|On Thu, 27 May 2004, john west++++ wrote:
||> OMG, Night Train! LOL!! Used to suck it down when I was a kid! Used to
||> drink a lot of Gallo Hearty Burgundy too, 1.5 litres a night.....
||> In America we are being bombarded by East European wines, Romanian,
||> Serbian, etc; is this happening across the pond as well?
||> Bob<><
||
||i think i've seen mad dog, but not night train. not a lot of extra east
||european wines lately here, although we have always had some imported
||from some east european countries over the years.
||its not that 'sweetener' is needed; more like something to counteract
||the 'vinegar' taste.
|
|Then it is merely a matter of controlling the pH level?

On second thought, you may be referring to the taste of acetaldehyde,
a rather harsh and unpleasant byproduct of distilling mash at too high of
a temperature. East European wines may be compensating for poor crop
production by distilling a mash at a high temperature, and then
supplementing the wine with an unnaturally high level of alcohol.
(And then people wonder why your tariffs are set up the way they are,
they are there to protect you from those countries with poor consumer
products.) You might be able to extract the acetaldehyde by causing the
beverage to undergo a second distillation employing a cold 'vacuum'
instead of high heat. The liquid is still passed through a coil to
condense it, but the molecular weight for acetaldehyde implies a
different condensation temperature, and you might be able to improve
the stuff that way.