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The best place I have found to get bottles is at a wine bar. I tend to walk away with 3 cases of bottles easily. The best time to ask restaurants, or wine bars for bottles is an hour before they close. I used to bartend and the industry is a fast paced one. The wait staff cannot afford to...

Typically when you add large amounts of wine together the color will appear darker anyhow. I guess it depends on how dark it is and hard for us to tell without a picture. I think my Riesling was a nice golden color and lightly caramel in color. rawlus is right that it should lighten up by...

Hey Troy have you seen the Alaska Bootleger's Bible? If you haven't you need to check it out! The post title kinda reminds me of the book. haha.

Hey whatever works, works. I've not had as positive experiences with Red Star yeast brand that's all. It's good to hear that others have had good luck with it then. I'll keep that in mind when I dispense advice. I agree and think liquid yeast would be overkill.

no i learned my mistake of topping off with water and wine. Do it with another zin wine only. Actually if you can get it, bota box old vine zin is decent wine in a box and affordable for topping off the carboy. Another method is to add some marbles to the carboy to raise the level of wine...

Steve: The yeast that comes with this kit is Red Star brand. If you buy the higher quality kits you get the better brand of yeast (can't think of name right now). Red Star is great for making bread in my opinion. Well it will do just fine making the wine but so far with my experience it is...

Hey Troy! I moved here from Sacramento last Jan and got interested in home brew just because everything is so damn expensive up here! I was used to having Napa and Lodi just a 45 min drive away from me at the time and took it for granted. Fruit is expensive up here and not worth making wine...

After this wine "ages" for 2 weeks it tends to sweeten up more. Next time I think I"ll add half the f-pac up front and the other half at the end and I think that would make it a drier wine. $74? Gees I'm in AK where everything is more expensive and these kits cost $68 for me. These kits are...

Actually you can take small samples of wine when you bulk age, just be sure to sterilize everything and top up the carboy if you take too much away. You are just going to have to learn to have patience with red wine. I'd keep aging it and start a taste while you bottle then at 3, 6, 9, 11, 12...

I"m pretty sure Winexpert recommends to "age for at least 6 months but a year is best" for this higher end wine. I would age it for at least one year minimum. I am positive if you have patience 1.5 - 2 years of aging and it will be amazing. Also consider bulk aging instead of bottle aging...

Disclaimer: I"m not a legal expert. With that in mind, I think it's perfectly OK to give a gift of homebrew. Problem comes when you sell it because 1.) human (the public) will consume it. Your homebrew needs to follow health standard etc. 2.) the gvt wants some tax money from it. 3.) alcohol...

There is a FOP place in town so I went in to check it out. Wine was made from Winexpert kits and cost anywhere from $9-$14 a bottle. It is popular here but it seemed to me to take away all the fun. I headed to the brew shop and found wine kits there and that's how I got started. To my...

I think the malt container would be fine. Just give it a lot of cleaning. I would be concerned if there was still malt smell. My suggestion would be what Troy suggested. Use one of those large trash cans. There was an article in WineMaker mag two issues ago about converting one. I'm pretty...

Just finished bottling the GA Riesling and wanted to share how it came out. I took Wade's advice and added about 6 cups of sugar to get a SG of 1.075 (although he seems to likes 1.08). Followed the rest of the directions but never topped off in secondary. It bubbled and roared for 7 days with...

Hey you will have to let me know how the low bush cranberry/lingonberry wine came out. I wasn't able to collect enough to make wine, but was able to make some awesome jam for christmas gifts. I was only able to collect a half gallon of blueberries near Central in July/Aug and by the time I got...

Oh good to know, thanks dammitcat. I want to try that GA Riesling and Blueberry Pinot. Those are next on the list.

Hey arcticsid!! I"m new to Alaska, moved here from near Napa, CA actually. I"m excited to collect wild berries this summer and make some alaskan mead or fruit wine! I'll be in Fairbanks half the summer. Any good places to do some collecting near you??

I usually let my wine kit wines sit almost twice as long as the instructions recommend after degassing and adding the clarifying agents (Step 3). This is perfectly fine since you added the metabisulfite package at that step. It'll keep. The extra time allows for more sediment to fall...

It came out to 29 bottles plus little drinking right after. I gave away a couple of bottles so have about 25 left I think.

Oh that's good to know that they are different in sweetness from eachother!! I guess I won't give up hope on Island Mist yet.