I'm new to winemaking. So far, I've made
two kits, one red (merlot) one white (piesporter).
I made the red first, and it's just been sitting in
a carboy for about three months since the last
racking. Then I made a batch of white, decided
to bottle it fairly quickly after the kit procedures
were over, and it actually turned out to be
reasonable, I've been using it as drinking wine
while I wait for the red and make other kits.

Next was an attempt at making just pure
alchohol and make my own liquors from
this. I mixed the alchohol in the same plastic
pail that I had done both the red and the white
wine in (for the initial week of fermentation).
I did make sure to clean the plastic bucket
thoroughly after each batch....but for some
reason....now that I'm racking off what should
be just straight alchohol....it tastes like very
diluted white wine. I'm wondering if maybe
it would be smart to have separate plastic
pails for white, red, and straight alchohol?
Or perhaps it's normal for this alchohol
mix to have a slightly sweet taste? Other
then the degassing, fining steps that I went
through with the wines, I treated the alchohol
mixture in the same way as the wine kits. One
week of fermentation, rack into a carboy, let
it sit there for 3 weeks with an airlock in place.
Today I racked it off, just to get rid of the
junk at the bottom and prepare to rack it off
later into gallon jugs.

The alchohol mixture was 23 liters of water, 11
lbs of sugar and the yeast and chemical mix that
came with the kit.

Thank you in advance for any ideas you might
have.

Ian