Recent content by Impiryo

I generally prefer higher end, full bodied red kits (WE Lodi Ranch Cab, MM Amarone), but I still find them to be a bit thin for my taste. I was going to buy grape packs to add some more body and ABV% to them, and had an idea: Would it work/be worthwhile to get a kit or two of Paklab, and use...

I started one in late September - as of bottling 2 weeks ago it was really good. I added a pound of raisins to the fermentation, which definitely helped. Unfortunately, at 1.5 months (after using all the oak), I decided that it needed more oak, and definitely over oaked it. It's still very...

Is it worth adding these to higher end kits that already have a grape pack, or is that excessive? Starting a cc malbec and mosti RI amarone shortly.

If you don't like really sweet wines, you'll probably want to add some of the f pack before fermentation. I never liked really sweet wines; I found that 3.5 lbs of sugar and 40% of the F-pack in the primary worked really well. Caveat - I found that, at that abv level, mine took 3 months or so...

Yea, a glass a day - great. A bottle a day - less so. But it's so good!

Those primaries look good - definitely what I'd expect. I really need to make myself a batch of dragon's blood to try. I was looking for a cheap, fast option to refill my racks while stuff ages; maybe I"ll start one this weekend. I see a major flaw with your setup. You have far too many...

I was more using the liver damage as an excuse for a challenge - how good of a red grape wine can I make at that alcohol level (and is it even possible)?

Similar to what others said, stretching out the time is always a good thing, and the differences between the methods are minor. The kit instructions are invariably too short. My only qualm with Keller's method is how he doesn't use a primary bucket (IIRC). I feel weird having my wine sit on...

Few drinks can compare to a big, bold, 14% cabernet, or a 15% abv amarone. Unfortunately, if you like to drink like I do, and love the taste of those wines, you could be 10-20 years away from your liver taking a permanent vacation. It's a crap shoot, and you could get lucky, could get unlucky...

I do the small bottle thing too, works great for the secondary. That room looks bright. Are you covering your carboy? Light kills wine.

Bit of a late response on the water - but home filters do a good job of taking minerals and chlorine out of the water cheaply and conveniently. Think Brita or Pur attached right to the faucet.

I agree with grapeman, you should be fine. Are you sure it's 1.5 inches? Typically the lees stick to any sloped part of a carboy, and especially with a red that's mostly opaque, it can be nearly impossible to differentiate between 1 mm and 1.5 in in a carboy. The only way to really know before...

You're fine. Anything but a kit, you would have probably k-meta'd first, them let sit for a day or two before fermentation, so your start is pretty typical (just not necessary for sterile kits). As for the sprinkling vs mixing yeast - I don't think it makes much of a difference. It's probably to...

I also suspect that, each time he took a sample, there was some semi-forceful backflow of room air into the carboy to replace the vacuum. Not a problem in practice, but in the experiment it was repeated many times. Also, he added more wine to top off each time - that wine may have been left open...

With how shallow the wine is, I would suspect that much of that foam is due to the agitated wine trapping the air above it, which definitely leaves me concerned about introducing oxygen.