wine making- my first time

I tasted the wine again, its about 100X better then ebfore, its now drinkable. Its not great by anymeans but is good, its drinkable.... although there is a person living in our basment for a couple weeks and he tried itand said it was great... so it looks like the wine is not half bad... i think if i leave it for another month or wo it will be even better

 

Well it has been a few months so i figured I would post a quick update.

both wines have a better nose, they are smelling like better quailty wines, they do not have a vinigery nose they did at the start.

Also i gave both a quick taste, the merlot is tasting like a merlot. a small glass reminded me of a house wine you would get at a middle end resturant. Its not great, not as well balanced as a nicer bottle but def wine. Its finnaly drinkable.
I figure6 more months and may actually enjoy it....we will see

The pinot noir needs allot more age, it still has that hoe made taste, slight vinager (that seemed to go away on the merlot), the flavors are not balance. The pinot is not tasting like you would expect a pinot to taste.

I am not sure about this one, im not expecting great wine from it... but hey at like 2 bucks abottle how can i go wrong?

so there is an update, the merlot is finnaly what I would call cheap wine, it drinkable but barley. Time will tell how much it will improve, the pinot on the other hand still tastes unbalanced, diffrent with each sip. It will be interesting to see how these age in th next 6 months

 

well it has been a long time since i udated this thread.

I got into a huge cleaning mood yesterday and decided to clear up some space by bottleing my wine.

I went to the store and bought all the sutff to do t (sink bottle rinser, corks, and a cork press thing) cost me about 50 bucks. not to bad.

It was an adventure to bottle it, fiiguring the perfect height to put the bottles so they dont fill to fast but the syphon dosent fail
I had a friend help. It was lots of fun.

So I also tasted the merlot. It was drinkable. i found it to be very 1 dimensional having only lght rasberry and strawberry flavours. Not great but not bad. My friend tried some and said it tasted liek what is parents drink (they spend about 10 a bottle).

so its not bad, i will drink it and enjoy it. Def better hten i thought it would be. good enough im going to try a white this time.

the only thing is that the wine is very merky, it tastes fine but is very cloudy. Im not sure what causes ths as i used the clarifying agent. maybe it was from when i lifted the carboy onto the counter... maybe chris can tune in on this one, he is an expert after all.

so the next step is let the bottle settle then they go on the rack and are for friends and stuff whent hey come over.

so which white to pick, im trying to decide between a chard and sovingen blanc..if i can find one..

any suggetions?


ohh and on a side note, making wine was alot of fun. I really enjoyed it. Even if the wine is just served to drunk firends after the bar it was worth it. At under 2 bucks a bottle and with the kind of fun i had it was well worth the time money and energy

 

Very nice update!! SOunds like the merlot is coming along. I just bottled my first batch of beer. May try wine in a year or so.

 

so some sad news, in the spirit of trying my new wines I tought i would test my pinot noir. I gave it a nice big sip... viniger. Its wrecked. I think it came from poor sanitization. I belive in wanting to make a second batch of wine with the kit i bought from someone in town (used) i didnt clean everything as wel as i should have. It kinda sucks since the kit costs about $100... ohh well lessoned learned.
I think tom i will go pick up a white kit and give it a try. I will post pics of this batch

 

Sorry to hear about that. My dad has made a few good batches of vinegar. lol What were or do you use for sanitation? When I am doing anything with my brew I have an extra bucket with sanitation solution that everything go through before use. Check out northernbrewery.com They do ship int'l but not sure how much shipping would be to Calgary. There has to be some online shop for you all in Canada.

 

I used that pink stuff that smeels like bleach, i dont have it handy but i guess its the standard stuff to use in wine sanitization.

I think where i went wrong was buying the kit used (that was outsied) and giving everything a basic santziation, i didnt let te plastic and stuff sit for a few hours only a few minutes. I think im going to have to let everything soak in cleaner for a few hours to make sure it is truly sanitary... ohh well lesson learned, wont do that again

so i found out i have a 10% off coupon for my local shop, so today is a new kit day

as for online, there are lots of online places in canada, i just like to ask te guy working. Im still new enough that any tps they can give me are worth any extra cost i may incur

 

I use a sanitizer that you don't have to rinse. Right now since my carboy is sitting basically empty, I know that is terrible, I have a chlorine based sanitizer in it. I like hte no rinse when I am bottling or making so I don't have to worry about rinsing.

 

Ill have to look for that santizier, thanks for the tip.

I started another kit last nigt, it is a reisling, i figure il give white a try. It is supposdly a good one, a Kenridge founders series (whatever that means)

this time for sanitization i left all the stuff soaking for like an hour and rinsed really well. There should be no chance of this stuff going bad (ok theres a chance but im hopping and being very carefull this time around)

ill post updates again, I enjoy going back and looking over this thread and reading about my wine adventures

 

The no rinse sanitizer I use is named "One Step" reminds me of Oxyclean by the description. There is another no rinse product too but the name slips me now. I will have to start a thread when I brew my next batch of beer. I should be able to try my first batch on Friday. Oh yes if you are wanting or thinking about another glass carboy then you should probrably pick it up soon. The local brewery here told me that the place in Mexico that makes them is closing and that future ones will come from across the pond. Yours could already be from there but just a heads up.

 

None Rinse sanitizers would be chlorine. if you have access to chlorine i should be able to find the dilution factors for it. It is what we use in the food industry - Food Technologist (science) Finally i am able to chip in some useful information in this forum ^_^