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Wait a minute. All this sounds like you just let it sit in one carboy for 6-12 months. You should rack it off the sediment into a clean carboy every 3 months. (Or you can go into a clean bucket, wash your carboy and back into the carboy if you only have 1 carboy.)If you leave 90% of the sediment...

If you put your freshly picked elderberries in a bucket or bowl of water, the green ones will float, as they are less heavy with sugar than the ripe ones. You might be surprised at the percentage of unripe ones, as I am. I doubt this is what's causing your green color, though. I agree that you...

Here are some pics of my line posts. They are 2 inch galvanized pipe uprights with 1 inch cross bars welded on and holes drilled in the cross bars near the ends. The wires are 5 and a half feet high, so I'm constantly getting my hat knocked off. The cross bars are 4 feet long, putting the wires...

I have a quart trigger spray bottle I use for k-meta sanitizing. You can get them in the mop and broom area in grocery stores and Walmart. I make up about a pint or pint and a half of sanitizing solution. For a clean 8 gallon bucket, I spray the sides, bottom, and lid, put the lid on for a few...

I have the opportunity to get some free carboys that are currently being used to turn wine into vinegar. This is one instance where I'm thinking it would be ok to violate the "no chlorine" rule. I was thinking I would bathe them inside and out with bleach and detergent, rinse thoroughly a few...

Maybe you could post in the classifieds section to be seen by people looking to buy equipment.

One reason why a wine will read .988 is that it has a lot of alcohol. Since alcohol is less dense or lighter than water, the more alcohol, the farther below 1.000. If you started your wine at 1.080, it might go to .996 or something. If you started it at 1.110, you have more potential alcohol and...

JustJoe, I couldn't get the quote thing to work. Here's a cake or cookie pan cooling rack used for picking elderberries. If I can do a picture. You kind of fling the bract onto the wires at a diagonal angle coming up or going down. It takes some practice and experimentation.

I make about 50 some gallons of wine a year. I don't own non vented stoppers for my carboys. It's always an airlock or a vented silicone stopper as described above. There's no reason to ever put a stopper in your carboys unless they're empty.

Green goo is attracted to latex like a magnet. I put on latex exam gloves, the kind you get a hundred pairs in a box, wash any powder off, then slosh my gloved hands in the must. The gloves will be covered with the goo. I just peel them off and toss.

Vintners Harvest makes a pure elderberry concentrate. Last I checked it was more expensive than the Vintners Best.

In a bucket with a towel over it? Initial stage of fermentation needs oxygen.

It's a plant growth hormone. Good question. Maybe something, maybe nothing.

More ways to skin a cat. We shake them off the vine and don't pick stems.

2,4-D can drift a mile. I don't even make any attempt to find out where it comes from. The only serious thing it has done to me (I think) is to delay my crop. Not a good thing on the northern edge of the zone. Last year there was a lot of dicamba damage all around me.

I grow muscadines. Never heard of fanleaf virus. I always thought this was drift, since I'm 30 feet from corn, beans, and wheat. Now I wonder.

Dennis, I don't know what zone you're in, but if you're too far north, you may lose some vine due to: excessively cold winter temperatures or early extreme cold in the fall. I have had this happen a couple of times from the excessive cold over the winter. Muscadines have a heat accumulation...

I grow, in order of quantity, Delicious, Tara, Ison, Triumph, Eudora, Majesty, Darlene, Supreme, Unknown, and Big Red. For those of you scratching your heads and thinking WTH? Yes, Heck. These are muscadines, native to the southeastern U. S. The source of America's first commercial wine. They...

Might get more response from people growing vines if you post in the Grapegrowing and Vineyard forum

Google is your friend. Simple syrup is 1 cup of water and 2 cups of sugar. Or you can go by weight and it's a little more sugar to make twice the weight of water. Boil the water, add the sugar, stir and heat until it's a clear syrup. Inverted sugar syrup is the same thing except you add a small...