Search results

I have a winemaking channel on youtube that might help ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCukfI_LTN8MqOLZq96ACbjA ). If there are any specifics that you would be interested in me covering, let me know in the comments section of a video.

Agreed. For those kits, you probably really don't even need the pectic enzyme. If you are working with fresh fruit or really cloudy juice then it is a good idea. Worst case you can get a bit of a pectin haze in the finished wine but I don't think you will. If you ever do have a cloudy wine...

Plastic carboys will work but they really are kind of lame compared to the glass ones. In my experience they are flimsy and you can accidentally squeeze wine out or suck air in when moving them. You can get some glass carboys and put them in milk crates to make them a little easier to move and...

Soak in a 6 gallon bucket of hot water with B-Brite for 24 hours. Refill with hot water the next day to soften the glue again and scrape off with a butter knife. Some labels will fall right off and some will be more stubborn. Any residue can be removed with a paper towel with mineral spirits...

Awesome!

You won't want to sweeten until everything is crystal clear and you are about ready to bottle. Any sugar you add now, will probably continue to ferment and any potassium sorbate now will stop your fermentation. To sweeten, you really want to have racked it a couple times, then you can use...

Your pee is probably going to be okay... If it completely stalls out, you can let it breath for a day with just a rag over it and re-start it with an agressive yeast like EC-1118. Just make a big yeast starter and keep doubling the size of it each half hour by adding your wine to it. Once it...

The tannin will buy you a little mouth feel/perceived viscosity if you are planning to go for another dry concord. I would add it right from the start of fermentation. Have you considered dialing back the sugar to give you about 11% alcohol and then back-sweetening until the taste is just...

If you can get your hands on some dry ice, it would not hurt to throw it on the grapes for those couple days. Especially try not to pop many grapes if you can help it also. As for the SO2, it probably won't be too big of deal to skip it as long as your grapes look really healthy and you get a...

I agree. Don't do any thing radical. If anything move it somewhere warmer for a while and churn up the lees a little. It might go a little dryer and it might not (My guess is that you are going to want to leave a little residual sugar in a grapefruit wine anyways). You might find that it...

Ah man, what a steal!

If it is tartrates falling out also, it will be a little sparkly/sandy looking. It is literally cream of tartar which you could re-purpose if you wanted to.

I find that if it is sticking to the sides, it is usually potassium bitartrate dropping out of the wine as it is becoming more cold stable. Is the are where you are storing the wine relatively cold? Normally I will intentionally cold stabilize, and on a high acid wine it will look exactly like...

On that wine, I added the MLB before the end of fermentation. I used the CH35 which is ridiculously reliable. I kept the SO2 low until a couple months in and just kept my carboys topped up and gave the lees a little churn every couple weeks. Honestly, anything I get from down at consumer...

Awesome! I am not a professional winemaker but am about as deep into amateur winemaking as it gets. I have a small youtube channel (The Home Winemaking Channel), and website (smartwinemaking.com) and am probably only going to get more and more deep into winemaking. At some point I would like...

Use a milk crate. The carboys fit perfectly into them. You can also consider transferring wine with a diaphragm pump, vacuum pump, or pushing it with inert gas so that you don't need to keep changing the elevation of your carboys...

I agree with the RC212. It is one of my go to's for a dry, spicy red. My only gripe with it is that it can be a little more nitrogen hungry than some others. Also it will stink out if you start climbing up towards 90°F (32°C). I take 1 gallon jugs of ice and swap two out per 100L of must...

Nice labels! 14% might catch up to you on a skeeter pee! Did you end up back sweetening it or leaving any residual sugar? I have had really good luck with the skeeter pees at about 10%ABV and 1 or 2%RS. Looks like you might need to adjust your corker a bit there. Cheers.

I'm in Verona. It is about 30 minutes away I think.

I have read posts from this forum for a while now and decided it is time to start participating! There really seems to be a lot of great knowledge and smart people in one place here. I hope to learn a lot and help out who I can. If anyone else is in the Pittsburgh area, let me know!