# my wine is too syrupy...



## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

My first attempt at making choke cherry wine! However it's turned out too syrupy....sweet...any thoughts as to what I did wrong? It tastes good when we add tonic water to it but that is on the sweet side too....I'm planning to make more of it and blueberry, raspberry & strawberry.....


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## kirkmcquest (Oct 21, 2010)

If it is sweet then the yeast did not complete the job of turning the sugars into alcohol. You may have added sugar? If you added sugar and used a yeast that could only tolerate a certain level of alcohol, then your yeast might have died before all ( or most ) of the sugar was converted.

Either use a yeast with higher tolerance, or cut down on the sugar. Did you interrupt the fermentation too soon? Did your yeast die halfway through? If you explain your process, it might be more helpful.


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

I agree with kirkmcquest. When making wine in the winter, you have to make sure that your wine making area is not too cold.

It's possible to hit the wine with yeast again, but you have to catch it as soon as possible and even then it may not work.

How much did you make? It's possible to blend a VERY dry wine with it to temper it a bit.

Did you use a hydrometer to check your sugar levels both before and after adding the sugar?

I have 30 lbs. of bluberries in the freezer waiting for me to get the ambition to make the wine. Blueberry is by far the best I've made. DH likes rhubarb, but it's, well...._sort_ of good if you let it sit for a year or so.


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## laughaha (Mar 4, 2008)

You ended up making a chokecherry cordial. Sounds Yummy!!

Should be good on icecream, pancakes, etc. Adults only though.


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## 7thswan (Nov 18, 2008)

I'm no help,but could you add some juice to it and have it get fermenting again? See I take whatever,put in jar, add sugar. It ferments, dh tastes it for me,if it's not sweet enough, I add more sugar and it goes to fermenting again. Repeat or not. It works every time, I don't know why. All the winemakeing stuff I bought just went to waste. Oh ya,it does it's thing ontop of the refrig. When it's done I put it in canning jars and in the Pantry.


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## Randy Rooster (Dec 14, 2004)

Long time wine maker here. Ive never used a hydrometer but I always use tried and true recipes. If you started out with fruit with too high a sugar content ( Ive never seen this happen) or added too much sugar, and/or did not use a good wine yeast - those could all be reasons why your wine was too sweet. Did you use a good wine yeast and which one did you use? Different yeasts will tolerate different alcohol contents and the more sugar they turn into alcohol, the drier ( less sweet) your wine will be.

different yeasts will also have optimum temperatures at which they will ferment your juice into wine- Most good wine yeasts can tolerate temperatures down to about 60 degrees though the fermentation will be slower the lower the temp.

Here is a good wine yeast chart

http://www.winemakermag.com/guide/yeast


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## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

Thanks everyone! The tip to use it on ice cream made my husband smile from ear to ear!
I went by the recipe out of How to Make Wine In Your Own Kitchen book...the yeast I used was fleischmann's for bread and the room I kept it in was cool....I did use an enamel pot to let it do it's thing...not sure if that had anything to do with it too? The sugar amount was exact though :shrug:


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## Randy Rooster (Dec 14, 2004)

Bread yeasts do not have very high alcohol tolerance and in many cases tolerance for sugar when using it for wine- adding too much sugar to such a yeast will often kill off the yeasts reproduction cycle - my bet is that if you wanted to " fix" your wine you could add a good wine yeast to it now and it would continue to ferment and make it dryer or dry it right out.


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## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

Our choke cherry wine is most excellent over vanilla ice cream :goodjob:


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## Riverdale (Jan 20, 2008)

The recipe you used would be very helpful to solve your problem 

btw, I have brewed beer and made mead for 20+ years.


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## Saffron (May 24, 2006)

I prefer sweet wines, I can't tolerate dry wines. So we make sweet wines all the time. Unfortunately, I can't help you as I don't use any kits or use the new ways. I have an old-fashioned recipe from an older lady and it doesn't even require added yeast(it uses natural).
~No, I don't want to hear about how dangerous this is or unsafe or anything else. We produce delicious and excellent wines this way.~

However, it looks as though you have a lot of good help here, so I'm sure y'all will figure it out.


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## NostalgicGranny (Aug 22, 2007)

I've used bread yeast before with no problem. Sounds like your recipe called for too much sugar. You could try to cook it up and make a real syrup out of it for pancakes and ice cream.


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## Lucy (May 15, 2006)

Sounds better to me the way you have it. Maybe make some wine jelly or can fruit in it ?


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## HappyYooper (Jan 26, 2005)

Choke Cherry Wine ingredients:
1st 2 weeks: 4 qts. of ripe choke cherries, 4 qts. of water
2nd 2 weeks: 8 cups of sugar, 2 cups of raisins, finely chopped, 1 package of dry granulated yeast.
I'm using the How To Make Wine In Your Own Kitchen by Mettja C. Roate 1963
In this book I found recipes for wine that do not use yeast.
BTW....we finished off the last of it about an hour ago


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## stanb999 (Jan 30, 2005)

It looks to me like you had too much sugar. Your berries may have been sweeter. 8 cups of sugar is like 2 pounds... Way too much. That would give you at least 12% on it's own with the berries and rasins your likely around 15% of fermentables. Bread yeast in a perfect enviroment will get to 14%.. I said perfect. But most likely stopped at around 10. So you had a sweet wine because the temperature of fermintation was probably to lo to start then to hi for the finish... 

Next time add 1 cup of sugar. You will end up with a drinkable 10% or so table wine.

or 

Start the carboy with a temp in the upper 70's after a week drop it to the 60's. After a week drop the temp to the mid fifties. Let it stay on the yeast cake the whole time. At a month. decant it into a fresh container to clear.

or
Start with a modern wine yeast. It will be much more temperature tolerant. But the recipe is still rather hi in sugar for wine. The wine will knock you on your butt. If it fermented all that. FYI 15% = 30 proof.


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