Recent content by donkeyface

Awesome, I'll remember that one - I'd hate to make a six gallon mistake of geranium-smelling wine!!

Thanks, y'all are awesome! I was wondering how often the sulfite needed renewing. I'll go this route then: sulfite and sorbate now, bulk age it w/ sulfite renewal every 3-4 months, sweeten it, wait a few weeks. Do I have to renew the sorbate at all? If so, should I renew when I sweeten...

Whoa. I never would have thought of this one in a million years. Please let us know how it turns out. I'm trying to wrap my brain around how it might taste!!

I've got another sulphite question on my first winemaking attempt. I've got six gallons of red sitting in my secondary. (It started life as Paul Newman's Organic grape juice.) I started this a month ago. It's currently at 0.998, super clear, and has been racked twice (once from primary ->...

Ok, I went with the latter and put it in the secondary tonight, since I'm trying for a sweeter wine. Checked SG before I put it in the secondary (1.003 now!) This is all a hell of a lot of fun, by the way. You know you have a fun hobby when you don't even mind the clean up! Thanks again...

Great, thanks again. I'm reading at 1.011 (1.01 + 0.001 for 70 degree temp). Plenty of bubbles and gas though, so I'll see where I'm at tomorrow. I probably will end up back sweetening, looks like this will be dry. Is there a certain amount of time I should space out between the...

Ok, let me fire off with a few more then. It's been going at a good clip, and I'm getting a large array of bubbles every 20 seconds now (down slightly from 15 seconds the past week). Smells good! 1) At what point should I move to the secondary fermentor? I read the "Home Winemaking Book"...

Wow, thanks so much! To be frank, I had read a couple different sets of how-to's on Instructables, and nicely confused myself between them. The juice was bottled grape juice - Paul Newman's Organic, from Costco - just water, grape juice, and Vitamin C, nothing else. The simple syrup was...

Hi there, proud owner of a new basic kit. Have yet to meet anyone who hates this hobby so I thought I'd give it a try. Here's what I did, trying for a fruity red: 1) Sanitized the hell out of everything used in the next steps 2a) Dumped in six gallons of grape juice into the primary...