Recent content by blumentopferde

I recently had an issue with Ethyl acetate. I thought my wine was lost but then I tried different fining agents and weirdly a fining agent that was actually made to reduce tannins helped really well. So I would like to encourage you to make some experiments, there's nothing much to lose! My...

SUCCESS! I experimented with the agents mentioned above, following NoQuarters suggestion I added potassium bisulphite to the list. Here the detailed results of my experiment, sorted by outcome: Gerbinol Super (isinglass & dairy protein + absorption agent): Even though this product is...

Well, if there is nothing I can do, then I will just experiment. I will try the tannin adsoption agent Gerbinol Super, the activated charcoal Granucol GE and maybe the adsorbtion agent Sensovin... All these agent claim to reduce off-flavours. I will also give the thermal treatment a try.. Let's...

I added 0.01 grams per liter every time the must had contact with oxygen. That was directly after crushing, directly after pressing and before racking. I racked the wine 3 times so far, so in total i added 0.05 grams SO2 per liter.

Hello winemakers! As you can read from the heading, I have a very severe problem with one of my wine batches: It smells intensively like glue, so I guess that somehow I got too much Ethyl acetate into it. I have heard that the only way to get this scent out of the wine is to boil it up to 77°C...

I think that could be an interesting approach for Europe, where legislations on the use of herbicides are getting stricter and stricter... I just wonder why you would need something as precise as a laser for undervine weed control - as long as you make sure not to burn the vine itself it will be...

I think that this could be an incredible breakthrough! This could reduce the use of pesticides in viticulture drastically. I just hope that this concept will get market ready and won't be bought by some big chemistry company just to be dropped afterwards ;-) Still, I see a certain danger, that...

That's amazing to hear! I've read that Southern England is regarded as the Champagne of the future but I wasn't aware that there is already so much production going on up there! If I can ever get hold of a british sparkling wine I will definitely try it! Bear in mind though that late harvest...

You are right, of course! I corrected the text now! Thank you! And nice to hear that this little joke still works from time to time! 😉

Hello from Austria! Thanks to global warming, Southern England should be warm enough to grow grapes outside. Maybe not Gewürztraminer, but I guess that Phoenix could do... So why not give it a try? ;-)

Now I understand what you were trying to point out: I just opened a wine from 2015, sweetened with Sorbitol. The label says : sugar: 5g/l -this is 0.5%. I always factored in that Sorbitol has only 50% sweetening power, so that means that I added 10g/l of Sorbitol. Well, the wine tastes VERY...

It was straight pressed juice. As far as I remember I fermented it with the skins, then boiled it up to 80°C to break down the Sambunigrin and pressed it by hand (didn't have a press back then). It was quite a mess....

Hounddawg, How much water do you add to the elderberry juice before fermentation? My 2012 elderberry wine was an experiment - I fermented pure elderberry juice and only added some sugar. Unfortunately this turned out to be undrinkable. It had an extremely harsh and medicine-like taste... so...

I'm just figuring out that it would be quite a waste if I didn't do a second run: I use a hydro press and it seems to leave a lot of "goodness" in the pomace. This year I had about 30 liters of white wine and was left with about 14 liters of pomace after pressing (weighing it would have been...

This year I only made wine from grapes. The sparkling wine will be done with sweetener instead of sugar so I can sweeten the wine before secondary fermentation and don't have to reopen the bottles afterwards. The goal is an "extra dry" style with an equivalent sugar content of about 15 g/l...