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So this is what it looks like coming out of the primary. Nearly everything flowed, so I imagine I'll have a lot to rack off of in a month. The glass was the leftovers, and it was almost a fruit smoothie consistency, albeit a very alcoholic one! ABV is 15.5%, which is more than I was...

I read somewhere that if you like washing dishes, you'll love making wine ;) Welcome to the board!

My daughter went to West Texas A&M, so I'm familiar a little bit with the Amarillo area. (She currently teaches music in small town West Texas.) I haven't hit too many wineries out here, but I've traditionally not been much of a wine drinker. But I'm getting into it :ib

Welcome! (From a Red Raider who now lives in the DC area. And has may 1% of the experience you do when it comes to making wines!)

Tonight I opened up a bottle of the first wine I ever made (not that old, just from last October.) It was what I made when I had no idea what I was doing. It was an apple wine that had triple-berry fruit added to the glass jug. That fruit lasted not even 24 hours before blowing out! One of...

The wife and I visiting the Sorrenti Winery in Saylorsburg PA.

And of course the challenge is I won't really know how it comes out at this SG for the better part of a year. So I guess I'll keep my notes and see how this finalizes so next year's batch might be better.

Nope, not ready yet. Tonight's SG was 1.116, so down a bit from the original 1.130. And I think I figured out my issue with the initial SG. I took the fruit bag out today and squeezed it good. The total liquid volume is almost right at 4 gallons. So my 10 pounds of fruit added nearly a...

So I'm doing something similar, but without any lemon juice or added tannins. I started a little higher, with the initial SG reading being 1.130. (I expect it to finish sweet. I'm using 71B yeast, which should finish up at 14%, leaving me at 1.020 if I figured it out all right.) I'm curious...

Went driving for an hour with my son (trying to get his 45 hours that Virginia requires to get his drivers license.) Now I'm fixing to do some soldering a few modules for my modular electronic synthesizer. All so I can stop checking my berry mead that I pitched the yeast into last night. It...

I'm starting to wonder if the frozen fruit diluted it more than i thought initially. I probably shouldn't have taken the water and honey to 3 gallons and then added the fruit. Next time I might take those to a little less than 3 gallons knowing I'd get some liquid from the frozen fruit. I...

It was a new Hydrometer. It reads 1.000 in water. I stirred it up again and rechecked It's still reading 1.130. I can't think of anything I did wrong. I didn't check the SG after the honey but before the fruit. Now i wish I had! I'm expecting the mead to finish pretty sweet and not need...

I've been making 1 gallon batches of most things, and am getting tired of the work/bottle ratio. So I just started a 3 gallon batch of a berry melomel. Here's the recipe. Berry Melomel 12 lbs honey (Trader Joes wildflower/clover honey) water to make three gallons 9 lbs frozen triple...

I will say that he does mention that the fruit has to be at peak to use those amounts. Store-bought fruit will (in general) never have the same taste profile or sugar content of something picked at it's peak. He must be getting some stellar fruit down there in Texas!

Welcome! Ask away. Folks are quite friendly here, even for us newbies that have little sense ;)

I've only made two of his recipes so far, a semi-sec blueberry and a blackberry port. Both seem alright to me. (6 lbs of blackberries in the port, so not light on fruit!) He has won a fair number of awards so apparently judges like his recipes. I don't have anything yet I'm willing to give...

And as a final note, the best resource I know for issues with clearing wine is from Jack Keller's website. http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/finishin.asp As he states, finishing your wine does not mean drinking it :) It has several details about clearing wine.

There are several variables involved. The most important one I've seen is "how well did you degas the wine?" A poorly degassed wine doesn't clear much at all! And it's easier degassing a wine at 74 degrees than one at 65 degrees. As to tell how well it's cleared, I store my 1-gallon jugs...

I know of mead makers that work to actively oxygenate their must. Now is there a benefit to using straight O2 as opposed to room air? I haven't had an issue with fermentation yet, so I think my yeast are getting enough.

Reading this I'm thinking I need to start another batch of DB. My first one was my second wine, and I've only got one beer-bottle left of it. I think I'm going to do maybe 1.5 times the fruit, and to let it sit longer to clear. I've got several other wines going right now, and it seems that...