Recent content by banannabiker

I am currently working on wine batch #10, and for some reason I started using champagne yeast along about batch 3 or 4. (I believe it was all I had at the time) Anyway-I figured yeast was yeast, at least it was not bakers yeast. What I found is that when I open a bottle that was fermented up...

I am still fairly new to wine making-but here is my experience. The primary bucket serves several purposes (gas release, easy stirring, easy access to the fruit so you can kneed it as needed, and to allow a little oxygen in for the yeast at the early stages). When the fermentation slows, you...

I hadn't heard anything about a kit wine vs. a non-kit. None of my wines have been kit wines. I just thought I was supposed to degass. This particular wine was made using the skeeter pee recipee from their website-except I used fresh citrus fruit instead of lemon juice from the store...

Thanks for the info.

Granted I've only bottled about 6 or 7 batches of wine so far, but my Mango is my favorite so far. I used Mango juice for my first batch-as well as for another batch that is in secondary right now-but I intend to go with real fruit next time.

I'm curious how everyone degasses their wine. I have read various methods, and so purchased a piece of copper tubing-bent it a little-put it in my electric drill-and started degassing. I found that the faster I ran my drill, the more rapidly the bubbles broke free-and you could say-the more...

Thanks for the replies. I realized after some research that the pectic enzyme should be added earlier, but I didn't think about it during primary fermentation. :slp I will definately remember in the future. It was nice that it did work so well in the secondary, but the fermentation had...

I've made a few batches of wine now-and I often make it with fruit. I recently made a batch of 'citrus' with Oranges, Lemons, and Grapefruit. I added a pack of Super-Kleer when it was through fermenting, bit I couldn't get the wine to come close to clearing, even a month after fermentation was...

When you say you use "3 and sometimes 4 cans of concentrate per gallon", does that mean you use the 3-4 cans of juice and then add water and sugar to bring the liquid vomume up to a gallon? Thanks-I'm still trying to learn.

I am on my 9th batch of wine-mostly fruit wines. My favorite batch so far was primarily Mango juice (made from store bought 100% juice) so I decided to try another batch with similar ingredients. After I started the batch-I realized that I didn't have enough sugar, so I decided to finish off...

For those of us who live in this era of climate controlled homes, burying our wine is probably not a sensible idea. I suspect that not too many years back (and in many places even today) when home temperatures varied a lot, that burying your wine wasn't such a bad idea. This might be an option...

Keep us posted Please keep us posted on the results of your clarification project. I am currently making mango wine as well, and it looks like orange juice right now. I have racked a couple of times, and even run it through a course filter-but it seems to be clearing very slowly (I haven't...

I have heard of a method of making an alcoholic drink, where people put a starter mix of some sort into a pot, let it ferment for a while, and then periodically add more fruit to the mix and just letting the whole batch sit for months or years. They may have started out with fruit and rum, or...

Update Well, I racked my Mango wine last evening-and just decided to dump the jug with the marbles. I couldn't see or smell any difference in the wine, but no sense taking a chance on having a batch of toxic wine. :rdo We live and we learn. I still have 5 gallons coming along nicely, and...

taste It doesn't really taste acidic any more...which is another reason I am hesitant to add any more acid reducer.