'Tang' flavor before wine/sweet flavor?

[detlion1643]

I made a strawberry and blueberry batch at the same time...

Both ingredients (Fruit refres to strawberry/blueberry batches separetly):
32oz 100% Lemon Juice
Water/Sugar to 1.085
8lbs Frozen Fruit
2 ½ tsp Yeast Nutrient
5 tsp Yeast Energizer
1 Packet Montrachet Yeast

Both ended up being racked to a 5g carboy at 1.000 or just under with 5 campden tabs.

The strawberry was bottled 3 months prior, the blueberry tonight. I added sorbate about 3 days prior and sugar 2 days prior to bottling.. I sweetened the strawberry to 1.005ish and the blueberry to 1.012-1.015ish. I can tell the blueberry is sweeter by taste and that's ok.

What's wrong then? Both have a sort of 'tang' before you can taste the wine and sweetness. It's hard to explain since it's not lingering around after the wine/sweetness taste. I thought it might be because of the 32oz lemon juice, but that shouldn't affect a whole 5g batch with a tang flavor, should it?

Is it the campden tabs? 1 per gallon during 1 racking seems pretty standard. No other campden and no other rackings. No campden at bottling either.

The wine itself is still very good. The strawberry is gone, and the glass of blueberry so far is even better (imo).

So everyone, any ideas? My next batch was going to be a lighter skeeter pee, but if 32oz of it affects me/wine this much I might reconsider...

 

[LonelyMassachusetts]

Carbonation can do that. I just bottled an apple wine today that was still spritzy after a year in the carboy; it can last a long time if you let it. Try this: empty out half of a bottle of blueberry wine. Shake the blazes out of what's left. See if there's a difference; if the one in the bottle suddenly seems smoother, you have carbonation on your hands.

 

[Turock]

Did you take a PH reading? Strawberry can be tart if you don't do some acid adjustment on it, and with the lemon in there you've got alot of acidity. The predominate acid in strawberry is citric--then we add more citric with the lemon--see where this is going?

Because it has so much acid, the only way to balance that is with more sugar. In the future, leave out the lemon. Do your strawberry with no water addition and always be sure to check/adjust the PH to about 3.4 Then you won't have so much acid and your sugar addition will easily balance the remaining acidity.

 

[detlion1643]

I didn't do any PH readings. Never have before, this is about batch 5 and 6 so still new/learning. Will read up on it.

I am already planning on leaving the lemon out in any future batches to compare.

I'll try the bottle carbonation thing and compare.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll update this in a couple weeks after I try them again. I'm hoping some time will dissipate it as well.

 

[Turock]

No doubt that some bulk aging might drop out some of the offending components in the wine. Give it about 9 months in the carboy. Young wines still have CO2 on them, for sure. You should bulk age them and then the gas is completely off the wine by the 9 month mark, too.

If you're going to make fruit wines, you really need to be able to accurately measure PH. Most fruits need some sort of PH adjustment. Also, it's very good to know the PH of a wine because this dictates how much free SO2 you'll need for preservation. Buy yourself a good PH meter.