The wine is bitter and sour, what should I do? How to prevent and eliminate bitterness in wine

When preparing a whole batch of your favorite homemade drink, you need to be sure that such a quantity of a valuable product will not be spoiled. For this purpose, winemakers not only carefully select the ingredients for preparation, but also try to prevent such a phenomenon as the bitter aftertaste of grape alcohol.

Experimenting with how to remove bitterness from wine, experts came to the conclusion that:

firstly, you need to do this in the early stages;
secondly, it is necessary to strictly follow the production technology.

How to remove bitterness from apple and grape wine

There are several main mistakes that novice winemakers make:

In the process of obtaining juice for apple, cherry or grape drinks, beginners crush the fruit too zealously. Moreover, “culinarians” also manage to squeeze the raw materials through a press, which, in turn, leads to damage to the seeds. It is because of this – the excessive concentration of astringents in alcohol – that a bitter aftertaste appears. To prevent this, it is necessary to crush and squeeze the ingredients carefully, and, if possible, also remove seeds from the fruit. If you need to correct what has been done and quickly decide how, for example, to remove bitterness from apple wine, experts advise using egg whites. You need to separate the whites from the yolks, beat the whites with a whisk, calculating that for 1 liter of alcohol you will need 100 mg of this substance. After this, you need to mix everything and leave the liquid alone for two weeks. During this time, the sediment will completely fall out, and you can pour the drink using a siphon into a clean container.
To prevent alcohol from rotting, you should always choose fresh fruit. In addition, it is necessary to timely separate the juice from the pulp - crushed berries. This situation can be corrected if you use a proven recipe for purifying a grape product: you will need 3 g of white clay per 1 liter of drink. Bentonite - clay - is poured with cold water, mixed thoroughly and kept for 10 hours. The resulting lime will need to be diluted with water and then added to the wine. The mixture settles for at least 5 days, after which the sediment must be removed from the alcohol.

It should be noted that it is the sediment that in most cases makes the product bitter. That is why, when thinking about how to remove bitterness from wine at home, first make sure that a layer of turbidity has not formed at the bottom of the container. To prevent this problem, you need to filter the liquid in time, and you can correct the mistake made with the help of clay or egg white.

How to get rid of the bitter taste of homemade wine

A slight bitterness can also appear due to pathogenic microorganisms, which over time can lead to the fact that the drink will not be suitable for consumption at all. Using sterile instruments and containers, it is easy to avoid such troubles.

But to get rid of the bitter taste in such situations, you will have to use pasteurization technology: heat treatment will kill all microbes. To do this, you need to tightly close the container with grape liquid, place it in a pan filled with water, and then slowly heat it to 60°C. The temperature should be maintained for 5 minutes, after which you can turn off the heat. After 5 days, you must remember to drain the drink from the sediment.

Experts say that long-term aging also harms apple and grape alcohol. To prevent the substance from acquiring a bitter taste, experts recommend tasting it every week. If the moment was missed, you should use white clay.

Many novice winemakers are faced with the problem of bitterness in wine. Because of it, it happens that all the work on making wine goes down the drain, and the wine is poured down the drain or sent for distillation. But, if you look in more detail at the causes of bitterness and their elimination, you can save more than one liter of finished wine.

Why is wine bitter?

Obtaining juice with damage to seeds and seeds. They often taste bitter.
Fruits and berries were difficult to pick. Leaves, sticks, scallops have a bitter taste.
The wine stood over the sediment.
Poor raw materials were used. For example, slightly rotten fruits or accidentally dropped leaves, stalks and other pieces that are not related to the fruit. Even a very small amount of them can radically spoil the taste.
Without filtering the wine for too long. If it sits for a long time with sediment at the bottom, it will very soon acquire a bitter taste, since wine yeast rots and decomposes, remaining in the nutrient medium.

All these reasons can be called simply - violation of cooking technology. Be careful and your homemade drinks will be second to none. Despite the fact that homemade wine can almost always be removed from bitterness using simple methods, try to strictly follow the instructions for preparing drinks. Then your alcohol will become a decoration for any holiday table and an excellent gift for friends.

Prevention and elimination of bitterness in homemade wine

Attention! It is impossible to remove strong bitterness from wine. The proposed methods work in the early stages, when it has just appeared.

Causes, prevention and methods of combating bitter taste:

Incorrect extraction of juice. The most common situation, causing the problem in 50-65% of cases, is typical for grape, cherry, and apple wines, but can also appear in others. Crushing fruits (berries) too much and then squeezing them through a press leads to damage to the seeds, which contain an excess of tannins and tannins. As a result, these substances end up in the juice, and after fermentation, homemade wine begins to taste bitter.

Prevention: if it is possible to crush raw materials without seeds and (or) using gentle methods that do not damage the seeds.

Remedy:“binding” of tannins with egg white. You need to break the eggs, separate the whites from the yolk, beat the whites with a whisk, and then add them to the wine at the rate of 100 milligrams per 1 liter of drink. Mix carefully and leave for 2-3 weeks until the sediment completely falls out. Then drain the wine from the sediment through a siphon (thin tube) into another clean container.

Rotten raw materials and overexposure of the wort to the pulp. Even a few rotten fruits getting into processing and untimely separation of the juice from the pulp leads to rotting of the entire pulp.

Prevention: use only fresh berries and fruits, strictly follow the recipes and remove the pulp on time.

Elimination: clarification of wine with bentonite at the rate of 3 grams of white clay per 1 liter of wine. Pour bentonite with ten times the amount of cold water, mix and leave for 10-12 hours, the clay will turn into lime. Add water until the mixture becomes liquid. Pour the diluted bentonite into the wine in a thin stream, leave for 5-7 days, then remove the sediment from the drink.

Long-term infusion of sediment. Untimely filtration of wine during aging is also a common cause of bitterness; during decomposition, yeast waste worsens the taste.

Prevention: timely removal of sediment.

Treatment: fining the wine with egg white or bentonite (both methods can be used alternately) according to the methods described in the previous paragraphs.

Contamination of wine. Pathogenic microorganisms that cause vinegar souring, mold and some other diseases of wine make themselves felt in the early stages by the appearance of a slight bitterness.

Prevention: sterility and strict adherence to preparation technology.

Treatment: pasteurization of wine with bitterness, during which microbes are killed by heat treatment. Seal the bottles with the drink hermetically, place in a saucepan, fill up to the neck with water, heat to 60°C. Maintain temperature for 5 minutes, then turn off heat. Remove the bottles when the water has cooled to room temperature. After 5-6 days, drain the wine from the sediment.

Overaging in barrels. If the wine is kept in barrels for too long (on oak wood or wood chips), the wine becomes excessively saturated with tannins, which are very difficult to remove.

Prevention: During barrel aging, check the taste once every 5-7 days in order to catch the moment of bitterness in time.

Treatment: In the early stages, clarification with bentonite helps. In advanced cases, the taste is stabilized by adding sugar and alcohol to the wine (up to 10-15% of the volume).

An excess of tannins, bitter and astringent substances, tannins, which are contained in the skin and seeds of grapes. Usually these substances are useful to us, they give the wine a tart taste and promote clarification, but their excess, as mentioned earlier, makes the product bitter and the color (of white wines) brown.

Treatment: If it has already happened that your wine is bitter, there is no need to be upset. To eliminate this negative effect, it is necessary to “bind” excess tannins. To do this, “binding agents” are used, which attach tannins to themselves and precipitate with them to the bottom of the container. The most accessible and effective two “agents” are egg whites and polyvinyl chloride-based preparations.

Protein is one of the oldest and most widely used "binding agents" in both home and commercial winemaking. It is usually added to red wines (or fruit wines, which contain a lot of tannins) in a concentration of 50 to 250 milligrams per liter. Before use, the egg whites are lightly beaten with a whisk and added to the container with the wine with thorough but gentle stirring (so as not to unnecessarily aerate the wine). The container with wine is then left in a calm state for a period of several days to several weeks, until the sediment completely falls to the bottom. As soon as this happens, it is necessary to siphon the wine into another clean container where it will ripen.
Polyvinyl chloride is a synthetic polymer powder; preparations based on it are sold in stores for home winemakers. As a rule, it is added to wine in volumes from 120 to 400 milligrams per liter with thorough mixing. Then the wine is also allowed to sit for a while, and then it is poured into another clean container. In addition to softening the bitterness, in this way it will also be possible to remove brown tones in white wines.

To choose the best method and amount of substance to add, you must first make several tests on a small volume of wine to choose which method is best suited for your wine. And also select the required concentration of the reagent. After all, this is much more profitable than pouring out the entire batch.

What to do if it still tastes bitter?

Finally, you opened the desired drink and discovered that the wine was still bitter. Having figured out the reason, you can take some actions that will give the wine a chance for a second life.

If the wine has become slightly acidic and has just begun to turn into vinegar, it must be urgently strained to remove all excess and, adding 20–30 ml of alcohol per liter of drink, placed in a dark place for subsequent aging. So it should stand for about six months. If everything works out, the bitterness will go away and you will get a good wine. Keep in mind that it will already be quite strong.
The wine will have to be poured out if you missed the moment of ripening and the tremors still go rotten. Nothing can remove such bitterness and smell. At this stage you should be especially careful and attentive. However, if the bitterness comes from the seeds, you can remove it with whipped egg whites. The white of one egg is enough to clear 50 liters of wine. Beat the egg white into a foam, add a little wine, stir and pour into the wine in a thin stream and stir. The resulting suspension should settle, after which a sediment will appear, from which the drink must be carefully drained. There will remain an excessively tart aftertaste.
Prepare a wine drink based on bitter wine. There are many options. If it’s red, what’s wrong with mulled wine? His recipe is simple and original, and you and your guests will feel so hot from the fiery wine that they won’t feel the bitterness behind the taste of spices. Mulled wine recipe: for 1 liter of red wine you need to take 3-4 tablespoons of sugar, 2-3 cinnamon sticks, 2-3 centimeters of ginger, 2-3 star anise, 2-3 cardamom seeds, 3-4 clove buds. Spice powders and fruits are not suitable. If some spice is missing, it doesn’t matter, and without one or two components everything will turn out great. The wine is heated in a wide bowl and all the ingredients are added. The wine with spices is brought to a boil. Removed from heat. Covered with a lid. Leave for 10 minutes. Serve hot.
White grape wine's bitterness can easily be corrected by preparing a fashionable drink - sangria. This is a drink with added fruit.

Ingredients:

Wine – 1 liter
sugar – 3-4 tablespoons
lemon – 1 piece
orange – 1 piece
mint – 4-5 sprigs.

In a free, beautiful glass container, the liquid is mixed with sugar until it is completely dissolved. Fresh, washed fruits are cut into beautiful slices and placed in a vessel with wine. The drink is left for 1 or 2 hours. You need to cover it with a woven napkin. Serve sangria with pieces of ice or simply chilled. Mint is placed in each glass before drinking. Any wine, not just grape, is suitable for making sangria.

You can cope with this problem using bentonite in the following proportional ratio: white clay (3 g) per 1 liter of wine. White clay is prepared for use with 10 times its volume of cold water. It should be poured in, stirred and allowed to sit for about half a day until it becomes lime. Then you can add water to it until you get a liquid consistency and pour it into the wine in a thin stream. It should be left in this state for about a week, after which it should be removed from the sediment.

The strong bitterness in homemade wine cannot be masked. If the wine is strong, distill it into moonshine. Its reserves are never superfluous.

If none of the above methods help, you can try to age the bitter wine for a long time (6 months) in an oak barrel with the addition of a small amount of alcohol. If you don’t have an oak barrel, you can do the following:

add 1 tsp. crushed oak bark for every 3 liters. guilt;
seal and store for six months in a dark, dry place;
drain from sediment, strain;
add 1 tsp. glucose.

You should be careful with this method, because if the oak barrel is not well treated and washed, staying in it can cause an even greater increase in the bitter taste of the drink. As a rule, it is used if all other methods have proven useless.

If not addressed promptly, a bitter taste can ruin an entire batch of homemade wine. This problem is usually faced by novice winemakers and those who have knowingly or unknowingly violated the preparation technology. Next I will tell you how to save wine and not repeat mistakes in the future.

Attention! It is impossible to remove strong bitterness from wine. The proposed methods work in the early stages, when it has just appeared.

Causes, prevention and methods of combating bitter taste:

1. Incorrect juice extraction. The most common situation, causing a problem in 50-65% of cases, is typical for grape, cherry, and apple wines, but can also appear in others. Crushing fruits (berries) too much and then squeezing them through a press leads to damage to the seeds, which contain an excess of tannins and tannins. As a result, these substances end up in the juice, and after fermentation, homemade wine begins to taste bitter.

Prevention: if possible, crush raw materials without seeds and (or) using gentle methods that do not damage the seeds.

Elimination: “binding” of tannins with egg white. You need to break the eggs, separate the whites from the yolk, beat the whites with a whisk, and then add them to the wine at the rate of 100 milligrams per 1 liter of drink. Mix carefully and leave for 2-3 weeks until the sediment completely falls out. Then drain the wine from the sediment through a siphon (thin tube) into another clean container.

2. Rotten raw materials and overexposure of the wort on pulp. If even a few rotten fruits get into processing and untimely separation of the juice from the pulp leads to rotting of the entire pulp.

Prevention: use only fresh berries and fruits, strictly follow the recipes and remove the pulp on time.

Elimination: at the rate of 3 grams of white clay per 1 liter of wine. Pour bentonite with ten times the amount of cold water, mix and leave for 10-12 hours, the clay will turn into lime. Add water until the mixture becomes liquid. Pour the diluted bentonite into the wine in a thin stream, leave for 5-7 days, then remove the sediment from the drink.

3. Long infusion on the sediment. Untimely filtration of wine during aging is also a common cause of bitterness; during decomposition, yeast waste worsens the taste.

Prevention: timely removal of sediment.

Treatment: fining the wine with egg white or bentonite (both methods can be used alternately) according to the methods described in the previous paragraphs.

4. Wine contamination. Pathogenic microorganisms that cause vinegar souring, mold and some other diseases of wine make themselves felt in the early stages by the appearance of a slight bitterness.

Prevention: sterility and strict adherence to preparation technology.

Treatment: pasteurization of wine with bitterness, during which microbes are killed by heat treatment. Seal the bottles with the drink hermetically, place in a saucepan, fill up to the neck with water, heat to 60°C. Maintain temperature for 5 minutes, then turn off heat. Remove the bottles when the water has cooled to room temperature. After 5-6 days, drain the wine from the sediment.

5. Overexposure in barrels. When kept in barrels for too long (on oak wood or wood chips), the wine becomes excessively saturated with tannins, which are very difficult to remove.

Prevention: during barrel aging, check the taste every 5-7 days in order to catch the moment of bitterness in time.

Treatment: in the early stages, clarification with bentonite helps. In advanced cases, the taste is stabilized by adding sugar and alcohol to the wine (up to 10-15% of the volume).

If none of the proposed methods worked, there is only one option left - distilling bitter wine into moonshine. The result will be fruit brandy.

So, one of the reasons, most common among home winemakers, for the appearance of bitterness in wine is an excess of tannins, bitter and astringent substances, tannins, which are contained in the skins and seeds of grapes. Usually these substances are useful to us, they give the wine a tart taste and promote clarification, but their excess, as mentioned earlier, makes the product bitter and the color (of white wines) brown.

To prevent this effect, from the very beginning of wine making, it is necessary to carry out careful crushing and “soft” squeezing of the juice using a press with a basket (can be purchased at most stores with goods for home winemaking) or another gentle method, but crushing the berries using a drill with I advise you to forget about the nozzle for stirring construction mixtures, as recommended in some sources. Read more about this in the first day of winemaking. The most important thing in these processes is squeezing out the juice without destruction. Squeezing the juice can also be done using a meat grinder, but this will result in a large amount of bitter seeds and peels getting into the wine, and with them excess tannins. Crushed seeds are our main enemy in this matter; it is grape seeds that contain the coarsest and most bitter tannins. And they begin to give off bitterness either when mechanically destroyed, or when maceration (infusion on the pulp) is too long without removing them.

You also need to be careful not to overexpose the wine after quiet fermentation on the lees. This can also add excessive bitterness to the wine.

There are other causes of bitterness, but in home winemaking in 9 cases out of 10 it is precisely inaccurate crushing, overexposure on pulp and lees, and excessive oxidation.

If it has already happened that your wine is bitter, there is no need to be upset.
To eliminate this negative effect, it is necessary to “bind” excess tannins. To do this, “binding agents” are used, which attach tannins to themselves and precipitate with them to the bottom of the container. The most accessible and effective two “agents” are egg whites and polyvinyl chloride-based preparations.

Protein is one of the oldest and most widely used "binding agents" in both home and commercial winemaking. It is usually added to red wines (or fruit wines, which contain a lot of tannins) in a concentration of 50 to 250 milligrams per liter. Before use, the egg whites are lightly beaten with a whisk and added to the container with the wine with thorough but gentle stirring (so as not to unnecessarily aerate the wine). The container with wine is then left in a calm state for a period of several days to several weeks, until the sediment completely falls to the bottom. As soon as this happens, it is necessary to siphon the wine into another clean container where it will ripen.

There are also industrial preparations based on proteins of various origins: from casein (milk protein), gelatin and ending with pea protein. But working with such preparations requires skill and considerable experience of the winemaker, as well as the presence and careful adherence to recommendations for their use.

Polyvinyl chloride is a synthetic polymer powder; preparations based on it are sold in stores for home winemakers. As a rule, it is added to wine in volumes from 120 to 400 milligrams per liter with thorough mixing. Then the wine is also allowed to sit for a while, and then it is poured into another clean container. In addition to softening the bitterness, in this way it will also be possible to remove brown tones in white wines.

If the necessary measures are not taken in a timely manner, bitterness in homemade wine can ruin an entire batch of prepared alcoholic beverage. As a rule, its appearance is observed due to a gross violation of manufacturing technology. The taste of wine can be corrected only in the early stages - immediately after bitterness appears. At the same time, in the later stages of alcohol maturation, it becomes almost impossible to eliminate such a problem.

Causes and methods of eliminating bitter taste

The situation when wine tastes bitter is familiar to almost every novice winemaker. This disappointing result could be due to several reasons. Consequently, methods for eliminating bitter taste will also be different in each specific case.

Incorrect juice extraction technology

This is one of the most common situations, causing the problem in more than 50% of cases. It is typical for cherry, grape and apple wines, but can manifest itself when using other berries and fruits. The problem arises as a result of excessively strong grinding of the raw materials used and subsequent squeezing using a press. This technology leads to damage to the integrity of the seeds, which contain large amounts of tannins and tannins. It is they that, when they get into the juice, lead to the appearance of bitterness.

Prevention.

Berries or fruits should be crushed without seeds and in more gentle ways that do not damage the seeds.

How to get rid of the problem.

Using egg whites removes some of the tannins. Break 2 chicken eggs, from which the whites will separate, and beat with a whisk until foam appears. In this state, it is added to grape wine in a ratio of 1 to 10 or 100 ml of protein per 1000 ml of drink. The alcohol is thoroughly mixed and transferred to a dark place for 14–20 days until a sediment forms. After this, the wine is filtered using a small rubber tube and bottled.

Spoiled raw materials and overexposure of wort in pulp

Even a few rotten or moldy berries that are processed can cause a bitter taste. In addition, this development of events can be caused by excessive time of aging the juice on the pulp, as a result of which the pulp begins to partially rot.

Prevention.

For winemaking, you need to use only freshly picked berries and fruits. Strictly follow the recipe and drain the juice from the pulp in time.

What to do when such a situation arises.

Using bentonite to clarify the drink will help. It is used in a ratio of 3 grams of the substance per 1000 ml of finished wine. The white clay is poured with cold water, mixed and left for the next 10–12 hours, during which time the bentonite becomes lime. After this, a little more water is added to dilute the mixture and make it more liquid. The resulting liquid is poured into the wine in a thin stream. The container is transferred to a dark place and settled there for the next 5–7 days, after which it is removed from the sediment.

Delayed wine filtration

Long-term settling on the lees is one of the possible reasons why bitterness appears in wine. During the decomposition process, waste products from yeast and fungal cultures give the drink a rancid taste.

Prevention.

Timely and thorough removal of sediment.

How to remove bitter taste.

Clarifying a homemade drink using bentonite or egg white according to the above methods.

Development of pathogenic microflora

Infection of the wort with pathogenic microorganisms provokes its souring. At the same time, the appearance of mold in the early stages and other diseases of wines lead to the appearance of a slight bitterness.

Prevention.

Maintaining the sterility of containers and all related equipment. Strict adherence to the recipe and technology of wine production.

How to fix the problem.

Heat treatment of wine with a bitter taste, during which most of the pathogenic organisms die. Bottles of wine are hermetically sealed, placed in a saucepan and filled with cold water up to the neck. After this, the pan is placed on the stove, and the water in it is heated to 55–60 degrees Celsius. The required temperature is maintained for 5–7 minutes. After this, the container is removed from the heat. The bottles are removed from the pan at the moment when the water in it has cooled to 18–24 degrees Celsius. After 5–6 days from the end of the procedure, the wine is drained from the sediment.