# Plum wine, sharp taste



## aidan (Feb 20, 2012)

Hello,
I'm new to wine making and I have 23L of plum wine in the carboy after 1 month sitting in carboy preceeded by 1 week of initial fermentation in plastic fermentor. I just racked it last night and had a taste, it was very sharp. I suppose you could describe it as bitter but to me 'sharp' is a better description of the taste. It was drinkable but only just. I'm wondering if this normal at this stage and will go away with aging or is it due to being overly acidic or something? And if it's the latter, can it be fixed? According to the procedure I'm following, it needs to sit another 3 months in the carboy and then at least 6 months in the bottles. My method and recipe is posted on my blog, beerandgarden dot com
Thanks in advance,
Aidan


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## jswordy (Feb 20, 2012)

Winemaking is the epitome of "time heals all wounds." I would bulk-age it in the carboy for the 3 months, racking off into a clean carboy as necessary if sediment builds to 3/4 to 1 inch. It should become beautifully clear with this process. 

Just prior to bottling, taste it. I'll bet it is much better then. You can rack it, stabilize and use a juice concentrate flavor pack and backsweetening to adjust away much residual roughness if nedded then. Bottle and age at LEAST 6 months.

When you next taste test it, if the sharp taste is there, simply pour some granulated sugar into the bottom of the wine in your glass, swirl it around a few times, and taste again. If the sharpness is much diminished or gone, you know you have something that backsweetening or back-flavoring (or both) will control, or that age will mellow out if enough time is allowed.

If your wine is still just as sharp and added sugar in the glass does not diminish it, then you might worry about fermentation gone awry. I can almost categorically assure you that you'll be fine, maybe 98% sure.


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## Julie (Feb 20, 2012)

Hi aidan, welcome to winemakingtalk.

It will get better with age, Plum is a very delicate flavor that needs to age a year before it really comes into it's own. You can, also, make an f-pac for when you backsweeten, ,that is if you plan on doing that.


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## Runningwolf (Feb 20, 2012)

I also have a plum that is 1.5 years old and tastes the same way. I think my issue is the acid was way too high and I wasn't paying attention to it at that time. I will probably be dumping mine back into a carboy and blend it after I do some bench trails.


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## Julie (Feb 20, 2012)

Runningwolf said:


> I also have a plum that is 1.5 years old and tastes the same way. I think my issue is the acid was way too high and I wasn't paying attention to it at that time. I will probably be dumping mine back into a carboy and blend it after I do some bench trails.



blend it with a niagara or a reisling, I think that would be very good.


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## Runningwolf (Feb 20, 2012)

Thanks Julie I have both sitting around in carboys somewhere in my basement. I am going to experiment with Raspberry and the riesling also.


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## aidan (Feb 20, 2012)

jswordy said:


> Winemaking is the epitome of "time heals all wounds." I would bulk-age it in the carboy for the 3 months, racking off into a clean carboy as necessary if sediment builds to 3/4 to 1 inch. It should become beautifully clear with this process.
> 
> Just prior to bottling, taste it. I'll bet it is much better then. You can rack it, stabilize and use a juice concentrate flavor pack and backsweetening to adjust away much residual roughness if nedded then. Bottle and age at LEAST 6 months.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the reassurance, I hope you're right! Yes, that's the current plan another 3 months in carboy and then at least 6 in the bottles. It is actually already very clear, looks like a crystal clear Rose.

I assume backsweetening is adding some sugar to sweeten once the wine has been stabalised. I actually made a small batch of feijoa wine last year and it had a similar sharpness which I was able to counterbalance somewhat by adding sugar to the wine. But I would prefer a dry wine than a sweet wine. Would you say backsweetening is usual for a plum wine? What's with the juice concentrate flavour pack, I wasn't planning on that, is that a normal addition for a wine such as this? Are they special purpose for wines?

What causes the sharpness, is it acid? And how does time reduce it?

On another note I added some oak chips after I racked it (well actually it was really more like oak dust but it was called oak chips on tha pack). Instructions on the packet said to add for 7-10 days during primary fermentation. I didn't think to add them then as I expected it to be part of the aging process. Do you think it would be ok to leave those in the carboy for 3 months?


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## aidan (Feb 20, 2012)

Julie said:


> Hi aidan, welcome to winemakingtalk.
> 
> It will get better with age, Plum is a very delicate flavor that needs to age a year before it really comes into it's own. You can, also, make an f-pac for when you backsweeten, ,that is if you plan on doing that.


Thanks Julie. Can you explain or point me to a resource re the f-pac? I wasn't planning on doing this as it wasn't mentioned in any instructions that I read. jswordy also mentioned juice concentrate flavour pack


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## aidan (Feb 22, 2012)

can anyone furthert enlighten me about backsweetening and flavour packs (if they would apply to my plum wine)? sorry, I really am a noob.


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## mmadmikes1 (Feb 25, 2012)

Plum always takes a year before it taste any good. I was bummed out first time I made it because I didn't know. Now I am on a 1 year ahead cycle and its all good


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## Arne (Feb 26, 2012)

aidan said:


> can anyone furthert enlighten me about backsweetening and flavour packs (if they would apply to my plum wine)? sorry, I really am a noob.



A flavor pack can be a concentrate of some kind. You can make one by using a fruit juice and simmering it down on your stove til it is concentrated.. Ferment your wine until it has finished out dry. it should stay at below 1.000 or so and at the same specific gravity for at least 3 days running. Stabalize your wine, (add k-meta and sorbate.) Now you can add your flavor pack. Stir it in and taste. If wine is still too dry, you can backsweeten some more with simple sugar. (simmer 1 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar together, it will go from a granular mix to liquid to clear. Then continue heating for a while longer, do not get too hot or it wll go back to a cloudy mix.) If it is cloudy, it can still be used, but it takes longer to clear. Now add the simple sugar til it is not quite as sweet as you want it. Let it sit and age some more, and you can bottle it. I always wait at least a couple of weeks before bottling after sweetening to make sure it doesn't referment. Refermenting in the bottle can cause corks to back out, corks to blow (big mess and waste of your wine) got some nice sparkling apple that way once tho, but had less than half the bottles left, and at the worse case, the bottles could explode.(Never have had that happen to me, tho. ) Good luck with it, Arne.


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## Flem (Feb 26, 2012)

Just to emphasize what Arne said, it is extremely important that you add Potassium Sorbate to your wine before you backsweeten to prevent refermentation in the bottle.


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## aidan (Feb 27, 2012)

Arne said:


> A flavor pack can be a concentrate of some kind. You can make one by using a fruit juice and simmering it down on your stove til it is concentrated.. Ferment your wine until it has finished out dry. it should stay at below 1.000 or so and at the same specific gravity for at least 3 days running. Stabalize your wine, (add k-meta and sorbate.) Now you can add your flavor pack. Stir it in and taste. If wine is still too dry, you can backsweeten some more with simple sugar. (simmer 1 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar together, it will go from a granular mix to liquid to clear. Then continue heating for a while longer, do not get too hot or it wll go back to a cloudy mix.) If it is cloudy, it can still be used, but it takes longer to clear. Now add the simple sugar til it is not quite as sweet as you want it. Let it sit and age some more, and you can bottle it. I always wait at least a couple of weeks before bottling after sweetening to make sure it doesn't referment. Refermenting in the bottle can cause corks to back out, corks to blow (big mess and waste of your wine) got some nice sparkling apple that way once tho, but had less than half the bottles left, and at the worse case, the bottles could explode.(Never have had that happen to me, tho. ) Good luck with it, Arne.


Is adding a flavour pack usually done with most home made wines? And for plum wine should it be made with plums? What amount of fruit for a 23L batch? Will the flavour of the wine not be any good on it's own without the flavour pack?


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## aidan (Feb 27, 2012)

Flem said:


> Just to emphasize what Arne said, it is extremely important that you add Potassium Sorbate to your wine before you backsweeten to prevent refermentation in the bottle.



Will campden tablets not be sufficient on their own to stabalise the wine?


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## Deezil (Feb 27, 2012)

Campden tablets are the tablet form of potassium metabisulphite, which is a sanitizer & way of protecting the wine from oxidation. 

Potassium Sorbate is what i call yeast birth control, it keeps the yeast from multiplying any farther in the case that more sugar becomes present. It wont stop a fermentation, but it will start another one from happening again.


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## kupikupime (Feb 27, 2012)

I agree with Deezil, fermentation can not be stopped in this way.


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## Flem (Feb 27, 2012)

+1 to what Deezil said.


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## aidan (Feb 27, 2012)

Deezil said:


> Campden tablets are the tablet form of potassium metabisulphite, which is a sanitizer & way of protecting the wine from oxidation.
> 
> Potassium Sorbate is what i call yeast birth control, it keeps the yeast from multiplying any farther in the case that more sugar becomes present. It wont stop a fermentation, but it will start another one from happening again.



Ok, I get it, the Potassium Sorbate is necessary if you back sweeten. Thanks everyone for pointing this out, maybe you saved me from bottle bombs!

I'm still looking for more info about the whole f-pack thing if anyone has any further input or can point me to a good resource. In all the plum wine recipes I found online, none of them mentions anything about a flavour pack.

By the way (now that I have more than 5 posts and can post links), the recipe and method I followed for my plum wine is posted on my blog: http://beerandgarden.com/2012/01/plum-wine/


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## Deezil (Feb 27, 2012)

F-Pacs are explained in a sticky thread under the Fruit Wines section.. But, to make it easy, here it is


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## Luc (Feb 28, 2012)

I make loads of plum wine each year:

http://wijnmaker.blogspot.com/2007/07/soms-lopen-de-dingen-in-het-leven.html

and here:

http://wijnmaker.blogspot.com/2009/08/pruimentijd-2009-plums-again.html

Plum is made from pure juice. Maybe just watered dow till the right acidity is reached but that is minimal. This will bring out the full flavor. Please be aware that acidity and alcohol percentage should not be to high.
A good plum wine is drinkable within a few months after it has been made. No need to age it for more as a year.

If you do have watered it down it will be indeed sharp and acidic. The only way to save a wine then is to add artificial flavoring like an f-fack (which is bad winemaking practice) ot just plain store bought lemonade syrups (which is basically the same as an f-pack).

Luc


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## aidan (Feb 28, 2012)

Thank's for that info Luc. I've bookmarked your blog for future reference. You have made a lot of plum wine so I reckon you should have good advice. Looks like I might have followed some bad recipes because I used about 10L of water with 15kg plums and 3.75kg of sugar for a 21L batch. All the recipes I found called for that much water, unfortunately I did not find your website before I started but good to know for next time. So, if I have to use store bought syrup, is that basically a fruit cordial? And by lemonade do you mean lemon flavoured?

How has your plum wine turned out in the past? 

Will waiting 1 year, as some posters suggested, remove the sharpness?


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## jswordy (Feb 28, 2012)

Flavor packs are popular in kit wines, and I think that is where the term came from, the kit makers. Kits like them because they make the flavor issue a no-brainer for all experience levels. 

But IMHO, a good goal for the from-scratch winemaker is to get to where you don't need them. That's probably why most scratch recipes say nothing about them. I think of the f-pack as an attempt to correct a pretty serious deficiency in the original wine recipe or the process used. This is where a well-kept wine log is your best friend. On subsequent attempts, you can adjust the recipe to meet your goals by referrring to exactly how you did it before and changing quantities/practices in an effort to get closer to your goals. You get to drink your "mistakes" while you seek out a more perfect recipe. What's not to like? 



My twin goals are to ideally use no back-sweetening and to use no f-pack in my wines. There's nothing "wrong" with either one, but by having these goals it gives me something by which to judge the outlier wines that didn't meet them and how far they fell from the goals. Then I adjust the recipe next time, and try again. For example, if I want a semi-sweet wine and also have the goal of no back-sweetening, then I am going to have to back up, look things over, and change my process from the typical recipe that ferments totally dry and then is sweetened.

My goals come from a personal impression that the taste of wine that has come with no adjustments through the fermentation process is cleaner and more complex. Plus, having the goals keeps the fun in it, and encourages me not to just hop from one recipe to another but to work on perfecting them to hit my targets. The only exception is my wine-juice blending experiments, in which I am still learning much.

Right now, I have a blueberry wine in the first racking that I stole from yesterday to taste, and -- if I don't screw it up -- it is on-track to meet both my goals. I hope I've not jinxed it now by mentioning that!  Fingers crossed.


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## Luc (Feb 28, 2012)

jswordy said:


> Flavor packs are popular in kit wines, and I think that is where the term came from, the kit makers. Kits like them because they make the flavor issue a no-brainer for all experience levels.
> 
> But IMHO, a good goal for the from-scratch winemaker is to get to where you don't need them. That's probably why most scratch recipes say nothing about them. I think of the f-pack as an attempt to correct a pretty serious deficiency in the original wine recipe or the process used. This is where a well-kept wine log is your best friend. On subsequent attempts, you can adjust the recipe to meet your goals by referrring to exactly how you did it before and changing quantities/practices in an effort to get closer to your goals. You get to drink your "mistakes" while you seek out a more perfect recipe. What's not to like?



Exactly my sentiments. I could not have said it better.

Luc


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## Luc (Feb 28, 2012)

aidan said:


> Thank's for that info Luc. I've bookmarked your blog for future reference. You have made a lot of plum wine so I reckon you should have good advice. Looks like I might have followed some bad recipes because I used about 10L of water with 15kg plums and 3.75kg of sugar for a 21L batch. All the recipes I found called for that much water, unfortunately I did not find your website before I started but good to know for next time. So, if I have to use store bought syrup, is that basically a fruit cordial? And by lemonade do you mean lemon flavoured?
> 
> How has your plum wine turned out in the past?
> 
> Will waiting 1 year, as some posters suggested, remove the sharpness?



Lots of questions so here we go.

Most recipes water down far to much. As you can imagine: that will dillute flavor as well as sugar levels (therefore you need to add so much sugar with these recipes) and acid(that is why you need to add so much acid in all these recipes).
One reason why they do that is because the author did not get quite the amount of fruit he wanted or did not have the funds to buy it.
My motto: better make less and better wine as more low quantuty wine.

My plum wines did come out very well.
You might considering oaking them Mine always took oak very well.

There is a language barrier here I am aftraid. We (in the Netherlands) call all fruit flavored beverages lemonade. What I meant is fruit syrup.
But beware when you add syrup you will be adding sugar and the wine might re-ferment so you will have to wait again before bottling.

Luc


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## aidan (Feb 29, 2012)

Luc said:


> Most recipes water down far to much. As you can imagine: that will dillute flavor as well as sugar levels (therefore you need to add so much sugar with these recipes) and acid(that is why you need to add so much acid in all these recipes).
> One reason why they do that is because the author did not get quite the amount of fruit he wanted or did not have the funds to buy it.
> My motto: better make less and better wine as more low quantuty wine.



Makes sense Luc, I'll be following your approach next time.



Luc said:


> You might considering oaking them Mine always took oak very well.



Yes, I've already added oak chips (actually looks like dust). I added it after second racking. Most has sunk to the bottom but still a little dust floating on top. Is there any issue with leaving the oak in too long? (I'm planning on leaving it for 3 months)



Luc said:


> There is a language barrier here I am aftraid. We (in the Netherlands) call all fruit flavored beverages lemonade. What I meant is fruit syrup.



So for plum wine would I need to use plum fruit syrup or just any fruit?



Luc said:


> But beware when you add syrup you will be adding sugar and the wine might re-ferment so you will have to wait again before bottling.


Yes, but if I stabilise with sorbate that should prevent that from happening, right?

And another thing what yeast do you use for your plum wine? I picked one called Vintners Harvest SN9 because it said it was an 'all round strain' and a good choice 'where uncertain recipes are employed'.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, I appreciate it! Sorry for bombarding you with so many questions.


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