Recipes,PLEASE!

[ray7]

With carrot wine you need to leave it for 12 months before drinking it tastes disgusting if you try to drink it too soon but is quite nice after the first year and just keeps getting better.
Also I don`t cook the carrots but put them through a juice extracter.
Raisins can be used in any recipe in place of grape juice concentrate.

[Cheezy]

the wine looked clear and was sparkling and tasted a bit like a cheap fizzy wine but it smelt a bit odd and had a muddy sort of after taste. Does this mean that the wine is off? Is it possible for it to have gone mouldy without any mould being present in the wine itself or does it just need longer to mature? Any advice would be appreciated.

This could be several things:

1. most "mouldy" smells are when the wine is "corked"..are you using real corks to seal the bottles, if so this could be the problem. Corks carry a fungal infection (I think)which spoils the wine. This happens to 5% of all commercial wine that use real corks , hence the move to plastic/screw tops, cos if you think how many millions of bottels 5% would be...
Upside is it is usually limited to only a few bottles, depending if the batch of corks you used are all from the same bit of cork.

2. It could be an infection, this usually shows itself with some cloudiness but it could be early stages, and can smell of mould/sulphur/vinegar depending on the infection.

3. could be the smell of the yeast, as you've obviously bottle fermented it due to the fizziness.

[chadspad]

Hi all,
What sort of percentage alcohol content are these types of wines or do they differ?
Bought this 'special yeast' off Ebay last year that claimed to turn any type of carton juice into 11% alcoholic wine within short space of time. Made several batches, all of different varieties and they were all equally vulgar lol. The alcohol was definitely present but they all tasted of cheap wine with no flavour of the original juice left.
Wendy

[ray7]

Hi all,
What sort of percentage alcohol content are these types of wines or do they differ?
Bought this 'special yeast' off Ebay last year that claimed to turn any type of carton juice into 11% alcoholic wine within short space of time. Made several batches, all of different varieties and they were all equally vulgar lol. The alcohol was definitely present but they all tasted of cheap wine with no flavour of the original juice left.
Wendy

Normal wine yeast will ferment out to well over 11% by volume if you are useing a good balanced recipe. You can get yeast that will ferment out to 22-24% and is used for the liqueur kits that you can buy.

[Wombat]

Wow, Ray,

That would lift the top of your head off like a frisbee!

Nev

[ray7]

Depends on how much you drink.
I have a recipe for Imperial Russian Stout that is 10.2% by volume. Not bad for a beer.

[Wombat]

Fair enough

Nev

[Cheezy]

I used to buy Boots high tolerence yeast, guarenteed not to drop out less than 16% alcohol.

The stuff was absolutely minging, very dry (unless you where fermenting root crops)and always gave a shocking hangover (even if you just sniffed the stuff)

I did as told with the temperature,but I know that if forced yeast will make the easier (thermodymanically) alcohol, which is methanol

And it's "woodspirit" that gives the really BAD hangovers. Hell it can kill you.

All modern wine production now uses temperature contolled stainless steel vats so to control the rate of reaction. I think the old advice of 68 deg F is about right, but possibly a little lower and you'll get a slower fermentation, resulting in less hangovers.

Don't go for the amount of alcohol, go for taste and lack of hangover, cos if you want to get wasted you could always open another bottle!