I did start out doing a search for "diesel" and it pointed me to a number of interesting sites such as this one http://www.aromadictionary.com/winemakinglist.pdf for describing wines' taste/aroma...
Does anyone know what can cause a wine to smell like diesel? It's a legitimate question here, the second one I had this happen to was a gallon of lime melomel. The one that bothers me most is the 3 gallons of red currant wine because usually that one works out beautifully for me...
Looking back on my logs, I know I have a couple of bad habits: I forget to aerate in primary fermentation, and I tend to rack and forget so sometimes stuff ends up sitting on small amounts of lees.
I suspect the aeration thing is a reason why a friend of mine complains that the "alcohol" taste is front and centre in a lot of my wines, but I'm not sure about the diesel aroma, because the lees thing is common to a lot more than just these two batches and most things turn out fine.
With the diesel-flavoured wine, I think it's just the scent, and it will dissipate eventually, I left a half-bottle of the red currant with a reuseable cork and although a little oxidized it did taste better.
Lime wine had a few mistakes to begin with, low SG of 1.060 and incomplete fermentation, don't remember which yeast I used but it would have been either Lalvin 1118 or 1116, racked off the mesh bag 10 days later, then when racked a year after pitching the comment was "tastes like lime mead" and the SG was steady at 1.010. Then the year after that I bottled it ("tastes like old tyres but tastes refreshing") so it developed the taste sometime in the middle there and I think it was pretty clear but degassing or something which is why I left it another year. Pretty sure the airlock was fine the whole time. Had two corks pop in the basement (fermented lime eats the finish on steel shelving, did you know?) so the rest of the bottles are standing up in the hopes that the corks will dry a bit and let any excessive gases escape and haven't done anything interesting in two years, I keep an eye on them, should open another bottle soon and see if it's any better. Should have sulphited it with that much residual sugar but I was dumb and figured it would be OK as it'd been stable for a year. And when I open one it will be over the sink wearing goggles!
Oddly enough I started the red currant (sorry, wine, not mead, sugar's cheaper) the same week, Lalvin K1V1116 yeast, SG=1.102, racked off the fruit 14 days later, SG of 1.040 and I had an extra 3/4 gal, which I put in a plastic 1 gal jug and squeezed it to minimize headspace. It fermented out nicely and was bottled 10 months after pitching wiht SG=0.992, the remaining 3 gallons were still bubbling at that time (comment "Tastes great!"). Eventually I got sick of waiting for it and hit it with campden tablets because it was starting to taste a little woody, let it sit a couple more months, ultimately bottled almost 2 years after pitching with a SG of 1.005 and right then it had started to go dieselly. It's diminished a bit in the year since it's been bottled (I hate to dump three gallons down the drain) but I think the only way it's drinkable so far is to aerate the hell out of it, been thinking of cutting it with soda water to see if it helps but I keep forgeting to buy some. Also left a couple bottles standing upright in the hopes that the smell would escape. It's fine for cooking with, the smell goes away leaving a nice taste, it's just really unpleasant to drink something stinky...
Anyone else ever mess up in a simiar fashion? The only thing I see in common was that they were in secondary fermentation for a very long time. These are two of the four or five batches I've screwed up in over eighty batches since I started (only one has gone down the drain), so wines and meads seem reasonably tolerant of my inherent laziness... although now that I know more of the science behind why you want to do stuff I'll be paying a little more attention to things like which yeast I use and aeration and stuff. One week with you Gotmead folks and I'm already planning improvements!
Does anyone know what can cause a wine to smell like diesel? It's a legitimate question here, the second one I had this happen to was a gallon of lime melomel. The one that bothers me most is the 3 gallons of red currant wine because usually that one works out beautifully for me...
Looking back on my logs, I know I have a couple of bad habits: I forget to aerate in primary fermentation, and I tend to rack and forget so sometimes stuff ends up sitting on small amounts of lees.
I suspect the aeration thing is a reason why a friend of mine complains that the "alcohol" taste is front and centre in a lot of my wines, but I'm not sure about the diesel aroma, because the lees thing is common to a lot more than just these two batches and most things turn out fine.
With the diesel-flavoured wine, I think it's just the scent, and it will dissipate eventually, I left a half-bottle of the red currant with a reuseable cork and although a little oxidized it did taste better.
Lime wine had a few mistakes to begin with, low SG of 1.060 and incomplete fermentation, don't remember which yeast I used but it would have been either Lalvin 1118 or 1116, racked off the mesh bag 10 days later, then when racked a year after pitching the comment was "tastes like lime mead" and the SG was steady at 1.010. Then the year after that I bottled it ("tastes like old tyres but tastes refreshing") so it developed the taste sometime in the middle there and I think it was pretty clear but degassing or something which is why I left it another year. Pretty sure the airlock was fine the whole time. Had two corks pop in the basement (fermented lime eats the finish on steel shelving, did you know?) so the rest of the bottles are standing up in the hopes that the corks will dry a bit and let any excessive gases escape and haven't done anything interesting in two years, I keep an eye on them, should open another bottle soon and see if it's any better. Should have sulphited it with that much residual sugar but I was dumb and figured it would be OK as it'd been stable for a year. And when I open one it will be over the sink wearing goggles!
Oddly enough I started the red currant (sorry, wine, not mead, sugar's cheaper) the same week, Lalvin K1V1116 yeast, SG=1.102, racked off the fruit 14 days later, SG of 1.040 and I had an extra 3/4 gal, which I put in a plastic 1 gal jug and squeezed it to minimize headspace. It fermented out nicely and was bottled 10 months after pitching wiht SG=0.992, the remaining 3 gallons were still bubbling at that time (comment "Tastes great!"). Eventually I got sick of waiting for it and hit it with campden tablets because it was starting to taste a little woody, let it sit a couple more months, ultimately bottled almost 2 years after pitching with a SG of 1.005 and right then it had started to go dieselly. It's diminished a bit in the year since it's been bottled (I hate to dump three gallons down the drain) but I think the only way it's drinkable so far is to aerate the hell out of it, been thinking of cutting it with soda water to see if it helps but I keep forgeting to buy some. Also left a couple bottles standing upright in the hopes that the smell would escape. It's fine for cooking with, the smell goes away leaving a nice taste, it's just really unpleasant to drink something stinky...
Anyone else ever mess up in a simiar fashion? The only thing I see in common was that they were in secondary fermentation for a very long time. These are two of the four or five batches I've screwed up in over eighty batches since I started (only one has gone down the drain), so wines and meads seem reasonably tolerant of my inherent laziness... although now that I know more of the science behind why you want to do stuff I'll be paying a little more attention to things like which yeast I use and aeration and stuff. One week with you Gotmead folks and I'm already planning improvements!
