1st batch, strong alcohol taste

[Jdrbucks]

I have been making homebrew beer for about three years and decided to make my first batch of homemade wine. Found a recipe online for a 5 gallon blueberry batch that seemed pretty simple. Followed the recipe as it said and I have a pretty bad taste. I gave it one month primary fermenter, one month secondary fermenter. It has been about three months since I bottled it and I decided to try it today. Taste like straight rubbing alcohol or something similar. Kind of like the ethanol taste from the unfinished batch of moonshine. Any suggestions or pointers would be welcome. It was my first time so I'm sure I screwed something up. I did however forget to take hydrometer reading before fermenting. Did take one towards the end and it measured at .940. The recipe I followed called for 15 pounds of blueberries and 10 pounds of sugar. I did add approximately 5 pounds of sugar throughout fermenting because I read somewhere that would prevent it from being too dry of a wine. Just trying to figure out if there's anyway to save the 5 gallons of already bottled wine.

 

[bushpilot]

Your extra 5 lbs of sugar fermented, and boosted the abv.

Let it age, taste it again in a year, who knows?

 

[bracconiere]

always one of these...


https://www.amazon.com/VEVOR-Water-...cphy=9030197&hvtargid=pla-1415158862063&psc=1

 

[JulianDave]

I don't think most bone dry fruit wines taste very good. I'd consider sweeting it up a little. Not like a dessert wine, but just enough to get it off of being so dry. If that works then you could either use a nonfermentable sugar, or stabilize and add sugar/honey/whatever.

 

[SatchIce9]

Your final gravity reading of .940? Do you actually mean 0.994, which is more realistic?
Either way, it's below 1.000, which indicates pretty much all of the 10lbs sugar in recipe + 5lbs extra sugar = 15lbs total added sugar (which is quite a lot for 5 gallons), plus the natural sugars in the blueberries, has all fermented out to dryness and raised the alcohol a lot above what is normal for a red table wine (12-14%).
You could unbottle, pour it into a 5 gallon vessel and back-sweeten it and drink it as a dessert style wine. Or you could make another batch with lower amount of sugar and blend the two batches together so it averages out to about 12-14% for a table wine.

 

[bracconiere]

You could unbottle, pour it into a 5 gallon vessel and back-sweeten it and drink it as a dessert style wine. Or you could make another batch with lower amount of sugar and blend the two batches together so it averages out to about 12-14% for a table wine.

you just gave me an idea from another thread about cloudy booze, and absinthe...

how about pouring it in the through a slotted spoon with some sugar cubes in the spoon?

 

[Coffee49]

The cloudiness will settle, I would wait 6 months but watch the corks for push out