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Craig - whew that’s a relief I thought I was missing a crucial acronym 😊

I like to filter before bottling. I feel like it insures that the wine will have no residual at the bottom of the bottle. I am uncertain if filtering removes any characteristics of the wine. I attached a picture of my filter. I use a .5 or .1 filter cartridge

So of the two responses it looks like some folks add oak before fermentation and some add after. Maybe I’ll try a little of both this time. Someone actually suggested boiling the oak and adding the brown water. That didn’t sound like a good idea.

Cmason - please excuse my inexperience but what do you mean by during bill adding. Also is it rule of thumb to boil the oak before adding.

I have used oak chips, cubes and spirals. I usually add oak after fermentation when the wine is aging in the carboy - close to bottling time. I've read that the best time to add oak is in the primary fermentation. Does anyone have experience in adding oak.

How about EC1118. That seems to be the safest bet

Also there is a chart on the Scotts Lab website that rates yeast for MLF. ICV D 254 is rated good. Have you used this with MLF? https://scottlab.com/yeast-ml-compatibility

When I did MLF in the past I kept the wine at 70-75 degrees until MFL was complete. Is it necessary to do the same until MLF completion

I buy 6 gallon pails of pasteurized juice. I have done MLF in the past but stopped after one pail didn't take. This year I would like to try coinoculation mainly for the time it takes. I have Merlot, Cab Sav, Cab Franc, Montepulciano, Zinfandel, Carignan and Barbera. I usually add sugar before...

I followed the directions and sunk them into the ground up to the graft and put a mound up to the shoots - Why? If I just put the roots in and it sprouted shoots below the graft would I have two different types of grapes?

Just planted 6 Cab vines in my yard that has a sprinkler system for the grass. I have it on 15 minutes in the AM and 15 minutes in the PM. Is that too much or too little for freshly planted grafted vines?

Oh man I put it in already but I'm going to filter with a 5 micron from filterfast before bottling. Hopefully that will help.

I just added tannin (powdered from LD Carlson) to my red carboys. They were racked 3 times already. How long do I need to wait before I bottle.

I have had some success with MLF and pasteurized juice before. When a couple of carboys didn't seem to go through MLF I turned to this forum. Someone posted the there is no need for MLF in pasteurized juice - maybe they thought it was a kit. I already added SO2. Hopefully the tannin will smooth...

I have 6 carboys of different reds aging and should be ready to be bottled. They are all started from pasteurized juice (Festa juice). They all seem to have a acidy taste or somewhat tart. I do add sugar and various fruit preserves when I pitch the juice and have had pretty good outcomes so far...

Would any of these American varietals be suitable for wine making

My grandfather grew grapes in his yard and he did make wine. However, I am not sure if he used these grapes for wine but they did not look like any vines that I have seen either here in the states or in Italy. His grapes grew on an overhead trellis, forming a natural roof to an open room. The...

Rick, Thanks for the feedback. I would be curious as to what a controlled specimen of the wine would show, in other words a wine with no marbles. In my area of NY (Long Island) we typically don't trust safe drinking water standards. Most of us either drink bottled water or have a water...

I have used glass marbles in the past and have 6 carboys sitting with glass marbles in them. I never really thought about lead but my thinking is even if there is lead in the glass marbles they aren't going to decompose or chemically break down in the wine. However, after reading this post now I...

Rice_Guy I do use a vacuum pump on my carboys but got lazy this time around. Did you use a vacuum pump directly on each bottle? I would imagine that you had to loose some wine in each bottle if you do that.