Recent content by dsm1212

Whatever this harshness is due to mine had it. I did boost the alcohol so I was thinking that did it, but now I'm not so sure. 6 months later (~10 months in bottle) it is much better. it's still not the mellow flavor I would expect from a chardonnay, but it's improved a lot. I did use the stock...

Nice. Would you mind posting a side photo and a shot underneath the melamine? I'd just like to see the rest of the frame :-). thx

Put me down for "Cellar Classic Italian Super Tuscan 18 L Wine Kit". Fingers crossed! Steve

I'm not sure on this one yet Bottled this about 4 months ago. I added 1.2lbs of sugar during fermentation to boost the alchohol 1%. Tried it last night and it was a little strong for a chardonnay, flavor I mean not alcohol. It's still very dry, it's not a sweet flavor, more like a little more...

Used the bottle washer a couple of times now and it continues to work pretty well. I washed a few cases of beer bottles this weekend and it went very smoothly. My next run will be very dirty wine bottles so I'll report back after that batch...

Thanks! I do like the color better :-). steve

I was filtering a two batches of wine and decided to go ahead and filter my 1st batch of skeeter pee. 5 micron whole home filter. But I did it last and got maybe a half cup of red wine in it (carmenere). Other than the fact that it now looks rose, is there any problem with a little grape wine...

This went pretty well and I'm probably going to stick with it for now. I used the avery software to create a pdf with the background photo on the labels that I wanted and my text. The staples web site doesn't even mention printing these for 60 cents per page, but that's all they charged.

Maybe I'm cheap but I can't see paying these online sites the prices they are gouging for labels. Staples has the Avery arch labels right now 90 for $10.99 with rebate and they will laser print them in color for 60 cents per page (9 per page). I'm going to try that out. These should look...

Tried Steve's bottle washer for the first time today. So much better than what I had been doing. I'm afraid my bottles were not all that dirty though. I thought it was going to be a good test because I picked up the bottles this weekend from a guy on craiglist but he had them pretty clean :-)...

I've been getting labels like these from my local brew shop for about $9 a pack (72 labels). http://www.4thandvinelabels.com/Fruit-B17062.htm There are other patterns, but I only get the 9 per page ones. They are about the cheapest (12.5cents) I could find that were brain dead easy to print...

Some of the off-dry whites wines might cause less heartburn. In the summer we like the WV German Muller-Thurgau if you like a little fruitiness. I usually don't but this one surprised me and we've made it multiple times. steve

Will try this next time. I racked skeeterpee last night (first of two rackings) and squeezed the hose a bit. Just to the point where I could see bubbles about 10 inches from where I was squeezing. That did seem to do the trick. I had 4 inches of foam and stirring afterwards I couldn't get much...

This is going faster than expected now. Even though the fermentation is kind of gentle, it's steady. Whipping it up a couple of times seems to help, thanks. I checked it yesterday and overnight it was suddenly down to 1.040 so I re-energized it according to the recipe. Forgot to check this...

Nice idea. I have some of those plastic hose crimpers that could probably be adjusted to just the right spot too. I do find 4 rackings will remove all the co2, but some kits only require 2! I always do an extra one for filtering now, but even then I'm sometimes doing an extra 4th to get the...