First time wine making from juice - Have a question?

[Molydeii]

Hi Everyone,

Several days ago I tried to ferment my first wine, using %100 Apple juice, sugar, regular bread yeast and a 1,5L plastic bottle covered with a baloon with pin holes on it.

This morning, after some five days since I started, the bubbles and the foam disappeared from the surface of the liquid so I poured the juice into another bottle. It has an overall cloıdy apperance, I tasted a bit and it surely tastes alcohol. The problem is, it smells really bad. Not like vinegar bad, but like a heavy apple/stale bread bad. From what I have tasted , it is bitter, not like vinegar bitter, but bitter like very dry. I wasn't expecting that. It also has a very disticntive smell that I cannot relate with anything, maybe bread dough gone sour. As I am writing this, that smell is on my hands, it is that heavy.

What can I do to sweeten it a bit before I drink it? any advices? I looked aroud the web and there are lots of things being said. I thought it may be better to ask in person to more experienced brewers.

This juice was an experiement for me, befıre starting to brew more. While it was brewing I bought two airlocks (S) type, wine yeast, cartons of %100 grape and%100 apple juice. I browsed through the web and found this forum and wanted to ask to experienced members to what can I do to avoid that smell and bitter dryness next time.

I live in a country where campden tablets, hydrometers or elese are not availible on the market. All I can reach are wine yeast, airlocks, %100 fruit juices. Is there anything I can do to make the next batch better?

ALso keeo in mind that English is a learned language for me, so I am hoping my English is making some sense.

Thank you in advance.

Cheers,

 

[Seamonkey84]

You’re likely smelling/tasting the sulfur from stressed yeast. Also, Apple juice contains some acids that are very noticeable when a apple wine is young. both are fixed with time, so let it age. gently degassing it can help It taste better sooner. To sweeten it, you’d have to let it ferment until the yeast can’t take the alcohol level Any more and stop, then any sugar you add are are left will remain. That can take a long time to make sure it’s stable before bottleing, and will take longer to age since there’s higher alcohol and the yeast are more stressed.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Molydeii - and welcome. Sounds to me that the real problem is coming from the fact that you used bread yeast rather than a wine yeast. Bread yeast tends to stay in solution and not drop out in the way that wine yeasts have been cultured to do, and so the yeast cells will be in every drop of the wine.
The bitterness is the effect of a wine that is quite acidic without any sweetness to counter balance the acidity. What you might try - and this avoids the problems that Seamonkey84 refers to - is to treat your wine much like we treat coffee and tea in the US. Each person adds sugar (or not) to the drink in their cup. In other words, pour yourself a glass of wine and add enough sugar so that it balances the bitterness.
If you cannot obtain an hydrometer (which here is not expensive) can you obtain a refractometer? This works not by measuring the density of a liquid compared to pure water but by measuring how much light is bent as it enters a liquid. The problem with refractometers is that it uses water as the medium and so you need to use charts to convert readings when the liquid is not water (with sugar) but water AND alcohol with or without sugar. Refractometers may be available because they are often used by people measuring pollutants in water whereas hydrometers tend to be used by wine makers (although they were often used to make sure that you had added enough anti-freeze to car radiators).

By the way, your English is excellent and your post very clear.