Homebrewing - Beer, Mead, Wine, Cider

2265 readers

3 users here now

A community dedicated to homebrewing beer, mead, wine, cider and everything in between. If it ferments, bring it over here.

Share recipes, ideas, ask for feedback or just advice.

Some starting points for beginners:

Introduction to Beer Brewing

A basic mead primer

Quick and diry guide to fermenting fruit - cider and wine

Brewing software

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Forgot fruit wine with citrus zest in it for over a month (self.homebrewing)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by whaleross to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

BUMPSIES: Update and discussion on bitters/aperitif in comments

This particular little wine was supposed to have the fruits in it for ten days. I forgot all about it over Christmas stress so the fruit has been soaking for over a month. I racked it today and boy does it have an aftertaste of the zest. Do you think it can be recovered? Will the zesty bitterness reduce from aging? Or can I do something else about it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

There are lots of bittering compounds and best bet for you is some kind of sweetening it. Because they didn't dissipate by ageing.

Maybe look into artificial sweeteners -combinations of them mask each other bitter after taste. But it wouldn't be exactly natural.

Quick search pointed me to some paper about how to prevent it in juice and lots of papers about medical use.

Main compound that may be your problem is limonene (Wikipedia has good article) but I can't tell how to get it out.

[–] whaleross 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Thanks. That's a bit discouraging that it will not dissipate.

But it just hit me now - maybe I could embrace the bitterness somehow instead. Like, figure out how to make a proper bitter, something related to a Fernet-Branca, but wine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It will probably need to be stronger so it is more aperitif. So maybe little bit of some sort of "moonshine" (it is legal in my country to make some distillates) and sugar and drink it.

I did some sort of this few times mostly by maceration of fruits and herbs.

[–] whaleross 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's true. Distillation is illegal here in Sweden, and honestly it's too much of an effort for me personally anyway. So I'm thinking if I could build upon this into an interesting bitter brew of some sort, I could always mix it with vodka before bottling like when you make a liqueur.

I'd much appreciate any experience or recipes for herbs and methods if you'd like to share.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

I tried to make some liqueur with currants and wine and it was disaster so not much help with that.

Now I usually let them sit in some "slivovice" for half a year and have much better results.