How can I make my homemade wine taste better?
April 24th, 2010 | Published in Wine | 8 Comments
I’m hosting a party and I made TONS of ghetto wine. I used cranberry juice, yeast and sugar. I’ve done it hundreds of times and it turned out great but the problem this time is that one of my batches is bitter. Should I just toss it or mix it with something.. I was thinking about mixing it with more cranberry juice? What do you think I should do?
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- why is my sangria bitter
April 24th, 2010 at 8:28 am (#)
im no expert, but maybe you could try honey, or brown suger, test little amounts first… hmm interesting..
April 24th, 2010 at 9:25 am (#)
Toss it and buy some cheap vodka or something.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:03 am (#)
Im not sure how ghetto wine works, but sometimes homemade wine has been known to turn into vinegar. You might have just turned ghetto wine into ghetto vinegar.
April 24th, 2010 at 10:25 am (#)
how bout trying to make a sangria out of it… add some apple cider, sugar, and orange juice… Sliced apples, Oranges, and grapes. I bet it will be Awesome!….cant hurt to try…
April 24th, 2010 at 11:06 am (#)
If it is bitter, add plain white table sugar. Bitter compounds are usually acidic, and table suger is a di-saccharide of glucose and fructose. The bitter compound will brake the bond of the sucrose, and give you individual glucose and fructose. This minute chemical reaction will also denature the acidic compound, making it less bitter, while also making the drink more sweet. This is why we add sugar to tea or coffee to get rid of the bitterness and make it tastier.
As for next time, be a little more careful when adding things to your “wine”, it sounds like there is a chance you got a contamination. Either that, or add more sugar, so your wine doesn’t dry out, the yeast could have just eaten up all the sugar, leaving you with just alcohol and fruit flavored bitterness.
Also, try the “adding sugar” trick to your bad batch. See how it turns out, if it is just mildly palatable, save it for the end of the party when you’re out of good stuff, and everyone is so drunk that they won’t notice.
April 24th, 2010 at 11:16 am (#)
just chase it with beer haha
April 24th, 2010 at 11:30 am (#)
with bad tasting wine I usually:
1. just use the batch to cook with
2. mix it with sangria
3. mix it with ginger ale or someting like that to make a sparling punch
4. mix it with a flavored brandy…(red wine goes good with blackberry brandy, white goes good with just about any flavor) this will be stronger than the other wines and kick ass.
April 24th, 2010 at 12:19 pm (#)
Wine needs balance to be good. Bitterness is caused by alkalinity and could be counteracted by adding acid, if you are talking about true bitterness. Try a small sample and doctor it up with citric acid (Sour salt, if you are buying it in the supermarket). See if that helps. If that doesn’t work, experiment with glycerine, strong tea, corn syrup, or your first thought, cranberry juice.
I hope you sanitized everything. If not, you are going to have trouble with all your subsequent batches until you do. I also hope you splurged a dollar on real wine yeast rather than bread yeast.