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Thanks Joe. 5 gal is already my standard procedure. Haha. For yeast, I am thinking about D47+71b to see how mixed yeast works. Will skip sorbate. Grapefruit zest sounds like a good idea. I will dump some (one whole grapefruit zest?) in primary first and see the dose is enough or not. Then add...

I got a Fontana looking Sauvignon Blanc (called Prestige, packaging and instruction look the same as Fontana) and am planning some tweaks. Any recommendations? I mean additives. Targeting crisp clean version like New Zealand style. Thanks in advance.

mine uses #10 bung.

Fining with protein based clarifier can remove some harsh tannin. Do a bench test to compare first.

If it is not a skin kit, you will be fine. The new WE instruction asks you do that anyway. But for skin kit, it needs daily punch down.

I am free floater in bucket. I use a stainless steel strainer outside the siphon to rack and spin from time to time to get rid of the sludge around the mesh. It works great. Then I dump all the pomace into a mesh bag and press to recover every drop of juice. However, I use bag in Fermonster...

I will. It is the RJS Cru International Chile Malbec with dry skin. (I am a Malbec fun). First part (4 gal) is in primary, bubbling vigorously. As said, no bentonite. I talked about the full process in the other thread (about EM) I read a couple of wine making books. all from grape even I don't...

That is general expense. Large volume of sludge especially for skin kits. My rule is always have some bottles left before starting any kit. So for a 30 bottle kit, net production is only about 25. For cheap kits due to reduction of initial volume to 5 gal, typical production is about 22ish. That...

That is very possible. Just started to try one kit. If it doesn't help for sludge issue, I will put it back in the future kits. Protein haze is the major concern for white. I won't skip clay for whites.

For the CO2 producer kit, (RJS Malbec with dry skin) I use the following strategy: 1. Before start primary, soak dry skin in 2L water for 1 day with some fresh black fruits (typical Joewine's tweak). And then freeze the mixture. Juice bag was not opened yet. The freezing is to break the cellular...

A kind of addicted to skin kits. From now on, I will not consider any red kids with price above $60 without skin. (By the way, I am also playing cheap Costco kits with heavy hand tweaks to fill the gap and provide sufficient everyday supply.) Here is my RJS EP Amorone journey to date: Day 1 to...

Thanks for the reply. I use a stainless steel strainer to filter out sediment when racking from primary to secondary. it works nicely for the skin and oak chips. However the sticky sludge is a pain. the other reason is that i have not seen this in wine making book in commercial production (i...

tannin can deal with protein. i am talking about red.

I just started to skip the bentonite. It results in too much waste every time and makes racking a big pain. I guess it is to accelerate the settling process to allow finishing the batch as promised.

The classic is with dry skin. I would use crushed skin. Closer to real grape. I am doing one now. It is at the beginning of the EM. Took a taste (Day 12), very harsh! Strong alcohol flavor, very deep colour. Pretty sure it will get smooth over time.

it is time to invest a temporature control device. temperature swing can be a good cause of stuck fermentation. the device is not expensive at all from ebay or amazon.

Just pitched one packet of RC212 into the RJS EP Amarone and started an exciting journey. The SG after cold soak was at astonishingly 1.113. (15.5% abv if FG=0.995). The range in instruction says 1.085 to 1.110. This is higher than the instruction range. First time I have seen this in my 10 kits...

Sounds more like a big mouth carboy best suit for secondary fermentation. Easy cleaning with chance to drop in some oak chips etc. Actually even the 7 gal still tight for vigorous fermentation of a 6 gal batch especially when extra skin volume is added in.

That can be a plan. Here is an alternate one. Since it is a big kit, dropping volume might be a kind of loss of resource (4 bottles loss and risk of off balance) : Do as per instruction to full volume with all the ingredients in. Before pitching yeast, draw 3L of juice (no skin) out and store in...

Thanks for your reply. Actually, the decision to use bucket at the beginning was based on three considerations: First, Quick extraction: You are right. Since the skin will go thru lengthy maceration, the quick extraction is not that important at this stage. Second, overflow: The Fermonster I...