Is my wine ruined forever

The Homebrew Forum

Help Support The Homebrew Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

TommyCa

New Member
Joined
Oct 16, 2016
Messages
4
Reaction score
0
Location
NULL
I made up a couple of white wine kits recently, and a funny thing happened.

When the time came to degass my wine, I made use of a high tech, homemade degassing tool of my own cunning design. It was a machanism of subtle genius and effective simplicity.

A steel balloon whisk in the cuck of a hand drill.

I had two fermenters on the go. My marvellous tool worked brilliantly for the first, but when I did the second, I suffered a mishap. The whisk fell out of the chuck and sank down under 5 gallons of cloudy wine. I had no easy way to retrieve it, so I left it to steep in the wine for the 4 days that it took for the wine to clear properly. I bottled it last night.

Now the normal fermenter tasted as expected. A young wine with a slight yeasty twang, just needing to lay down for a month or two to mature into a perfectly acceptable drinking wine. The fermenter with added balloon whisk however, had developed a mild but distinct metalic flavour which could not in all honesty be described as 'pleasant'.

My question is this: Based on the experiences of you good sirs, will this steely vino develop into something drinkable given a couple of months in the garage? Or is it more likely that my wine rack is now laden with thirty bottles of swill, fit only to be drunk by a smug cyborg after the robot uprising?

(The worst part of it is that I didn't label the bottles until after everything was bottled. So I have no way of knowing which is which!)
 
I personally doubt if it will get better - well to the extent you're hoping for anyway - but you never know. Better luck next time!
 
I agree with Steve its unlikely to get better.

Why not make your own degassing wand out of a plastic coat hanger -

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/how-to-degas-wine-with-a-home-made-degassing-wand.48971/
My plastic one broke after several years service so i bought a stainless steel one similar to the one below which works a lot better -

1702062659883.png
 
Last edited:
Would it be worth taking a couple of samples, labelling them, mixing them up and then blind tasting them? I don't know how strong the metallic taste is, but is it possible you're sufficiently aware of the issue that your mind is playing tricks?

Assuming the balloon whisk is just stainless steel, I can't see how it could cause any major taint, short of some kind of infection from any parts of it which might not have been sanitary. If so, I'm confident it will get worse, unfortunately.
 
Back
Top