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Yeah, I’m not super impressed with the experience this year either. For the scale of it and the overall cost, I kind of expected more. Not necessarily that my stuff performs better, but organizationally. Dunno.

Results are posted. Two bronzes for me.

Any guesses as to when the AWS amateur competition results will be posted somewhere? I haven’t done this competition in a few years, can’t even remember where to look…

Thanks!

Hi, all - As an off-shoot of the sour cherry wine from earlier this summer, I pulled enough wine to fortify into a port. Bottled yesterday, and finished today. Finished at 1.020 and 22% abv. I'm really happy with how it turned out, but definitely needs some time to integrate. Would have...

For the sake of completeness, I'll report that I finally put the press to use. Started a batch of malbec rosé. Pressed 108 pounds of grapes. Worked splendidly. My son came up to help, which made it especially nice. Really too much fun. Entirely too long a project, but turned out...

I will say that I made acid adjustments using Malic. Also, out of an abundance of paranoia, I hit it with lysozyme before bottling.

I came up with my own protocol. This was not all fruit. Tart cherries, especially the flash frozen, pitted ones I got from a local orchard, are too dear for me to do that. And I was going for a lighter style blush anyway, which is where I landed. As I said, these were pitted - I've heard bad...

Thanks! I ended up using a little less than 7 pounds per gallon. Would have loved to use about 25 pounds more than I did, but - dosh - and I was going for kind of a blush wine for drinking on the deck anyway, and I'm happy with how it turned out. There's a tremendous amount of clean, sour...

Finally! The sour cherry is bottled and finished! Has been a lot slower than I'd anticipated, but I'm happy with the outcome. Will let things sit for a couple weeks, then try it out on the deck!

Hmm, crickets. For what it's worth, I'm going simple on this. Making semillon and sauv blanc; doing essentially the same thing for both:

I'm think about barbera from grapes this fall - will be watching your experience!

Hi all - Planning out my year and thinking of making sémillon from South African juice. Anything special to note when I cypher out a procedure? Tips/suggestions? Thanks!

This is a great idea - thanks for sharing that. I kind of knew about this, but didn't really consider that you can add back tartaric to compensate for the more ripe fruit. Good tip - thank you.

Hi all - I was pondering a rose this season, specifically from California Grenache fruit. I'm reading that it can be, depending on variety of Grenache, difficult to get color from these grapes. This would be my first rose - is this not a good variety to start with? I was guessing for a few...

And, the basket is complete. Ended up using the cherry I had on hand, replaced all the hardware with 18-8 black oxide stainless. The rivets I removed were replaced with stainless binding barrels, which provide plenty of room for the joining bars. There's a little tweaking of stave placement...

PROGRESS!!! After way too much thought, interruptions, and general stalling out, I got some uninterrupted shop time today and milled the staves. After deciding to use what I had on hand, rather than spend more money and have an overall accumulation in the shop, I landed on some really old...

It adds body and mouthfeel. Which can be done otherwise. And nutrients can be used to improve conditions for yeast.

I’m not a big fan of raisins in wine in general. I don’t think they add anything positive to the flavor of the garlic wine. I’ll likely use tannins next time around. I'm also a fan of garlic so might actually increase the amount in the next batch. I bottled into 10 ounce hot sauce shaker...

Made Jack Keller's recipe a few years ago, have a few bottles left. I'd probably forego the raisins next time I make it. We use it exclusively for cooking and eating, favoring it as a topping for steak. I didn't find the smell during fermentation objectionable, but very strong. My dad made...