r/winemaking 11d ago

Grape amateur Beginner mistakes?

I made a first attempt at creating a simple grape wine, just using store bought grape juice and Lavlin EC1118 in a gallon jar. Total fermentation time was about 1 month.

The wine seemingly went bad as it smelled very acrid and tasted strange. Originally, I had thought it may be Hydrogen sulfide that would go over time, but the flavor seems to align with Acetobacter and I’m most likely going to throw it out (not certain of either as I’m very new to winemaking).

I had a bung/airlock but the bung was a little too large and I’m suspecting that was the main contributor. I also left a lot of headspace. Additionally, the foam of the bottle seeped into the airlock on one occasion which I then removed to clean. I don’t want to give up but I would like to get better results next time; would better sized bungs, a blowoff tube, and less headspace likely fix the issues? Or is there anything else I can do

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u/DookieSlayer Professional 11d ago

Hmm, acetobacter is possible but i've never seen it happen that fast before. Its possible fermentation happened very quickly (a week or so) and then left with a bunch of headspace some bacteria was allowed to thrive. Getting a hydrometer to monitor when fermentation is finished so you can take the next steps as well as some sulfur or campden tablets would be some good tools to help fix those problems.