Elderflower champagne - thickness problem

[ramfucious]

My elderflower champagne is coming out thick & gloopy from the fermentation bin, & I think this is stopping the yeast from doing its thing in the bottles. Is this from pectin in the lemons or the elderflowers?

The recipe I'm using is:
20 litres water
2 kg sugar
6 lemons sliced
2 oranges sliced
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
40 or so elderflower heads

anyone had this problem before? any ideas how I can stop it getting so thick?

[red]

eh does not sound good... would you call it ropey? this is something that can happen to wine making...

[MKG]

Doop doop

What on earth is vinegar doing in there???????

[ramfucious]

all the rtecipes i've seen include white wine vinegar, though I put a minimal 1 tbsp in because I suspect it ruins the taste

[ina]

Doop doop

What on earth is vinegar doing in there???????

The same as the lemons, I suspect - adding acidity.

[MKG]

Acetic acid does NOT add merely acidity. It will begin a reaction which will, eventually, turn anything you've added it to to - surprise - more vinegar. One of the symptoms of excessive acetification is a certain viscosity - a ropiness - in the wine (which won't be wine for much longer). In fact, it's the beginnings of a thing called a vinegar mother. Great if you want to make vinegar, otherwise ....

I'm surprised about these recipes. One of the basic rules of winemaking is to avoid acetification at all costs.

[ocailleagh]

Yup, MKG is quite right. But hey, it might not be a total loss since you could get a nice vinegar out of it, which could then be used for any number of things!

[ramfucious]

One of the symptoms of excessive acetification is a certain viscosity - a ropiness

so would you suggest trying without the vinegar, maybe even less lemons?

[MKG]

I would certainly leave out the vinegar. I've no idea why any winemaking recipe should have it in - it's begging for trouble. Citric acid (the oranges and lemons) is usually added because it helps the yeast, aids flavour and prevents bacterial infection (usually) - and the amount here is about right. Residual pectin in a must doesn't thicken the wine, but it does induce a haze (harmless) which can be difficult to clear (adding a teaspoonful of a pectin-destroying enzyme at the outset prevents this, but a lot of people don't like the idea).

Your description of your wine leads me to believe that you have a bacterial infection of some kind - and it may well be acetobacter introduced with the vinegar. Normally, if this kind of thing happens, you dose the wine heavily with sodium metabisulphite, give it a good stir, put the whole thing under an airlock and keep your fingers crossed.

I think that one of the problems with the recipe is that it's obviously not intended to produce a very alcoholic result. 2 kg of sugar in 20 litres wouldn't produce more than 5% alcohol at best. I suspect that it's an old recipe (or, at least, it's based on an old one) intended to produce something light and refreshing without too much fermentation (other than to produce bubbles), and if that's the case, the vinegar was probably a very late addition to counteract the overwhelming sweetness of unfermented sugar. I'll look up and post a more modern one for you.

EDIT: I see the problem now - the version you're trying to make doesn't ferment at all - there should be no yeast in it whatsoever. That explains the vinegar. And I didn't have to look very far for answers - there's a good article on elderflowers/berries on this site.

http://www.selfsufficientish.com/elderflowercordial.htm

Have a look there and you'll see what I mean. The whole point is that acetobacter (or good old plain vinegar) will happily sit and turn alcohol into more vinegar all day - that's its purpose in life. And I have to say that even if I wanted to make the non-alcoholic version, I'd still leave out the vinegar and replace it with a little tartaric acid, maybe. And even then (oh, I do go on!!!) what you'll have is a sugar solution sitting around pleading for a yeast cell or two to drop into it and ferment it, and unless you're scrupulously sterile when you make it up, that's exactly what will happen - there are yeast cells floating through the air, and lots of them on elderflowers.

There's a recipe there for elderflower wine. If you made up a batch of that but cut the sugar down to 2 lbs, fermented it to absolute dryness, racked it off as described but, instead of maturing it, bottled it with the addition of a half level teaspoon of sugar per bottle (making sure that your bottles will stand the pressure), tied down the corks and THEN left it for a couple of weeks, then you'd have a stable (and alcoholic - 10%) elderflower champagne.

[MrsD'ville]

I made my champagne without vinegar, but it just tasted like yeasty sugar water, yeeuch. The others like it but I think it's horrible! Am sticking to cordial in future I think.

[MKG]

I looked at the contents listing for a commercial non-alcoholic elderflower champagne in a health food shop the other day. There wasn't a trace of vinegar of any description, but it DID contain what I would have considered to be a high load of lemon juice and citric acid.

I think that, for the recipe you listed at the start of this thread, I'd halve the sugar, do away with the wine vinegar and add a level teaspoon of citric acid (or stick another lemon in). That might do the trick.

[ramfucious]

Thanks MKG I've made up another batch along those lines & there was no gloopiness when bottling. Just waiting for the yeast to work, then hopefully get in another few batches before the flowers are finished