Recent content by appleweld

just finished our first run at growing fruit in the bottle. after heavy winds this year, we have one apple and one pear. they are still on the tree and ready for picking. I need to wash fruit and bottle with k-meta im sure, but what needs to be added to preserve for years to come without...

ive done several carboys of wine from kits, concentrates and fresh juice. i still learn something each time, so im no expert. id like to try a beer next. my wife likes a pilsner beer like miller.(happy woman equals less static when you spend to much on wine supplies). any sugestions on a kit to...

i used a splenda brown sugar in aug of this year. no refermentation yet. be careful though, its twice as sweet as real sugar, and my friends who arent used to diet pop can taste the diference as someone mentioned. however to diet pop drinkers used to sacarine, equal, and the like, there is no...

thanks everyone, this advice probly saved 12 gallons of pear wine.

thanks for the tech wade. so when is fermentation complete, .990 or .999 ? i know yeast eat sugar to produce alcohol, but when fermentation is complete, are the yeast forever dead? as a side note, we used pure pear juice we cranked through the mill ourself. i froze 2 gallons for an f-pack if...

we made a stawberry wine this summer. when the sg was 1.020 i racked into secondary. the airlock looked like a piston going up and down at first. when it slowed i checked the gravity at 1.010. the taste was incredible. i let this ferment to dry, and had to backsweeten and still never got the...

danny, i just finished a 7 month long grapefruit experiment. the problem i had was the bitter taste of graprfruit peel all along. we used a lot of sugar and created a bitter concocktion at 16.3 abv. we backsweetened with some wine conditioner, some spenda brown sugar, and finally 2 bottles of...

to answer al's question, the bourbon that came from the little barrel had a good amber color, and the smell similar to woodford reserve, however the similarities stopped there. the taste was hot! it burned all the way down. the proof must be 150 or 160. kinda reminded me of bacardi 151. we lit...

a friend of mine had a bourbon kit where you put 1.75l of a white sour mash whiskey in a small charred oak barrel. after it sat for a six months, we opened it and took a taste. i got the idea to refill the little barrel with an apple wine i got going. then let that age for a few months. any...

ive looked at the corks here. are the nomacorks better than the aglomerates? i watched georges videos, and it seems difficult to get the bottles in and out of the floor corkers. the italian will be best for the different bottles we use. it looks like the levers are hard to push, what are your...

does one leave the leftover corks in this bucket untill the next bottling? sometimes its a couple months or longer between bottling. or can the leftovers go into something like a cigar humidor? i think i will invest in a floor corker, as we seem to be making more and more wine. we just started...

we bottled 123 bottles one day last month, and just got around to labeling tonight. i let the wine stand up for a week to insure there was no blowouts, then put it on its side in the rack. i noticed that some of the corks are starting to ooz out wine. i used the #8 cork, agglomerate, 1.75 long...

ive heard some sediment in a good wine is accepted. is this true? also, my first ever wine had some sediment and the people i told this to believed me like i was some expert!

i like the idea of dissolving the sugar in the wine instead of water. at what stages are you doing this? ive sugared to a high sg to increase alcohol, and ive added some flavored vodka. ill try your idea next. on the topic of the daquiry mix. it has been stable since i put it in the wine...

i sweetened a gallon of strawberry last night. after adding the sulfite and sorbate, i used 16 oz of the daquiry mix. so far it has stayed in suspension well. although, i thing its too sweet. i will try 8 oz in a few days with another gallon.