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Regarding duration of cold stabilization, I've experimented a bit and it seems like a week around the low 30s is sufficient to precipitate tartaric acid crystals in my whites. YMMV.

Running 10 vine rows, mature vines with full tension and fruit load, I've not seen any bowing of 4" SQUARE endposts. Round should be stronger. Remember most of the tension goes into the ground anchor.

This is why I drop the temp on my wine into the low 30s for 5-7 days prior to the final rack...drop the crystals then and not in the bottle. Of course I have a spare, used refrigerator just for this purpose.

I am sorry about your friend. The most common cause of something like this with household cleaners is chlorine bleach and ammonia being mixed. This results in the release of chlorine gas....potent and lethal enough that it was used in the trenches of WWI. One should know exactly what they...

You will get neither the heat nor the contact time to sterilize. This is what you need if you want to sterilize with steam. 121C for >20 minutes.

Thanks for the thoughts. The SGs of the jugs are very near completion, so I took it up to 70F last night to get it finished up so I can do a quick cold shock just to settle and rack, then I'll test the acid and decide where to go from there.

I understand raising the temp will complete fermentation faster. My question was more to the point of diminishing returns, or perhaps harm, by slowing it down and continuing so long.

I crushed my whites on Labor Day. I bought a cheap fridge off Craiglist to try to control the fermentation at 55-60F. The thing is touchy, I will be getting a temp controller for next year. After some back-and-forth, I had to leave town for a week and the thing ended up settling at 50F. As...

There are ways to do it with (I think) potassium bicarbonate, but I will leave that to people who have done it and know the details. Personally, I'd go ahead and ferment it then do a MLF. Your pH may just end up where you want it. Given how much it can change, if you are anywhere in range at...

I used to make wine in a basement, where it was dark enough most of the time. Now I age my wine in a room where a lot of sunlight comes in. I tape the flaps on the carboy boxes up (so that they sit taller, to accomodate the airlock) and just invert the boxes over the carboys.

What was your starting SG? It appears you have already let the wild yeast colonize and whatever their character is has already started to become the character of your wine. If you simply pitch wine yeast now, they are unlikely to out-compete the already-established strains. If you want to...

I'd just rack to carboy on Day 7. You're not gaining anything appreciable from the apples by leaving it in extra. Typically you want it in the secondary before it is finished completely fermenting so it pushes all the O2 out of the container/wine.

Don't confuse crushing and pressing. An antique sausage press will press grapes...I should know, that's all I use...but you still need to crush them first (I still do it by foot though my volume is getting high for that). Otherwise, your yield will be very low. This style of press simply does...

Be sure to let us know, and good luck. I had great luck with mutt dogs throughout my life (all I owned until my avatar) so I won't pre-judge your mutt wine. :)

Most people ferment and then blend according to what they have and what they can achieve with those wines to improve on the overall lot. That said, with such small volumes what you are looking to do also makes sense. Just recognize that you will lose the varietal character of each and can't...

They are just sodium or potassium metabisulphite in pre-measured tablet form. Use a similar amount of one of those in a powdered/granulated format. Google Midwest Supplies or one of many other online vendors which supply everything you will need.

Read a lot of threads, plenty of information already here. Add 1 campden tablet per gallon of must when you crush; pitch the yeast the next day. The sulfite sterilizes/stuns the must so the boiling water is not necessary. Pectic enzyme is not necessary but typically will not hurt either...

After cleaning by one of the methods described in prior posts (it varies for me for some reason), I drip dry upside down, then cover with a wrap of tinfoil. I figure if covering with tinfoil was sufficient in the lab for autoclaved, super-sterilized glass, it's sufficient for winemaking...

Nice ideas. I hope you're slow filing your patents because I'm going to copy shamelessly.

The freezing point of the wine will be a function of the ABV. Click for chart. Your wine will freeze once it reaches roughly 25-27 degrees F. A dip in temp overnight will likely be OK, because the entire wine container needs to cool before the edges will start to freeze. But sustained temps...