Help!

[Helen]

Hi, this is my second attempt at making wine, I made raspberry wine last year and it was like paint stripper, couldn't taste the fruit and it gave me a huge headache. On the hydromiter it was almost sunk to the tip.

This year I made both pink goosbry wine in demijohn 1 and gooseberry champagne in demijohn 2.
I tasted them both today and they have a similar awful taste! The starting level was 1.000 right at the top and today's reading is the same. My tounge still tastes (bitter?) please help

This was recipe:
http://www.wine-making-guides.com/gooseberry_champagne.html

 

[dralarms]

Sounds like you need to backsweeten it.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Helen - and welcome .
Sounds to me like this may have fermented too fast and produced all kinds of fusel alcohols (they taste hot), but the "champagne" (not sure why or how this is called gooseberry champagne - the recipe simply calls for a champagne yeast which simply means that this yeast is very aggressive and is likely to blow off all flavor and aroma..) is not part of this recipe which would require this wine to be sparkling and for you to remove the sediment that would form. The recipe is also quite high in alcohol (about 18%) and I would think that 6 lbs of fruit could barely support a wine with 12% alcohol. .But you say the starting gravity was 1.000. That is the gravity (density) of water. I would have expected the sugar to have increased the gravity of those 8 pints of water to about 1.120. The sugar in those 6 lbs of fruit might have added another - I dunno - another 20 -25 points , so before you pitched (added) the yeast the gravity might have been closer to 1.140 which has the potential to make a wine that will finish with 18% alcohol. That is close to rocket fuel even in the hands of a master wine maker...
You don't say when you started this so the wine may be far too green (young) to be enjoyed even in the best possible world but I certainly agree with dralarms that you may need to stabilize this and back sweeten it to balance the alcohol.
Back-sweetening involves more than simply adding more sugar. You need to read up on this but it involves add two chemicals (K-meta and K-sorbate) to prevent the yeast from treating the sugar as more to ferment. Good luck

 

[Helen]

Hi Helen - and welcome .
Sounds to me like this may have fermented too fast and produced all kinds of fusel alcohols (they taste hot), but the "champagne" (not sure why or how this is called gooseberry champagne - the recipe simply calls for a champagne yeast which simply means that this yeast is very aggressive and is likely to blow off all flavor and aroma..) is not part of this recipe which would require this wine to be sparkling and for you to remove the sediment that would form. The recipe is also quite high in alcohol (about 18%) and I would think that 6 lbs of fruit could barely support a wine with 12% alcohol. .But you say the starting gravity was 1.000. That is the gravity (density) of water. I would have expected the sugar to have increased the gravity of those 8 pints of water to about 1.120. The sugar in those 6 lbs of fruit might have added another - I dunno - another 20 -25 points , so before you pitched (added) the yeast the gravity might have been closer to 1.140 which has the potential to make a wine that will finish with 18% alcohol. That is close to rocket fuel even in the hands of a master wine maker...
You don't say when you started this so the wine may be far too green (young) to be enjoyed even in the best possible world but I certainly agree with dralarms that you may need to stabilize this and back sweeten it to balance the alcohol.
Back-sweetening involves more than simply adding more sugar. You need to read up on this but it involves add two chemicals (K-meta and K-sorbate) to prevent the yeast from treating the sugar as more to ferment. Good luck

Thankyou for the reply, this has taught me a lot. I made it in july. I will read up on back sweetening.