# Nasty Wines



## grapeman (Feb 4, 2009)

Smurfe's post that follow a bit made me start thinking. I bet we have all made a nasty disgusting wine before. So that newbies understand even though a lot of us have advanced our winemaking, we have pretty much all created a truly nasty wine before. First Smurfe's post

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<TD vAlign=top rowSpan=4 ="msgableSide"><A name=99065></A>smurfe 
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 Posted: Today at 9:19am</TD></TR>
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<DIV style="OVERFLOW: auto" ="msg">The Curvee will ferment to dry. From what I see you are pretty well on the money and should have no issue. I will throw another thing into the yeast discussion. Many will want a wine to finish with some residual sweetness and will use for example the Cote des Blancs yeast believing it's low alcohol tolerance will wither out. I will say that I have used this strain a few times and it fermented to dry every time. I used it in a batch of raspberry last that I misread my hydrometer (read 1.089 when it was really 1.189)and had a much higher SG than I though. I found out my mistake after fermentation started and I checked the SG with another hydrometer and the reading was higher than when I started. I then realized my mistake and didn't want to dilute. The wine ended up around 20% alcohol and is indeed rocket fuel. They yeast fermented down to 0.090 Even with a ton of back sweetening this wine was nasty. </TD></TR>
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<DIV style="OVERFLOW: auto" ="msgSignature">Brewing on the Bayou in Gonzales Louisiana 

Civella Wines and SwampWater Beers 



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Now let's share some of our worst wines with others so that the new winemakers out there can see we all make mistakes and we can learn from each other.


Did I ever make a wine I would only serve to my enemies? Sure!


When I first began making wine years ago, someone gave me some raspberries. Well naturally I made a gallon of wine from it and it turned out great! I still had some raspberries left, so in the freezer they went. Well I didn't get enough more for a full batch. What else could I use to stretch it? I had quite a few strawberries and a couple 3 pound bags of frozen peaches. Hmmmmmm. That sounds good. A nice fruit punch wine. So I mixed up the raspberries, strawberries and peaches. It fermented vigorously and had a ton of sludge in the bottom. I hadn't put the fruit in a bag. Fermentation lasted a few weeks and I didn't rack off the crap at the bottom, figuring I wanted to extract all that nice flavor. Finally bubbling subsided so I decided to rack................ WWWWHHHHOOOOOAHHHH Nellie. What a disgusting smell greeted me. Sort of a combination of rotten egg, and rotted manure! YYYYUUUUCKKKKK.


Well I racked it off and tried a bit of the wine by holding my nose. OH MY GOD! That was disgusting. I just couldn't bring myself to dumping it so I racked it off into a clean carboy added k-meta and topped up. I let it age and racked a few times. It never improved in taste and to this day still tastes as disgusting as ever. Anybody want some truly disgusting wine? Try a batch of that stuff!









This has been a true story and if you are brave enough- share yours with the rest of us!


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## Tom (Feb 4, 2009)

Many years ago when I started making wine my wife only liked swet wines. (now she only likes dry..go figure) So I started with a White Zinfandel kit. That turned out just ok for her. So, next batch I made I wanted to back sweeten. I was talked into using wine conditioner. BIG MISTAKE. When I added it I made it "to sweet". So guess what it tasted like a few months later... 

Yep! it tasted like cough medicine. I found out a few things from there. One is be carefull how much you add and how to make simple syrup. 

Later I learned how to make a F-PAC. That made all by fruit wines much better,especially my Strawberry and Blueberry wine. Now all our wine club members makes it for their fruit wines. We have won MANY awards since...


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## hannabarn (Feb 4, 2009)

Is that recipe for the F-pack a secret or can you share it?


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## Tom (Feb 4, 2009)

Yes it is !






Nah.. It was already posted on a different thread.
Lets see what some of the others use for a f-pac beforeI repost.


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## PeterZ (Feb 4, 2009)

Back in my first foray into wine making twenty-some years ago I decided to make a plum wine. So I went to the grocery store, bought about 5 lbs of plums and made some wine. The plums weren't really ripe. They were, however, very acidic. The net result was a wine high in acid and low in abv. I didn't even know in those days about using sg to determine sugar addition. There was, of course, no internet back then.


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## NorthernWinos (Feb 4, 2009)

A long long time ago...
In a land not far away....
I grew a bumper crop of strawberries.....
Remembering my German Grandma made Strawberry Wine...
[To which she added Vodka before drinking]
I thought I could do it too...
Took out a 10 gallon crock....
Added Strawberries, sugar and bread yeast...
Covered with a fabric....and waited...
Tasted along the way..
Drank it along the way...
Then....bottled some in Chianti bottles.....
Had some sort of cork in it....
Opened a bottle one day....
The cork hit the ceiling and blew apart....
A small smoke like plume came out of the bottle...
Like there was a Genie coming out ....
Poured us each a glass....
I didn't like mine...
Jim, not wanting to be wasteful...
Drank his and mine...
Later he had green coming out of both ends....
I almost killed him.....
Waited near 30 years before ever making wine again....
This time I read books, asked questions and studied....
Now...The wine is good....and....
Life is Good!!!!


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## grapeman (Feb 4, 2009)

Northern Winos said:


> Many years ago...
> Opened a bottle one day....
> The cork hit the ceiling and blew apart....
> A small smoke like plume came out of the bottle...
> ...




What an image that conjurs up!


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## Tom (Feb 4, 2009)

Northern,

Great story. Wish you had pictures... NOT! Looks like you have come a long way since.


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## gaudet (Feb 4, 2009)

PeterZ said:


> Back in my first foray into wine making twenty-some years ago I decided to make a plum wine. So I went to the grocery store, bought about 5 lbs of plums and made some wine. The plums weren't really ripe. They were, however, very acidic. The net result was a wine high in acid and low in abv. I didn't even know in those days about using sg to determine sugar addition. There was, of course, no internet back then.



You sure Al Gore hadn't invented it at that point??


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## vcasey (Feb 4, 2009)

I made a Black Chery Pinot Noir one time and I had a pretty bad cold at the time but took a taste and decided my cough medicine tasted better. Waited a couple of weeks to get over the cold and still the cough medicine tasted better. Over the next few months I kept tasting it and there was no change. Glad I was not sick that long! My sister loved it and we gladly gave her the whole batch. She still has a couple of bottles left, but I really would rather take the cough medicine then see if that stuff has improved.
VPC


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## hannabarn (Feb 4, 2009)

I'm going thru the same thing with my chokecherry wine. It is only 3 months old and I have only tried 1 bottle. so far it is a big disappointment. Tasted very bitter. Hopefully time will heal!


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## hannabarn (Feb 4, 2009)

Poor Jim!!!!!!!!! Life wasn't good for him!!


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## Wade E (Feb 4, 2009)

Besides me being cheap and trying to stretch out a few of the Vintners cans to more then recipes stated and ending up with weak flavor wines when I started the only 1 that I think came out terrible was the ancient orange mead in which I used wine yeast but I think it was the amount of cloves that made it disgusting to me, dont know if Ill ever do it again but if i ever do it will not have any cloves in it!


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## AlFulchino (Feb 4, 2009)

ah.....dont tell anyonne about this, but when i got back into wine making i had forgotten my share of things (and also didn't really know a bigger share of things



) and that wine to this very day finishes fermenting in you stomach when you dare drink it





I am not really sure why i keep the remaining stock...everything about it is bad from the wine to the labels...i think there are are still 4 dozen bottles left


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## NorthernWinos (Feb 4, 2009)

hannabarn said:


> I'm going thru the same thing with my chokecherry wine. It is only 3 months old and I have only tried 1 bottle. so far it is a big disappointment. Tasted very bitter. Hopefully time will heal!



I made a batch of ChokeCherry wine once and decided to use up all the left over fruit in the freezer....it was just too strong....

That's one type of fruit wine where a little less is better.


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## whino-wino (Feb 4, 2009)

My first attempt at using an acid titration kit resulted in a horrible wine. I was still fairly new to winemaking and I was making a 1 gallon batch of wine from fresh plums. I did not read the directions on the acid test kitcorrectly and I re-tested juice samples about 3 or 4 times before I figured it must be telling me the truth. Long story short I dumped about8 teaspoons of acid blend into a 1 gallon batch! Experience tells me now that no wine, no matter how acid deficient the ingredients, will ever need8 teaspoons of acid blend per gallon. It was so sour it put tears in my eyes. Being the miser that I am, I couldn't bring myself to dump it so I watered it down.....way down. I added some vodka to bring the alcohol back up and dumped in some cherry flavoring that I ordered from George. The acid level was still too high, the vodka was definitely detectable and the cherry flavoring gave it a "metallic" aftertaste. A really, really bad metallic aftertaste. I bottled it and left it on the shelf for over 2 years. It was still so nasty after 2 years that I simply had to dump it out. The bottles had such a thick sticky layer on the inside (probably from the flavoring) that I couldn't even get them clean again. Had to throw those too.


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## joeswine (Feb 5, 2009)

TEPE tell the people how F/pacs /extracts and simple syrup came about remember in Jan?


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## joeswine (Feb 5, 2009)

i my self have made every wine making mistake possible created massive volcano's.burnt out wine created rocket propellant because of my use of fpac, frustration with fermentation,even after chemicalization (not quite enough) not taking good notes or better know as none,breaking 12 gal.demijohns washing them ,pulling very deep vacuums (experimenting with degassing),yes if theirs anything i,ve left out please fell free to add it to the list,with all the above happening who had the time to taste the wine????????


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## grapeman (Feb 5, 2009)

I bet you though Joe that you have made many more excellent wines than mistakes!


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## Tom (Feb 5, 2009)

I'll*AGREE* withthat !


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## suprasteve (Feb 5, 2009)

along these lines (trying not to hijack the post) I started a gallon using 3 cans of welch's concentrate, brought SG up to 1.090 so nothing crazy, even added a pinch of tannin. That was about 3 months ago that fermentation started. I racked the other day and tasted it, for lack of better terms it was boring and thin. I threw in some french oak chips to try to give it some sort of taste, but what can be done with it? I mean I can use it in like hunch punch or something but that's all it seems good for at the time being. Any thoughts?


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## Tom (Feb 5, 2009)

Need much more info,

yeast, temp, chemicals used, containers, santizing agent, you get the idea...was this concord welches


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## joeswine (Feb 6, 2009)

I believe theres a time to say, is this wine worth me keeping?- start over and regroup your thoughts learn from some of the errors and move on to better bottles of wine ,don,t settle for close enough ..you,ll fine you Will never move on..it will always then be good enough.......................................


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## PolishWineP (Feb 6, 2009)

hannabarn said:


> I'm going thru the same thing with my chokecherry wine. It is only 3 months old and I have only tried 1 bottle. so far it is a big disappointment. Tasted very bitter. Hopefully time will heal!








The pits of the choke cherries can cause lots of bitterness. If they get nicked in the processing or if you leave them in the primary for too long.


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## PolishWineP (Feb 6, 2009)

Maybe you can save that thin wine for topping up other wines. Better than water...


Back when we started making scratch wines, Poor Bert made a wheat wine. It smelled like a burning tire. It tasted like what I imagined a burning tire would taste.






And old Mr. I-Can-Make-Wine-With-That saw some blueberries in last night's groceries and immediately thought they were for making wine. I swear, you'd think that fruit isn't for eating!



I beieve he even pouted for a few seconds. 


We're going to open the last bottle of wheat wine tonight and will report back.


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## PolishWineP (Feb 7, 2009)

Well, I opened the last bottle of wheat wine last night. Everyone please say a silent prayer for my marriage as I am going to be totally honest here.




It was bottled summer of 2004. Smells like a skunk ran across the road and I missed it by putting down 1/2 the rubber off of my tires. Yes, burnt rubber and skunk. I took a taste and it wasn't much better than the smell. However, it was a nice clear wine with a lovely amber color to it.


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## grapeman (Feb 7, 2009)

And what did Bert think of it?



It may be a man thing..... mmmmmmmmm
nothing like Burnt Tires and Skunk pee in the morning!!!???


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## gaudet (Feb 7, 2009)

Princess,

Was the wheat wine ever good?? Were you holding out hope for it?


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## moto-girl (Feb 7, 2009)

Bless you for even tasting it. If it smelled that bad, there is no way I would have even tasted it!


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## Bert (Feb 7, 2009)

It wasn't that bad..



..can't say it was very good, but it was something to try making at the time.....but I'm sure I can find better thing to try....let's see were did PWP put those blueberrys...


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## PolishWineP (Feb 7, 2009)

Step away from the blue berries and no one gets hurt...


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## gaudet (Feb 7, 2009)

Bert is busted


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## grapeman (Feb 7, 2009)

Those aren't blueberries. They are mini-bottles of blueberry wine!


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## hannabarn (Feb 8, 2009)

I'm with Bert!! GO FOR IT!


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## suprasteve (Feb 8, 2009)

tepe said:


> Need much more info,
> 
> yeast, temp, chemicals used, containers, santizing agent, you get the idea...was this concord welches


been away for a few days, sorry
used Pasteur Red yeast, fermented in a plastic bucket and transferred to a glass carboy at just under 1.010 inside my house, low 70's the whole time. It did completely ferment, SG around .995. Yes 3 cans of the concord welches, nothing else as far as flavor, starting SG 1.090 added acid blend topH 3.4 by electronic tester (I know, not TA like I should but...). Been in the secondary since Thanksgiving, American oaked it first, some flavor profile from that but not overpowering by any means. Added the typical yeast nutrient, a little energizer, 1/8 tsp tannin, some K meta but just a pinch. On the last racking (last week) I added French oak to give it some sort of taste, haven't tried it again or anything but its a lack of grape body that's my concern here. I've got the red grape concentrate George sells, but at this stage in the game am i going to run into fermentation issuesif Iuse that? The other ones i have that aren't 'ready' still have significant flavors, undeveloped or not, but this one so far is a letdown (albeit not too expensive of one)


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## uavwmn (Feb 9, 2009)

PWP, got to be "a man thing". hahahaha


Did Bert get your blueberries???


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## Bert (Feb 9, 2009)

Had second thoughts about useing PWP's blueberries......just go out and buy some more....or life may not be so good around here .....


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## grapeman (Feb 9, 2009)

Sometimes you just want to eat the fruit or cook with it and not make wine. I picked a bunch of red,balck and gold raspberries last summer. I made sure everybody got some to eat and I froze the rest for wine. Saturday I felt like cooking dinner and I thought- "You know a pie would taste good!" I went down to the freezer and dug out 2 bags of berries each with over a quart in them. That would have made at least a gallon of wine. Did I waste them? Nobody thought so. It made one heck of a pie. I think I could have used one bag in it and it was a deep dish pie. The berries were at least 6 inches high before cooking. It lasted us two days and was great! 


So yes, Bert- let PWP have here blueberries and you can just go buy some more!


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## joeswine (Feb 10, 2009)

now thats thinking outside the box appleman


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## JWMINNESOTA (Feb 10, 2009)




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## hannabarn (Feb 10, 2009)

JW, YOU ARE LIVING DANGEROUSLY!!!!!!!


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## PolishWineP (Feb 10, 2009)

Ah ha ha ha ha ha! Now THAT is funny!


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## hannabarn (Mar 30, 2009)

I just opened a bottle of Poor Bert's chokecherry wine. It is very good and a far cry from mine which was made from basically the same recipe. Of course his wine is a little over 2 years old. I think the big difference is that he used a steam extractor and I used a collander so I probably got some taste from the pits. What is the best source for a steam juicer. There are some on ebay but there is a big price range, Is higher priced better?


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## gaudet (Mar 30, 2009)

Get a stainless, no matter what... You will pay between $120 and $200. The only real difference in my opinion is size. The will all do the same job.


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## Waldo (Mar 31, 2009)

gaudet is right hanna..go for the stainless


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## Bert (Mar 31, 2009)

Hannabarn...Mine is a Norpro made with 18/ 10 gauge stainless steel...has a 11qt. steamer insert , 4 qt. juice container and a 8.5 qt. water pot and glass lid.....Got it at a store in Grand Forks, ND... One like a fleet farm store....I think it was about $120...Last summer they were on sale for $90...[ I never seem to be in the right place at the right time..lol]...Good Luck in your search...


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## PolishWineP (Mar 31, 2009)

I would suggest Fleet Farm. Or, someplace like that. But whatever you do, don't get anything but a good, stainless steel. This is NOT the place to be cheap. Floor corkers, auto syphons and steamers. Don't be cheap!


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## hannabarn (Apr 16, 2009)

I opened a bottle of my chokecherry wine. It is 6 months in the bottle and what a difference a little time makes! I really enjoyed it. The really strong chokecherry taste is gone. I made a batch of orange, pineapple apple to mix with the choke cherry but now will scrap that plan!!


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