06-07-2006, 08:40 AM
I love to experiment, tinker, and see how stuff works. I'm not afraidto break stuff (temporarily) to see how things work. The juices weusually use to make our soda bottle wines is cheap enough to "break",so I'm really not afraid to play around and see what happens.I noticed that a lot of the fruit wines I make don't always have thatdefinitive "wine" taste to them, that little bit of a bitter undertonethat makes the difference between "wine" and "grape juice with alcoholin it". I did a little bit of reading and learned a couple of things.1. Different families of grapes have different levels of acid content.2. This level of acid is a big cotributor to what makes wine fromTHOSE grapes unique.3. Almost all Mead calls for a little bit of some kind of citris juiceas part of the recipe. Citris juices contain citric acid.Sooo.... I decided to experiment.I made a double batch of my favorite brewing juice (White GrapeRaspberry) and poured each half into their brewing bottles. I thentook about 1/2 cup liquid measure from one bottle, but it in a bigcoffee cup with a regular tea bag and cooked it in the microwave forabout 45 seconds. This made a really strong 1/2 cup of white grapereaspberry tea. I let it cool down for a few moments, then squeezedout the teabag into the tea. I added this tea back into the bottle thejuice came from, and let both bottles sit for about 1/2 hour (capped)so the temperatures could get about equal. then I added the yeast andlet then do thier thing for about 3 weeks.The result was the batch with the tea added (tannic acid) hadthat "special something" that made it taste more like wine and lesslike juice. I think it was well worth the invetment of 1 minute and a2 cent tea bag!Enjoy!Willum the winerORGINAL POSTER: willum