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Consistency is something you get with fruit wines when you use good techniques time after time. Everyone loves our fruit wines, and is mostly what they ask for even tho we make a number of various grape wines. It's very difficult to find commercial fruit wines--and when you do, many of them...

We make a lot of fruit wines and the best way to have good success with most fruit is not to dilute with water. That way, the wine tastes exactly like the fruit. Some fruits, like cranberry,blueberry, raspberry, elderberry need SOME water dilution to bring out their flavors and a standard...

Yes, there is a test that can be done--and that might be a good idea if you suspect this problem.

What else could it be? I can't understand why you have doubt. There's no other wine fault that produces that aroma.

Yes, but Keller means FINE lees. Not the bulky lees which, if you allow the wine to rest for a long period on them, can cause H2S issues. Get the wine off the gross lees and allow it to bulk age on the fine dusting of lees. Racking wine off a vat and into the secondary, or carboy, is done...

Why does the one carboy have so much headspace? Not good.

Brett CAN smell like rotten meat.

This sounds like Brett. The way to prevent this yeast from taking off is proper levels of SO2. It's often associated with higher PH wines,as well,especially if your SO2 level is not proper for the higher PH. It is often recommended to sulfite to .5 mol instead of the typical.8 mol that many...

When doing reds, you also want to have to a warm ferment to pull the color from the skins.

Well, with summer coming you'll be able to experiment with real fruit. Cherries and strawberries will be first so you might plan to make wine with some good fruit--it beats nearly any juice you can buy.

Well, it depends. If you're sweetening and using sorbate at bottling time, then yes you need to use a dose of meta. However, if you otherwise have the proper amount of free sulfite in the wine, you don't need to re-dose it. The only way to know this is by testing for free sulfite.

Topping up with water just dilutes the result. However, it's very important to top up to prevent too much oxygen exposure to the wine. We never dilute our wines by topping up with water. Instead, we have various sizes of glassware. It helps to have gallon jugs, 3 liter jugs, 3 gallon...

Many of these flavorings are not the best to use in wine. Flavorings for candy can give an off flavor. Someone might know of one of these flavorings that works well, but I've never found one. One of the best ways to improve flavor is to get yourself some bags of frozen fruit and do an f-pac...

The 2 causes of vinegar production are not enough meta and too much headspace. Vinegar is an oxidative process so it takes oxygen to produce it. Keep your carboys topped all the way up to prevent it. Not sure why you waited until the 3rd day of the ferment to add water.

olusteebus----You know, even tho you're using a good schedule with your nutrient, something you might want to pay more attention to is how the ferment is rolling along at that 1/3 break. If the ferment is sort of sluggish and not very warm at that point, you might want to add a dose of DAP at...

Well, there's really only a couple of faults that produce soapy taste--either high PH or unresolved slight H2S problems. Sometimes you can have H2S problems that are undetectable by aroma.

Why should the PH be 3.5? What about white wines that may be around 3.2? I think you have to adjust the acidity for what you're working with and how much acid you like. If you're a dry drinker of fruit wines, then you might want the PH somewhat higher because you're not using any sugar to...

I wonder how they would taste in something like Niagara wine??? It might be fun to try making an extract from them--you know, the berries in a bottle of vodka. Lots of ideas here. Well, we'll see how things bloom up this spring. Was pretty cold long-term here this winter. Just hope we don't...

If you don't have enough acid in fruit wines, they just taste kind of blah. Because many people like these wines with some sweetness on them, there's nothing nicer than drinking them with a good balance between acid and sweetness. As with everything--not enough isn't good and neither is too...

Add some tannin to your wine. Tannin stabilizes the color and prevents plating in the bottle.