Recent content by Crawlspacevintner

I have racked off my Liebframilch into a 5 gallon carboy. Through the advice of my local wine store owner I topped off the 5 gallon carboy and bottle 4 bottles. I will try a bottle once a month to see how the aging is going. I couldn't help myself and I tried one bottle. It was very average. It...

I have degassed, added kmeta and sorbate and added the clearing agents. It will be 14 days on Wednesday. I have a question on the color though. It seems to be clearing nicely but the color is very dark. A dark yellow/brown. Is this normal? Most whites that I have had are much lighter in color...

Thanks for the input everyone. It will take me a while to give my full background in this, but here we go. (This will be based all on my taste and opinion and i don't mean to offend anyone) First I will start with my likes and dislikes in wine in general. My favorite wines are old vine zins...

My addiction to wine making is kicking in. I am only on my first batch of kit wine but I am eagerly looking to get more involved. I live in Minnesota and know there are some good cold hardy grapes being produced around here. I have been to a lot of the local wineries and enjoy the experience. I...

Thanks for the input. After posting this i did do a search and I apologize for asking the same question again. I am new to this and before I go out and put hundreds of dollars into my equipment I want to make sure I love this hobby and that I can make good wine. I was thinking of using those...

If you make a white in one, can you put it on one of those water coolers and have a nice chilled wine on tap? Would be a big improvement over the plain water we have at the office.

I was at a local grocery store and was looking at the 5 gallon jugs of water. I believe it was $13 for the bottle and the water. Are these blue 5 gallon jugs ok for making wine?

All in all I think step 3 went well. I added the kmeta and sorbate, degassed 4 minutes with my homemade degasser, (Plastic coat hanger "J" shaped) added f pack, degassed 2 minutes, poured in clearing stuff, degassed 5 minutes, put the air lock back on. Planning on leaving it for the 14 days...

The time is here to actually do something to my wine. Today was day 10 of secondary fermentation. I had readings of .990 yesterday and today. With the amount of days that have passed and the repeat sg readings it looks like I'm ready for the next step. I have honestly read through the directions...

Thanks for the replies. I think I am leaning toward doing another lower end white kit next. Am I making a safe assumption that a Liebframilch and Reisling won't need a lot of bulk aging? My Liebframilch is close to being done with secondary fermentation, I know I have at least two weeks for it...

Is it worth doing a Vintner Reserve Red? The VR Liebframilch is my first kit and it's been in the secondary for a week. Itching for another kit. Being a newbie I don't want to buy a $140 kit and mess it up. That being said I am much more of a red wine lover. Red Zin is my favorite style of wine...

I'm new to this an am still unsure how to do everything. Don't know if my techniques will work out, but this is what I do. Being from MN like others, it's freezing cold in my basement. I have blocked off part of my crawl space (hence my username) with a sheet and used a cheap space heater set...

Baily thanks for the info. There a fair amount of head space in the carboy right now and I dont expect it to have a problem making a mess, but you would probably know more than me. On that note I will probably go put a towel down. As far as skeeter pee goes, I'm kind of kicking myself I...

I racked to my carboy last night after 7 days in the primary. I was down to sg of 1.000. I checked it at day 5 and it was at sg1.02. I didn't rack too late did I? It took forever to rack it though. i could only get a slow flow out of my racking hose. Took over 20 minutes. Is this normal...

This happened to my very first batch. I went to put the airlock in the bucket lid and the black ring fell in. I was really concerned until I read some posts on here about not needing an airlock for primary. I stirred the wine a lot trying to bring the ring to the top without any luck. I just...