Recent content by J-Dewey_1980

Every year I swear I’m not picking any more chokecherries... And every year I end up with more chokecherry syrup. 😊 So what is the best method to use fruit syrup to make wine? Essentially it’s just fruit, water and sugar just begging for some yeast, so I am wondering what others have tried. I...

Sounds great! Thank you, Jovi!

Glad to hear upright storage is an option for future bottling; so much easier from a functionality standpoint for our space. Thanks!

Thank you, thank you, thank you to winemaker81, Rice_Guy, Jovimaple, jackl, BigDaveK, ChuckD, and everyone else that held my little hand through this past year. We bottled 29 bottles last night and had #30 to celebrate. It came out so, so, so much better than we could have hoped! We learned a...

Great read and great info! I appreciate it.

I am running on very little sleep, so forgive my need for clarity... Because I am using Xylitol to sweeten, I don't need to add the sorbate?

Thank you. I will use it as a precautionary measure, then. Just to be extra annoying, but because I want my first batch to turn out safely, I am going to rack from primary into a clean bucket with 1/4 tsp k meta + 2 tsp potassium sorbate, mix everything together, sweeten with Xylitol to my...

This is wine that has bulk aged for 10 months. Can I take that to mean I shouldn't need to add sorbate?

Do I also need to add potassium sorbate? I read something that said "if making a sweet wine you must also add 0.3 tsp of potassium sorbate per gallon of wine." What is the function of that? Is it mandatory? Also, related to a new bacth I kind of goofed last night when starting out. I added K...

Do you also sanitize your corks? Same solution?

Thanks, all. So a 1/4 tsp of k meta to 6 gallons? Add right to the new bucket, then rack the wine in and stir? Then sweeten and bottle?

Bumping this up. Thank you, everyone, for your help to this point. After 10 long months of bulk-aging, I am ready to back-sweeten and bottle. The issue is...I don't know how to back-sweeten and bottle, lol. My plan, after much research, is to use Xylitol. Where I get stuck is I have a full...

Very helpful--thank you so much!

I take that to mean I could siphon it out back into my primary, clean/sanitize the carboy, then put it back in...then top off? If I go that route, how do I minimize oxidation? Just cover/airlock my primary bucket and do things as quickly as possible? Sorry if this is an overly obvious question...

I have my apple wine in a 6-gallon carboy currently after racking it over from primary about 3 weeks ago. It’s starting to clear nicely, but I see about an inch of fine lees has now formed. Thinking about racking it into a 5 gallon. If I go that route, how can I store the excess for purpose of...