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You bring up a good point about hypocrisy articsid. Collectively we kill animals every day to meet our needs it's just that we usually have somebody else do the dirty work for us. What I don't like to see is the killing of an animal just for the thrill of the kill. Around here if a person wants...

If you were to put a small towel in the bucket so that it drapes over one side, the water will wick up into the towel and increase the surface area of the water and therefore increase the evaporation rate.

Ok, I understand now. This situation has been discussed several times here. You will have to wait until after fermentation is complete and use the boiling off method to determine the alcohol content. Here is an older post that discussed this issue...

Most hydrometers have a potential alcohol scale as well as the specific gravity scale. After you add your sugar and stir to make sure it is evenly dissolved, take your first reading to measure the SG. you can also check the potential alcohol scale to see what will be the finished alcohol...

I always thought that tobacco was poisonous when ingested.

Adding two pounds of sugar to your wine should have increased the SG. well above 1.000. I think that the sugar was not dissolved in the wine giving you a lower SG. The yeast at the bottom of the carboy would have been overwhelmed by such a high concentration of sugar and the yeast suspended in...

The pieces of glass are heavy so they would sink to the bottom of the carboy. What you could do when racking is to keep your racking cane well above the sediment to make sure you don't pick up any glass. With the remainder of the wine you could run it through a filter as was suggested previously.

I don't have a wine thief either. I find that a turkey baster works well enough for me.

I've tried blending skeeter pee with some of my homemade wines and found that it blends well with a lot of my wines. The most pronounced was with a chamomile wine that did not turn out to my liking but add some SP. and it is quite nice.

Sorry after rereading my post I should have called it a plastic milk crate instead of a carton. Like these...

The old trick to destem your grapes after they have been crushed is to put the crushed grapes inside a plastic milk carton. The milk carton has holes in the bottom so it acts as a giant sieve. Once the grapes are in the carton give them a vigorous shaking with your hands and the grapes will...

Great minds think alike. I made one very similar to this one. It holds 30 wine bottles. The only difference is that I didn't make any holes for draining carboys.

When you start bottling your wine a wine bottle sulfiter will come in handy as well as a blast bottle washer for rinsing your bottles.

If you watched the "Big Fat Fiasco" by Tom Naughton you may also be interested in watching his other documentary called "The Fathead Movie". In it he debunks all of the stereo typical thinking that we have about a healthy diet by only eating fast food for one month and loosing 12 pounds in the...

If you had a smaller piston it would take less force to stroke it but the down side is you also would have to pump more often. I've seen a design on how to make a vacuum pump using an old bicycle pump. I haven't tried to make this, I'm just throwing it out there for something to see. Here is...

Buying your yeast in bulk will save you some money but the cost of yeast is so inexpensive do you really want to deal with all the extra fuss for such small saving?

Another possible source for a breeding area would be in a bag of potatoes. If even one potato has started to rot this will give them a good food source. Also look around your blue box to see if there are any present. They are attracted to the sweet surgery residue left in containers of pop or...

It sounds like Thunderbird is the American equivalent to Craklin Rosie wine that was sold in Canada. Neil Diamond had a number one hit singing about this wine. The Wikipedia entry suggests that it was a homemade wine but I seem recall that it was sold in liquor stores. Hence the line in the song...

I make my wine in the laundry room and it is too cool for fermentation in winter also. What I have done is to have the carboy or primary sitting on a piece of Styrofoam to keep it off the cold cement floor. Also for additional heat I use a heating pad. It has three heat settings so I have good...

Try wetting your corks before you insert them in the bottle. i find that this helps to reduce the effort required. I use #9 corks with my hand corker and I have never had any trouble with them going in.