass because you are going to drink the samples and any surviving yeast is not going to have the time to chow down on the sugar you have added.
If the problem is acidity, then you may need to find some way to neutralize this - adding small (small) quantities of K-carbonate will raise the pH BUT I would not add any until I have checked the pH... if you have a pH meter you could check what is called the TA - TA is a measure of the amount of acids in the wine (this affects the flavor) , pH is a measure of the strength of the acidity. These two metrics are related but not in any simple way (A wine can have a lot of weak acids , a lot of strong acids, very little strong acids and very little weak acids).
 
Thanks for the good advice bernard, I will try the sugar as u said, failing that I'll look at acidity... failing that it'll go down the drain 😂😂 thanks again
 
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