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I have a large volume of frozen ripe strawberries to clear from my freezer by way of winemaking. I have not attempted strawberry wine in 15 years. I was a neophyte at that time so I will discard my experience. What I got was thin on flavor and unpalatable. I think we diluted and used bread...

Late to the party… I would not add any water when making peach wine. I would not worry about browning when processing. It will not transfer to the wine. I would not use Fruit Fresh. I'm not sure it hurts, either, but is not necessary. The one thing I do with peach to optimize the...

Great deal

This is geographical dependent, if using locally grown grapes. Indiana is a rough areas for reds. We get very cold winters, so we need cold tolerant grapes. But our summers are hot and stay hot late. Typically I have to pull my reds in 80F+ heat when the bees/wasps start taking them in...

Normally I really love this time too. However given my remodel issues described in another thread taking all my spare time, and a really challenging travel schedule for work, I was tardy getting my bird nets on. I've been waiting 5 years for a good crop of Marquette, and I lost them all to...

The kraft paper on typical wall insulation is not a real vapor barrier. And reversed into a wall, it will do very little to actually stop the movement of moisture. Completely insufficient. A real plastic vapor barrier is required. An update. After discussion, he claimed no knowledge of...

Indiana is a tough place for reds. We can get very cold winters so we need the NY/MN varieties unless you like re-planting every 5-7 years. Cayuga has produced excellent for me but I've also had to go into the vineyard with a chainsaw once in 10 years to cut everything off at ground level due...

I interpret that as the amount of yeast per gallons of must. At my scale, I just crush, measure my volume of must, and add yeast accordingly. I don't weigh but I know from my number of vines the rough volume I will get so have enough yeast on hand. I crush into 5gal buckets and transfer every...

He had detailed schematics, to scale, to the inch. We had detailed discussions, which included a plastic vapor barrier. If a professional contractor does not understand the condensation risks inherent to a wall with a 20-30F potential temperature differential, they have no business in the...

I posted a pic earlier of a rack I"m building for a new wine room filling the space underneath our staircase. As we planned the remodel (half our downstairs is involved) I reiterated two things to the contractor regarding the wine room - the entire thing needed plastic vapor barrier on the warm...

Thanks both of you. Yes I have the proper sprays, but with 30%+ travel the schedule can be difficult to maintain. Last year with the rain we got…I cannot be over-dramatic about it…no amount of spraying would have done any good. I'm hoping the wet feet thing was a one time issue. In a...

We had an incredibly wet July last year. Water flowing in a river through my Marquette, I had never seen standing water in that location in the decade we have owned the land. Much less enough to make a river. The end result was that I had black rot set in to the Marquette terribly, and other...

Checked mine for the first time today. Foch and Cayuga starting to bud, not much yet on the Oberlin Noir. So I'm concerned based on everyone's comments for my Marquette. They are either safe and not budding yet or they've already been nuked.

Haha. Here's what I did. Not exactly master mathematician, but brute force approach. With a minimal wood shop, this is what I do. I have a $150 Sears table saw and hand tools do do this: - Confirmed that 13 inches inside diamond dimension would hold 16 bottles. - Measured space. Determined...

16 bottles per full diamond. I have not set the partial diamonds with bottles to see for sure how many. But the when full it should be around 300 bottles. This would be a full, high production year for me. The rack fills the majority of the space. Another smaller rack will probably add...

Everything fits pretty tight, it's pretty structural as-is. However the joints will receive metal bracing on the back, and then the entire thing will be anchored to studs.

Yes, I dado'd the boards to overlap. It is not actually fully assembled, I only put in one screw per joint on the angled boards to make sure everything fit. I will disassemble to sand/stain and then re-assemble and add all the extra screws that have not been put in yet.

My wine cellar is the space underneath my stairs. I sought to maximize the number of full diamonds, which required it to be just high and wide enough to need to take a couple inches off that top left corner to clear the incline of the stairs coming down.

I looked and looked for a prior post on here with measurements to make a diamond wine rack to no avail. So I figured out my own. Math is hard and my space has very specific space restrictions, but surprisingly, it looks like it all worked out. Go Go Pythagorean Theorem…

So I've lucked out and a beer making friend is willing to buy me a new 5gal barrel to age my wine in, so that he can subsequently age beer in the wine-conditioned barrel. Yay me! I have no experience with barrels. With a new Hungarian barrel, how long should a medium-body (Marachel Foch)...