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The hard part about all of this is that most "Bad" things that can be in water have no taste. A simple TDS meter tells (part of) the story....at least how MUCH stuff is in your water. You can only guess WHAT that stuff is. A small community just N of me (on a municipal well) thought their water...

If you have a couple of tea bags at home, this is simple. Take water from the old Schmit brewery (or tap water from home) and buy a bottle of osmosis water from the local grocery store water machine. You could also buy a bottle of Aquafina. That is osmosis water also. Make 2 cups of tea (or...

This is from a poster on homebrewtalk back in 2012. PHYSICAL WATER QUALITY PH 7.8 TDS 177 PPM: Sodium, NA:17 Potassium, K: 6 Calcium,CA: 45 Magnesium, Mg: 19 Total Hardness CaCO3: 192 Nitrate, NO3-N: < 0.1(safe) Sulfate SO4-S: 1 Chloride, CL: 40 Carbonate, CO3: < 1 Bicarbonate, HCO3: 195...

Sounds good. Reading the hydrometer confused me for a while also. The learning curve is sharp at first and good thing that wine is so forgiving. The first week to ten days you should follow your hydrometer readings more than the kit times. I have found that their days between steps is almost...

I've controlled them little buggers with a combination of 2-liter traps (like JohnT pictured) and small cups with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of Dawn dish soap. Kills them without even a cover. Place 2 or 3 in your kitchen or brewing area and it knocks down the population in a hurry.

Thanks for adding that Stressbaby. You are more than correct!

NorCal, do you pick just any oil off the shelf for that nice Mustang of yours? I figure they are all safe...right? :h

I'm afraid Spikedlemon has it right. You have no idea whats in spring water. Spring water means "ala naturale". You get what you get. Most spring water that I've tested has a higher TDS (total dissolved solids in parts per million) than average well water. That means there's a lot of stuff in...

I live up by Grand Rapids and have a well. I also have an osmosis water maker and use only that for drinking, cooking and wine making. Not sure about water from the city. Too many years of pollution and contaminants going into the soil for me. And the city water comes from the river. Yum! :s

Just curious, did you add sugar to the kit to drive the SG up a bit? If so, that might explain the SG going up if that sugar did not get dissolved right away. I've been brewing kits for years and have never seen gravity go up like that.

If you like your wine in the 11% range, you brought your SG up too high. 1.094, if it drops to .990 is going to put you in the 13.6% range. You should have left it at 1.074 which would put you right at 11% if it goes to .990. Also, it is really easy to calibrate your hydrometer. Just fill your...

Tap water is fine as long as you know whats in it. I really doesn't matter if it is from a municipal well or a private well. City water will have chlorine it which will evaporate if left on the counter overnight. There are over 600 potential contaminates that can be in water. Our city tests the...

I started a batch of Apple wine about 2 weeks ago. I've racked the batch twice and added sulfite on the second racking and also splashed racked with the Allinone. I added some bentonite 2 days ago and stirred it in with my whip and drill. I was very careful because the carboy is topped up to...

Check your SG if you haven't already. If you used a slurry like I did, it fermented lightening (3 days) fast! I thought something was wrong too because it didn't seem like a normal ferment. I REALLY thought something was wrong when the SG read almost finished. Just keep stirring and checking the...

I've read about cold stabilization here. I think this is what they are talking about. I'm going to have to look for an old fridge to try this with. Do you do this with all of your wines before bottling? This could also be why the yeast doesn't give you trouble when back sweetening. You are...

Bodenski, I did that to a batch of peach, mango, pineapple this summer. I was amazed how fast it cleared the second time. Don't beat yourself up too bad because 1) we all make mistakes (except bkisel), and 2) wine is very forgiving. I'm sure it will be fine in no time. Relax and grab a glass of...

Dang bkisel, are you a retired politician?

I didn't know you could do that. Still learning. If you've been doing this for 15 years and never had bottle bombs it must work. When you say chill proof, do you take the must temperature below the yeast temp range for a period of time or what does that mean exactly?

Not exactly sure what that stuff is, but calcium carbonate is used to raise pH (less acidic) pre-ferment. What you need to do is lower the pH (more acidic) with either an acid blend or like I mentioned earlier, most here prefer tartaric acid. I would try to get the wine below 3.7 to protect it...

Evidently you like dry wines, if you've never used sorbate before. Adding an f-pack without sorbate risks a re-ferment unless your ABV is high enough that the yeast is toast. Like bkisel said kits will have you add k-meta, sorbate, degass, f-pack and chitosan all in the same step. Others here...