Recent content by tbayav8er

Hi Everyone, I've been out of the game for a while now. Haven't made a kit in about 1.5 years. Prior to that, I had been making wine from kits for about 7 years and have made dozens of kits. I found RJS kits were better than WE kits generally speaking. I found WE kits produced the "kit taste"...

Hi Everyone, Just about to start the toasted caramel dessert wine from RJS. Is EC-1118 a good yeast for this, or will I get much better results with something else? Thanks!

Yes, I'm not impressed by the switch to 14 litres. I've done several En Primeur kits from RJS, and they are absolutely fantastic, especially when using a varietal-specific yeast. I have a very hard time believing a 14L kit could beat the En Primeur product.

I started out making Winexpert kits in 2014, but have only made RJS kits for the past 3 years or so. I was looking at Winexpert kits today, and noticed they have totally rebranded their kits, with the "private reserve" being their new premium wine kit, and it is only 14L of concentrated juice...

Thanks for the replies everyone! I think from now on, I will sanitize the bottles out in the sunroom with lots of ventilation. Having the bottle of sanitizer open for a short period of time to pump sanitizer through my autosiphon and things like that doesn't seem to have any effect on me, but...

Hi Everyone, I'm sure you all know the fumes I'm referring to. It's especially strong while sanitizing bottles. Are these fumes concentrated enough to be harmful? Also, after sanitizing my bottles and letting them drain on the bottle tree, I don't rinse them. My logic is that the residual...

I just finished bottling this kit. I made it as per the instructions, and I am very pleased!

That's an interesting observation! The vine was labeled as Marquette when I bought it, however they were also selling Frontenac, so it is possible that they mixed them up. The grapes became more of a light purple colour, with some being darker than others. I didn't get a picture right before...

Added pectic enzyme and pitched the yeast about 5 hours ago, and it's already turning red thankfully.

Added pectic enzyme, and pitched the yeast about 5 hours ago. Already starting to develop more of a red colour.

Nice! Those are a fair bit darker than mine. I think next year, I will fertilize my vine. Maybe fertilize once in the Spring next year, and once mid summer. Hopefully get the grapes growing a little sooner. Our winter went a little longer than normal this year in Winnipeg.

Ah okay. I am pretty sure a few of the seeds got crushed. We'll see how it turns out! This is my first time ever trying to make wine from grapes, so I'm sure there will be a lot of lessons to be learned. PH was about 3.5 when I checked, and SG 1.090...So those numbers look alright, but we'll see...

I used a potato masher, and then used my hands. We'll see how it turns out. Going to add the yeast today. Hopefully the juice turns more red.

This is the vine's 4th summer. This is the first year I allowed it to produce fruit.

Here's the juice I got. It's about a gallon. Hopefully the colour turns more red, as it ferments on the skins.