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Welcome, glad you found the site.

I agree with your decision. There is a lot of personal investment of time, thought, $ in making a batch of wine and it’s not worth having it go bad on taking a chance on an unknown.

I think it depends on how many bottles you are going to make. I’ve run over 10k bottles through my used Ferrari that I think I paid $50 for and it has never skipped a beat. If you are going to be making thousands of bottles, I would look for a unit with brass jaws. Used ones do come quite...

They look like thick HDPE, which is what flextanks and speidels are made of. I agree with @Rocky that if the containers are porous the potential exists to harbor spoilage bacteria. If they are slick on the inside, you can confirm they are HDPE, a good brushing and soaking with PBW and I’d put...

@crushday, great plan. I think the two steps that have improved the wines the most (once getting the basics down) are doing a 5-10% saignee and the use of as much free run in my primary barrel. The saignee brings out the depth of flavor, the free run a softness, both are qualities I like most...

The forecast I have heard for this year is that it will be a full and good crop, but delayed past the recent decade norm. There are some varieties that are always last to ripen in the vineyard and those are the varieties that have to be managed closely. Reducing crop load and watching...

I would not chase a number. If it tastes good, I would leave it alone. I think more wine has been made worse by making post fermentation adjustments than making an improvement.

I did not get any snow at my 1000 foot elevation, but it has been very very wet and colder than the norm.

A much different year!!! 3/8/22 Start of bud break. 10% of vines 3/25/22 All the vines have shoots, started mini suckering. 3/28/22 Suckering pass all vines 3/31/22 First spray sulphur 4/4/22 continuous suckering and mowing Versus 4/5/23 Buds are swelling but no bud break...

I've drawn wine into glass carboys many times with the AIO. The AIO creates the vacuum in the carboy and draws the wine in from whatever vessel you have. The limitation is that the vessel you are drawing into has to be able to withstand the vacuum without collapsing, as could happen with...

And that is why it was named an AIO; it does a nice job vacuum racking into carboys as well as a very capable vacuum bottling system. Both at racking and bottling, the wine has minimal exposure to oxygen. For <$300 it is a good tool to have in the wine making toolbox.

I predominately make wine from grapes in barrels. I've used an All-in-one (AIO )on over 10K bottles, works like a champ. However, I always rack out of the barrel, into another container, prior to bottling, to prevent sediment in the bottle. As long as your bottle filling height is higher than...

Very nice write-up with explanations. Helpful.

I racked the 2022 Cab Franc barrel yesterday. The fruit was really good and the ferment was clean. There was some residual sugar that looks like fermented out in the barrel. The lees were light and silty. Based on what came out, the racking was probably unnecessary, however, there is...

My overall process has been: - crush (late Aug) - ferment (1 week) - press - let sit for 24 hrs - pump to barrel - mlf (6-12 weeks) - rack - optional rack, depending on grape quality and ferment** (April) - rack to Spiedels a day before bottling - bottle (Aug) I’ve seen the benefit of letting...

Such a blessing to meet such wonderful people on the forum. Continuous education credit and @crushday had a twist that changed my view on a segment of wine making I had never cared for.

Looking forward to it.

Cookies for a bridal shower.

We had our tasting review last night and it did not disappoint. There was a twist, that I couldn't reveal, for reasons you will understand. The last time @crushday was in Nor Cal picking up grapes, he gifted us cases of wine. What he didn't know was that one of the samples in each of the sets...

I should have added that all the black label wines were all made from Cab Franc grapes from the same vineyard in Northern California. The red label wines are any variety wine that the winemaker wanted to enter. @crushday is to rank each set of wine favorite to least favorite.