Wine has changed color
- Thread starter EllwoodG
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Oxidation is usually the cause of such darkening. It's also possible that it's light struck, or maybe both.
Do you have it in a dark place, covered and protected from light, and appropriately topped up? If so, then it must be something else. If not, then that is the reason.
Do you have it in a dark place, covered and protected from light, and appropriately topped up? If so, then it must be something else. If not, then that is the reason.
Thank you all for your responses. I think it may be the fact that I have them in a corner of the house with occasional light hitting them. Poured them both in a glass and the color is still there. Strawberry is light pink an apple is light brown. Almost clear. They still taste just a little strong but not as strong as they did a month ago. I'm hoping the bite continues to fade with more aging. Any ideas on how to back sweeten both?
After they are clear, you can stabilize by racking onto sorbate and campden (1 crushed campden tablet per gallon and 1/2 teaspoon sorbate per gallon, dissolved in a little water) and let that sit a few days. Then sweeten to taste. That's hard, "to taste"- but I like dry wines and you may like sweet wines so I can't say what your taste is.
Generally, both of those wines are better as a semi-sec in my opinion, so you may want to sweeten to 1.005 or so.
A little info on how you made these would help a lot. Did you add sulfites at the beginning? How much fruit? Fermented in a bucket or carboy etc etc. WVMJ
siletzspey
Well-Known Member
My 1 and especially 2 year old strawberry wines are picking up a shade of root-beer color and tasting oxidized. My plum wines are less oxidized, and my apple ciders/wines have not oxidized. I stored everything in total darkness, and I only used k-meta at crushing time.
This year I'm adding 30-60ppm of k-meta at bottle up, and if I can convince myself it won't kill off the malo-lactic bacteria, I'll probably start adding k-meta between each racking, as others suggest doing.
--SiletzSpey
This year I'm adding 30-60ppm of k-meta at bottle up, and if I can convince myself it won't kill off the malo-lactic bacteria, I'll probably start adding k-meta between each racking, as others suggest doing.
--SiletzSpey
It will prevent MLF, so if you're going to do MLF on anything, do the MLF right at the end of primary before adding any additional k-meta.
I add k-meta at every other racking and at bottling, to guestimate 50 ppm.
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