Vinegar tasting wine now ok!!??

[Brew_Novice]

Hi everyone,

Around a month or so ago I used a strawberry wine making kit for the first time and it was during the last of the humid weather we had here in the UK.

This seemed to fast track fermentation and at the bottling stage is tasted very high in vinegar.

I have left it at room temp and last night both me and the husband decided to taste it and all of the vinegar taste seems to have gone.

I would love to try and understand why this may have happened as I had wrote it off to be honest and I was going to either turn further into vinegar or bin it.

Has anyone come across this before and understand why it may have improved when it was very bad??? I thought once something tastes of vinegar it is at the point of no return.

 

[Yooper]

It's not possibly that it was vinegar and now it's not. That's an irreversible chemical change.

It's possible that it was very tart due to the high acidity of the strawberry juice, and that some of the acidity precipated out (in the bottom of the fermenter) or the wine had a tartness to it from the yeast and once the yeast dropped out, it improved.

 

[Farside]

Adding to Yooper's comment, it sounds like the ferment went unusually fast and I'm guessing it was warmer than what you usually brew at. Maybe you used a different yeast too.

Higher temperatures and different yeasts will produce byproducts that make recently completed fermentations taste and smell pretty funky.

But they gas off over a few weeks. You may have confused vinegar aroma and sourness with these byproducts.

 

[Francis Eric]

yes I am wondering if the gas might have gave it a sharp taste

Think Champagne think Pop (soda) the C02 gives it a sharp taste

Not sure if you know but butyric acid is vomit
in Wiskey over time that can change to pine apple molecules
(this I saw on dateline about someone that supper ages wiskey with ultraviolet light
suppose to make the wiskey taste 300 years old, by changing the molecules of very young wiskey.

not hard to beleive when you taste wine transform over time in a bottle
In a year it should taste very different
some people use desert fruit to make wine, (but strawberry surprisingly is good dry)
but for a dry wine, the harsher fruits astringent fruits like wild black cherries make good wine,
and stuff like sweet cherries are not so great (at all) dry (need tannin or tea, and out of balance)

 

[Francis Eric]

And oak taste so very harsh when it is over done , but you know that astringent flavor
will be a good wine to let sit for a couple years. --(or blend it.)

Sorry rambling , but good to keep in mind when tasting new wines. (or buying wine)