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Not mine! Mine is hand crafted wine.

I found that getting the bucket off the floor makes a significant difference. A warm room with a cold floor and even worse a cold concrete basement floor is a lot of work to warm the sides while the floor is stealing the heat from the bottom. Putting it on a table, counter, some blocks...

I learned the hard way that having the fermentation vessel on the floor is the coldest part of the room. If the floor is a slab or concrete basement floor, even worse. I use buckets, so it's easy for me to have them on a table or counter. If your tank is sitting on a cold floor, next time, if...

With regard to only using one variety for wine, no, I don't have enough Tara vines to make wine with just that variety. But most of my other bronze vines are Triumph, and that is a parent of Tara. In fact, I can't distinguish a difference in the two. I eat or give away the few Darlenes i have...

I've had a Big Red vine for 5 years and it hasn't born a grape yet. Your Big Red, Darlene, and Supreme are all females requiring a pollinator. I have about a dozen varieties and the Ison has proven to be a good variety for me. I also have some Darlenes, and a Supreme. The Darlenes are great for...

Not adding anything relevant to the discussion, but I think I count 9 trunks on this muscadine.

Everybody has an opinion. Here's mine. I never get my corks wet if I can help it. I use a corkidor. In order to prevent misunderstandings I'll specify that I keep the corks in it for at least 15 minutes up to an hour or so, whatever time I'm bottling. I say this because someone reported keeping...

Wow! I had no idea phylloxera was a threat as far north as Indiana, especially central Indiana. One more reason I appreciate my muscadines.

I'm mourning the loss of my shmoo roommate. He fell victim to the knife and made 12 quarts of canned pumpkni. @Tonio

I think in this case, it means you're not allowed to get them if anyone is looking.

"Hi, How are you using your nylon bags? Are you using them as a bucket liner? I've only used them to put fruit in them, tie it off and put in the bucket. Thanks." You put the mouth of the bag over the opening of the bucket and turn it down over the lip of the bucket. Then you can shovel or...

Do you have a one gallon bucket or a five gallon bucket? The 5 gallon size will work on 6 gallon buckets, too.

Use wine yeast instead of bread yeast. You can look up on a chart published by the wine yeast companies what the alcohol tolerance of the yeast is. If you're planning to make a sweet wine, you just need to add stabilizing agents and you won't have to backsweeten much. I would let it sit for a...

I have never done MLF on my wines. It reduces harshness, but I've read that it also reduces the fruity taste and aroma. Not a big deal on a dry wine, but if you're making a fruit wine and trying to emulate the flavor of the fruit, it might be counterproductive. I make muscadine, elderberry, and...

It's some kind of gunk. I usually find that when I rack, it is left on the sides of the carboy as the level of the wine subsides.

I use an Allinone. I transfer from bucket to carboy when I press, then rack in a month, more or less, and every 3 months thereafter. I've never had carbon dioxide after that one month rack. My basement is in the 60s.

It will simply take longer to settle out all the suspended solids. Except that you usually still have a little bit of sediment a few weeks after transferring to the primary, so you would have to rack anyway in a month or three. I rack the secondary a few weeks to a month after transfer from the...

I think bkisel's post #4 above is unclear. The amount of sorbate and the amount of k-meta are not the same. He correctly specifies for the k-meta that it's 1/4 tsp for a 5 or 6 gallon batch, but the sorbate amount should be 1/2 teaspoon per gallon, or 2.5 teaspoons in a 5 gallon batch. This is a...

I bought a 96 ounce can of a Vintner's Harvest elderberry wine base about 4 years ago. I don't recall that it had other juices in it. In fact, I'm pretty sure it didn't. It was $49.99 for the can, which was supposed to make a 3 or 5 gallon batch, depending on how full bodied you want the wine...

Using some water with muscadines is common. If you are using more grapes and less water, then you should add less sugar. Think of it this way, the water has no sugar in it and the grapes have some. You are probably going to be asked a whole slew of questions about what you are doing because you...