Hi Finnlamar,
Can you order your winemaking supplies online? I'm sure there must be a homebrew store in Finland somewhere that would do mail-order.
If you don't want to make a sherry-style wine, and you'd like to do everything you can to "save" your wine otherwise, here's what I would recommend:
- If you smell and taste appreciable amounts of vinegar or if you smell a pronounced rotten-egg smell at any time, consider throwing the batch out and just marking it up to experience. - Otherwise, treat it immediately with potbuttium metabisulfite, 1-4 teaspoon per US gallon (3.79 liters) - As soon a possible, get the wine into a carboy with an airlock affixed. Top off with wine or water to make sure the carboy is filled into the neck of the bottle. - Once you're hooked up with a source of homebrew supplies, get an acid testing kit, and adjust the acidity of your wine if it is low. Use acid blend powder to get the total acidity level into a good range (0.65% to 0.75% is a good range to aim for). If the acidity is over 0.75%, just leave it alone (don't try to adjust it down). If the total acidity is over 1.0%, consider throwing the batch out. - If the grapes you fermented in the bucket included the grape skins, you may have a very tannic (as well as oxidized) wine. Taste the wine -- if it tastes bitter on the back of your tongue and makes your mouth feel dry, that's tannin. I would startrt seeing what you can make of it by fining. To reduce the tannin content, you can first do a fairly heavy fining with gelatin (either from a homebrew store, or unflavored gelatin from the grocery). You can start with 0.5 gm per US gallon (1 US gallon = 3.79 liters), mix thoroughly, allow precipitate to settle, taste, and repeat once if the wine still tastes very bitter. - To try to reduce the browning caused by the oxidation, I recommend a second fining with PVPP (a fining agent you can find online from a homebrew store). Mix thoroughly, wait two or three weeks for all the particles to precipitate, and rack (siphon off) the wine into a second carboy.
reasons for winemaking 31On 7-22-2006 7:47 PM, alien Not to derail the topic, but I very much enjoy the Bowmore 17 year old offering. It's just lovely. I've found that it's really very difficult...
At this point, you may have allieviated some of the symptoms of your overly long fermentation (actually, if you had fermented in a airtight container, you would have done what's called an extended maceration). Hopefully the gelatin has reduced the bitterness, and the PVPP has reduced the browning and taste effects of the oxidation. If the wine is not yet clear, you will want to add a pectic enzyme and then fine it yet again ... maybe with Sparkolloid.
Since you have now fined this wine a lot, and you're dealing with oxidation that can make the wine taste flat, you want to test your acidity again and make sure it's still high enough. The acidity will add some brightness to the taste to counteract the "flat", raisiny taste the oxidation may have introduced.
Bordeaux Blend 32One other comment: There is an advantage to having at least one person who does not know what is "Suppose" to be in a Bordeaux style blend. I experienced this one...
At this point, you can consider adding some sweetness to the wine, buttuming it has fermented to dryness before. You could add just sugar, dissolving a 1-4 cup at a time to taste, or you could add some clarified apple juice. You will also want to add potbuttium sorbate, which will keep fermentation from restarting once you bottle it.
Jon Check out my winemaking homepage
