Very unhappy day yesterday as several of the Brynn bottles decided they didn't like it in the bottle and pushed out corks. Even one that was already in the fridge! I lost about a litre and a half in total, salvaged about 500 ml that I'm probably going to drink, and opened a few others before they popped corks. Was. Not. Happy. Messy to clean up too. I'm mourning for quite a bit of what promised to become very nice mead. The remaining bottles are standing on the kitchen counter, loosely corked so they can breathe off, and until I stop being pissed off about it and start dealing with it.
Gwyllion is more hopeful. Had a slight brainwave and realised that with a different wine with a similar problem, I'd be looking to add fruit juice or concentrate to fix the thin-ness problem. The hippie food shop sells elderberry juice, so I went and got some, and did a little test with some of the thin, too sweet port. About 1:8 juice:port balances it out very nicely - counteracts the sweetness, gets rid of the thin-ness. Yum. I took out 0.7l to make space, and then added juice - originally 660ml, but reduced to about 0.5l.
I didn't stop there, because that would make sense - I added the yeast starter I've been putting through Alcohol Tolerance Bootcamp over the past week. It's more wine now (14%) and I still hope it'll become a proper heavy port. No idea how that's going to work out, but we'll see.
It was 1040 (I think the previous readings were off - they were with a less precise hydrometre) & 14% just now.
So I have a demi full of Further Experiment, plus a bottle that with the addition of a bit of juice will make something to try at Christmas - I quite like it, we'll see what my visitors think :-)
Gwyllion - Elderberry wine
Gwy: 1035 and 14%
Well, Edmund was right..
Watering is often a mistake. In addition to introducing new issues of sterility and oxidation, watering cuts the balances of sugars and minerals in an unbalanced way; you'll end up with a drink that simultaneously tastes too sweet and too thin.
I tasted it and it does indeed taste thin and is still too sweet. Bugger. Shame I didn't know that before I did it, I didn't think half a litre of water could make that much difference! I bottled half a litre of the un-watered bottle and have set the rest of that aside to add to the new start I've made - I got in a 'killer' yeast that should go to 16%, and I'm going to try making a starter and very slowly introducing the wine to ease the yeast up to the alcohol percentage. Then I'll pitch and see how it goes.
Well, Edmund was right..
Watering is often a mistake. In addition to introducing new issues of sterility and oxidation, watering cuts the balances of sugars and minerals in an unbalanced way; you'll end up with a drink that simultaneously tastes too sweet and too thin.
I tasted it and it does indeed taste thin and is still too sweet. Bugger. Shame I didn't know that before I did it, I didn't think half a litre of water could make that much difference! I bottled half a litre of the un-watered bottle and have set the rest of that aside to add to the new start I've made - I got in a 'killer' yeast that should go to 16%, and I'm going to try making a starter and very slowly introducing the wine to ease the yeast up to the alcohol percentage. Then I'll pitch and see how it goes.
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