Recent content by datcv

I am planning to do a sparkling strawberry this year which I will keg carbonate and put in champagne bottles. Be careful about doing this in normal wine bottles because they typically aren't built to withstand much pressure.

Off dry is how I like it... If the acid balance is good then it's good with just a hint of sugar. Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

Nah, it's just strategically taken so that you can't see the bag. right after I took this I tied it off and squeeze the fruit to mush. Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

Finally starting my 3 gallons of local Virginia picked fruit (blackberry, blueberry, and black raspberry). Black Dragon's Blood? I'm doing double fruit so I added the full 3tsp of pectic enzyme. Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

Anyone ever make a complete mess when filtering/bottling wine? I just created a disaster filtering some raspberry wine I made earlier this year... Knocked over the jar of saved top-off wine which fell and hit another jar which shattered and then dumped all of its contents on the kitchen floor...

Did you use frozen fruit in a plastic bag? What brand was it? I've noticed that some brands of frozen stuff has a plasticky taste... Haven't had it with fruit yet but I had to stop buying trader joes tater tots because they tasted like plastic. Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

Name one Viserys and pour a gold wax over the cork hole... Sent from my iPhone using Wine Making

I'm sure someone has already thought of this, but DB makes awesome Sangria. Really, any wine makes an awesome Sangria though... I chopped up a couple of fresh peaches, some meyer lemons, tossed in some sugar... tasted pretty good to me... ;-)

From what I've read, the right thing to do is have a measurement taken of the acidity, and then adjust up or down using either acid blend to make it more acidic or calcium carbonate to make it less acidic. The downside of adding calcium carbonate however, is that too much will alter the flavor...

I put some heat shrink caps (I just used some steam from a pot of boiling water) and some labels printed on my old b&w laser printer. It is really difficult to put the labels on straight! It's a little uncreative-- I need a winery name. :-) Sent from my iPad using Wine Making

If it is opaque yeast sediment then the problem is lack of preservatives (I.e. There was still residual sugar for the yeast to eat and not enough sulfites/sorbate)... or you got it in the wine when you bottled. If it is the sort of translucent particles it is just pectin and it won't affect the...

Almost - I did add 2 liters of water. It's pretty good but a little acidic.

This is non-DB related but I bottled my first 100% strawberry wine (25 lbs which yielded 11 bottles) and I used a vinbrite filter pad - very easy to use and definitely makes a difference in the appearance. Hopefully no pectin chunks in this one. ;) Planning to do a Viognier wine kit and a DB...

Thanks I had forgotten about that one. I found it and it says 3tsp of acid blend for a full batch of dragonette. Sent from my iPad using Wine Making

I'm going to start a new batch of DB this week. I have been diligently collecting a lot of pick-your-own berries from local Virginia farms this summer. I currently have in the freezer about 6 lbs of black raspberries, 1 lb of red raspberries (I unfortunately missed most of the reds), 2 lbs of...