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Simon "I can certainly see that you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn't know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret." - Basil Fawlty
As a novice to using grapes I'm finding myself getting jittery, nothing like jumping in at the deep end . My Merlot is now down to 1.000 and seems to be around my taste for sweetness. I haven't experimented with back sweetening yet so my first question is, would it be better to add sulphites now or ferment out totally and sweeten later after oaking presumably.
My second question is, I have a slight bitterness in both the first run and the kit I added the skins to. Will this disappear with ageing or should I have removed every bit of stalk in the grapes before starting. There didn't seem many and I did remove the odd one that cropped up whilst pushing down the cap.
Thanks Alan
I would ferment to dry and then see where you are in terms of taste.
The bitterness will subside, red grape wine needs age on it before it becomes good quality, but you can (and some do) drink it early, but the wait is worth it.
I rekon I am ok with 10% of stalks still in (the smaller bits that escape the crusher/destemmer)
regards
Bob
N.G.W.B.J.
Member of 5 Towns Wine and Beer Makers Society (Yorkshire's newest)
Wine, mead and beer maker
Thanks Bob
I will make some wine No2 and experiment with sweetness on that before moving on to the grape wine.
Alan
There's a bit of a "mead tweak" that's worth being aware of Alan. While you're experimenting, it's easy to over sweeten (which to my taste, is a bit like the cloyingly sweet "dessert" meads). Anyway, I recently discovered Moniack Mead (origins up your way somewhere).
So, with commercial batches, I like to chuck a hydrometer in to see what the numbers come out at. They're usually quite high, in the 1.030 to 1.040 area (yes, I know.......), but the Moniack I tried, wasn't as sweet as all the others I'd tasted, despite measuring at about the 1.035 area.
A bit of further investigation, showed that it was also measuring at 2.6 pH.
I'm not suggesting that you think of going to anything like those levels, but it may be worth remembering that if you did add a bit too much back sweetening for your taste, you can always add a bit of acid to mask the sweetness.
Bob, et al, may have other suggestions......
Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.
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