HI GUYS, a freind made some pear wine and its been in the secondary
about 2 months with airlock attached. i realize its young but it has a
very bitter taste compared to the pear i made this year at 2 months. he
said he didnt use acid blend but did use the other additives in the
recipe. is it acceptable to add the acid blend now or is it a lost
cause? this is a 6 gallon batch. best regards, lucas

You can add it any time, but before fermentation is usually better. I
never add it before fermenting mead as a heads up, the increase in acid
is too unpredictable. A lot of country wines are like that.

I'm not sure more acid will help bitterness, are you sure he did not
crush some seeds or something like that? If you do add it measure out
the expected amount and put it in in small increments; you can always
add more.

Joe

thanks for your reply. i ll give it the acid blend and see how it is.
best regards,lucas

http://www.minibite.com/america/malone.htm

Just be aware that acid will not balance bitterness.
Steve
> wrote in message
...
> thanks for your reply. i ll give it the acid blend and see how it is.
> best regards,lucas
>
> http://www.minibite.com/america/malone.htm
>

As another poster mentioned, acid blend on its own won't balance bitterness.
You might want to taste the wine again to make sure it's bitter you're
tasting ... pick up a bit of grape tannin from the homebrew store, mix a bit
with some water, and taste that. Or brew some really strong tea and take a
tiny sip. These are bitter things ... then (after eating some bread and
drinking some water to get the previous taste out of your mouth) retaste the
wine.

If you're still convinced that what you're tasting is bitterness, I
recommend trying a fining with PVPP fining like Polayclar VT
(http://www.morebeer.com/product.html?product_id=16810). This will either
do nothing or work miracles. I made apricot meade with pureed dried
apricots a few years ago which turned out very bitter (since I actually
pureed the reconstituted dried apricots, skins an all, in a blender) and
dark. A fining with PVPP removed the bitterness, lightened the color to a
nice amber, and left just a wonderful wine. So, I would try this first.
Some sources indicate that you need to filter your wine after fining with
PVPP, but I just let it settle and racked, and had no problems.

If you think the wine is still bitter after fining with PVPP, you could try
fining with gelatin. You can either use unflavored gelatin from the grocery
store or by gelatin sold by your homebrew store specifically for fining.
Gelatin fining will also remove tannin from wine, and tannins are bitter.
You need to add the gelatin to the wine while it's still warm, and mix well.
Don't forget to bump up the potassium metabisulfite a bit to compensate for
the air exposure.

If even after the gelatin fining, you still think the wine is bitter, you
can either try some additional gelating finings, decide the wine is good
enough and leave it alone, or discard and start over. One other option
would be to try adding some spices (cinnamon/cloves/ginger) and both acid
blend and sugar to mask the bitterness, but you'll end up with a very
different wine of course.

It's also worthwine to reflect back a bit and try to determine where this
bitterness came from. Were there a lot of seeds or stems included, or were
these pureed in a blender?

In any event, good luck!

Jon
[Check out my winemaking homepage at
http://users.rcn.com/jcgilliam/Southeast_PA_Winemaker/!]

> wrote in message
...
> HI GUYS, a freind made some pear wine and its been in the secondary
> about 2 months with airlock attached. i realize its young but it has a
> very bitter taste compared to the pear i made this year at 2 months. he
> said he didnt use acid blend but did use the other additives in the
> recipe. is it acceptable to add the acid blend now or is it a lost
> cause? this is a 6 gallon batch. best regards, lucas
>