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Hi, WildHair; and thank you for the mind words. Yes, to be clear: I did not cool the beets, and I did leave them in primary. I have no idea if this is the best way or not; however, it is how my grandfather did it, so I did it the same way. The results, in my opinion, were good; but I have...

I bottled this wine on Monday evening, 2 October 2017. I was able to get 4 full bottles and just a few tablespoons shy of a fifth bottle; that one will be a "sampler" over the next couple-three weeks, I guess. The particulates in the wine had settled and it was very clear, very beautiful...

Well, I didn't juice the orange - I intended to, but my kids lost a critical part to the juicer. I did remove the pith, though. I cut it out of the skin and peeled most of it off the meat of the orange. The segments I cut in chunks for easy removal. As for the yeast, I am going to gamble...

I started a batch of this tonight; I have seen the same recipe on a couple of forums and finally decided that - given the time frame involving mead - I am not getting any younger. Everything went well, and I think it will turn out quite good. A couple of deviations, more from necessity than...

Well, we never made it over there, but that's alright - I intend moving forward with this recipe. In the meantime, I found another option - this one looks to be written specifically for sweet cherries: http://blog.eckraus.com/sweet-cherry-wine-recipe

I'm honestly not sure, Tom - probably nostalgia.... Smelling that wine brought me right back to my grandpa's garden in rural North Dakota when I was a kid - even though I don't specifically remember him growing any beets. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this turns out; I've heard...

Hi, SB - Thanks for this information; I keep going on and off the fence about sorbate etc., so it is good to have some real-life experience to draw upon. I'll see how this one ends up It's kind of funny because my dad made some about the first time I made my first batch. He literally broke...

Well, a late update on this - Since my last posting, I put it away to bulk-age. For a month or so, I told myself to forget about it, and after a while, I did! Somewhere in that time, I re-filled the air-lock a couple of times, but that's about it. Last night, I took a look at this wine...

Well, my #2 son got into my first batch before it was ready, and to cover his tracks, he replaced a full half of it with water.... I thought of killing him, but decided not to; it's just too damn much hassle, although in the end I might have been able to plead temporary insanity. Instead, I...

Follow-up - 17 January 2017: Between being busy and procrastinating, I was not able to rack this wine over until 17 January. I added 1 crushed campden tablet and topped the gallon off with some extra wine that I had from racking over into secondary. There was a surprisingly-low amount of...

Cheers! Good to see you, too!

I transferred my beet wine to my secondary fermenter last night, 31 October. The wine looked wonderful and smelled nice and "beety," in a good way. As far as I can tell, everything is going just fine. I'll try to forget about it for a couple of weeks while it finishes fermenting and clears a...

Funny thing is - I live in Chinook, Montana. Sugarbeets as an industry and - surprisingly - as a culture have been a "thing" here for a very long time. We had a thriving sugarbeet production here up until the late 1970s or so; we still have a "Sugarbeet Festival" every year, and our high school...

I've been thinking about it, and it definitely might have been the turkey baster itself, since that's where I seemed to be having the most trouble. As far as I could tell it was a decent baster (brand new), but it didn't seem to "hold" the must from bucket to sampling tube, and I would end up...

Hydrometer? :? SG? :? :? :? :? Just kidding - I do have one, and I know how to use it. And I agree that it is the only way to be sure. But with 1-gallon batches, I've encountered many problems using one - all were probably due to operator error. The hydrometer is too tall for the...

Thanks, Pam - I'll add a half-dose when I get home from work and stir the must. I am planning on transferring it to secondary on Sunday, but we'll see how it goes.

Hi, Pam, and thank you for the feedback on this. I am still very much a novice and have no "formal" wine training, so I am always looking to learn, especially with these "country wines." I actually started this project on Saturday, 23 October (I neglected to add that in my opening post) and...

This is still going well, as far as I can tell. Fermentation may or may not be slowing down a bit, but it definitely seems to be taking place. I am loving the colour and even the beet aroma, which brings me right back to my grandfather's garden in North Dakota. On the other hand, I have been...

Montrachet. I would have followed my grandfather's example and used bread yeast; however, I had none on hand. We'll see how it turns out!

Cream Cheese Kit from FarmSteady Cheesemaking is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, probably since childhood, if I think about it. The couple of times that I picked up a book on the craft, however, it seemed like a very esoteric process, involving certain equipment and ingredients...