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GTB

Home made wine question..........

I made 4.5 gallons of a white wine using grapes grown in my Father's greenhouse. The wine consisted of just under 5 gallons of pure grape juice which had been pressed (in my cider press to get all the juice extracted) and passed through some muslin before it went into a clean fv. I then added 3lb of sugar and some German hock wine yeast to the brew. I added a further 1lb of sugar to the brew a month later. The wine was racked in clean demijohns once the bubbling had stopped and finally bottled just before Christmas (just so we could have a very young bottle of wine with our Christmas dinner).

My question is this: We have got about half a teaspoon of small reddish/brown crystals at the bottom of every bottle of wine which is rather unsightly but does not spoil the wine. A mate of mine has said they are naturally occurring sulphites but I have never heard of this. I have tasted these crystals which crunch similar to sugar but have a grapey type flavour. I have been making wine for about 17 years now and I have never had this problem before.

You can see the crystals here at the bottom of the wine. The picture looks a bit blurred but it is just that the bottle has condensation on it because I had just got it out of the fridge.



This is how clear the wine is. You can see the crystals at the bottom again - and the condensation on the bottle.



Any ideas?????
Chris P Bacon

Re: Home made wine question..........

GTB wrote:
I made 4.5 gallons of a white wine using grapes grown in my Father's greenhouse. The wine consisted of just under 5 gallons of pure grape juice which had been pressed (in my cider press to get all the juice extracted) and passed through some muslin before it went into a clean fv. I then added 3lb of sugar and some German hock wine yeast to the brew. I added a further 1lb of sugar to the brew a month later. The wine was racked in clean demijohns once the bubbling had stopped and finally bottled just before Christmas (just so we could have a very young bottle of wine with our Christmas dinner).

My question is this: We have got about half a teaspoon of small reddish/brown crystals at the bottom of every bottle of wine which is rather unsightly but does not spoil the wine. A mate of mine has said they are naturally occurring sulphites but I have never heard of this. I have tasted these crystals which crunch similar to sugar but have a grapey type flavour. I have been making wine for about 17 years now and I have never had this problem before.

You can see the crystals here at the bottom of the wine. The picture looks a bit blurred but it is just that the bottle has condensation on it because I had just got it out of the fridge.


Just had a look around a few web sites and it would seam you have Tannic acid Precipitation, sounds like acid rain to me.
have a look at this site.

http://www.winemakingblog.com/catagory/flaws.htm

4th box down under flaws seems to describe your problem
GTB

Cheers, Chris.  

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