People who create aromatic wine do not immediately become professional winemakers. Sometimes you need to spend more than a dozen years to prepare a high-quality and tasty wine drink. Beginners who decide to do this for the first time often encounter the fact that the created drink begins to smell like vinegar. To prevent this from happening, you need to figure out in advance why wine sometimes turns into vinegar.
Why did the wine go sour?
There are several main reasons why a wine product is turned into vinegar. These include the following:
- The appearance of bacteria in liquid. Most often, an alcoholic drink turns into vinegar if harmful bacteria appear in it. Therefore, experts who have been making wine for many years advise storing it in pre-sterilized jars. This increases shelf life significantly.
- Unsuitable storage conditions. Sometimes a grape drink begins to sour if it is not stored correctly. Most often this happens if the liquid is kept in a too warm room for a long time, where the temperature does not drop below twenty degrees Celsius.
- The content of a large amount of oxygen in the containers where fermentation takes place. If your prepared wine begins to smell like vinegar, it may not have fermented properly.
How to determine it
People who are going to seriously start creating a grape alcoholic drink should know how to distinguish a sour wine from a normal one.
Finding out that wine turns into vinegar is quite simple, and you can do it even without an alcohol meter. The souring process is most often determined by the taste of the liquid and its unpleasant odor. Wine that begins to spoil smells unpleasant and has a sour taste. Over time it smells a little like vinegar. At the same time, the acidity of the taste increases several times. Therefore, to check whether a drink is turning sour or not, just smell it and test the taste. During the test, it is recommended to drink no more than 2-3 sips, as a spoiled drink can negatively affect your well-being.
How to fix spoiled wine
Many people are interested in whether it is possible to save a wine drink on their own if it has begun to sour.This can be done only in the first forty-eight hours after the start of the souring procedure.
However, experienced winemakers recommend doing this in the first hours, as this increases the likelihood of restoring the taste of the wine.
There are several ways to help get rid of the unpleasant vinegar aroma. However, the most effective method is pasteurization, which is performed in several stages:
- first you need to remove the gray film that appears on the surface;
- distill the liquid into clean, sterilized containers;
- place the filled container in a pan with water;
- place the container with bottles on the gas stove and heat for half an hour;
- transfer the vat with filled bottles to a room with an air temperature of about 9-10 degrees.
Prevention measures
There are several useful tips that will help you avoid turning a wine drink into vinegar:
- Prepare grape liquid only from high-quality berries. Grapes must be sorted in advance to get rid of rotten and spoiled berries.
- Sterilize dishes. Experts advise first sterilizing the containers in which the drink will ferment and be stored in the future.
- The wine cap should be periodically immersed in the must. This is done so that the drink does not start to spoil.
- Use quality lids. During the fermentation process, you need to use good water seals that will prevent air from getting inside the containers.
Is it possible to make vinegar from sour wine?
Sometimes time runs out quickly, and people do not have time to save wine that has begun to sour. In this case, you can simply throw away the spoiled drink or make vinegar from it, which is often used by people in everyday life.The vinegar liquid made from wine is very aromatic and is therefore added to various dishes to add a little piquancy to their taste.
To prepare wine vinegar, containers with liquid are opened and left open for 2-3 weeks. In this case, the drink should be infused at a temperature of at least 20-25 degrees above zero. Under such conditions, the liquid will quickly turn sour and turn into vinegar.
Methods of using tartaric acetic acid
If something went wrong during fermentation and you get acetic acid instead of wine, you shouldn’t be upset, as it can also be used. Most often people use it in:
- Culinary field. Many housewives and professional chefs use acid in cooking. On its basis, aromatic sauces are made, which in the future are added to vegetable salads. This vinegar is also used for marinating meat products or fish.
- Life. Spoiled young wine that has begun to sour can also be used at home. For example, it can be used to easily remove dirt from clothes or dishes. This liquid is also used for washing clothes to make the fabric softer.
Is it possible to drink wine that has turned to vinegar?
Spoiled and sour wine has lost everything useful that makes it drinkable.
Therefore, if it has a vinegar taste, it is recommended to refrain from drinking such a drink.
Conclusion
People who have never made wine drinks often find themselves smelling like vinegar. To avoid such a problem, you need to become familiar with the prevention of its occurrence and methods for restoring sour wine.
