Recent content by DarkStar

If it has worked for this long why change. Juice, skins, seeds will get you the tannins and color. If you pressed hard could crack the seeds and would get bitter but it Sounds like your doing everything right the way you have been doing it.

No, its is not common and not recomeded by the manufacture, adding less than the required amount of water will throw your alcohol content off, acid and tannin levels making a unbalanced wine.

If you could supply a location we could be able to locate one close to you. Ive ordered most of my stuff from Northern Brewer and Midwest Supplies.

If its in the bottle now there is nothing that can be done without dumping back into carboy. If it really disturbs you dump it back in after purgeing carboy with co2 or argon to help prevent any further damage, sulfite to proper level, and use a fining agent called Polyclar pvpp. Heres a clip...

I just use hot water to soak the bottles and a product called Goof Off to remove the left over glue

Storm Fronts and temp changes will usually cause the air lock to reverse

I love my Italian corker best Purchase Ive made. Been using Altec corks for anything Im planning on keeping around more than a couple years and nomacork synthetic for everything else.

A mity-vac hand vacume pump works great and its alot easyier than stirring forever. I use that and one of the orange carboy caps to pull a vacume of about 15 to 20 in.hg when the gauge stays and doesnt fall its done.

No sulfities do not prevent fermentaion, Sorbate is what you would want to avoid. Excess sulfites is fixed by areation before yeast is added

What is your gravity at now? Would be possible to repitch with a starter made with a high alcohol yeast like lalvin ec-1118. What is the PH of it? If its not to low, would be possible to add some acid to cover up the sugar, the only other way is to blend with another wine.

I did a chocolate mead thats in the middle of aging right now. Tastes pretty good but in still needs time to sit. Just follow a basic mead recipe and added 20 oz of cocoa powder to it and also let it sit and age a couple months on some 82% dark chocolate. Will say this I tried to use fining...

Your time within the directions will be off on how many days. so just use your hydrometer to judge when to go for next step. When you are done fermenting and at the degass stage before your add the final finings raise the temp above 70 if possible to 75. Helps greatly with driving off co2...

Coppied from another forum Posted by Tim Vandergrift from winexpert Winexpert warrants it's kits for one year from the date of manufacture. You can read the date by looking for the peel-off sticker on the top of the box. It will read something like this: 04 320 03 12304 = 4th kit run of the...

Doing sweet wines it is best to allow them to complete fermantation first, it is extermley hard to stop a ferment in progress. Sorbate will only stop the yeast from multipling and most wine yeasts are tolerant of normal levels of sulfite. So to sweeten it is, wait unil clear either through...