Recent content by Wayne Freeman

Here's a link to the product page on Amazon: aPour Wine Chiller Bag Dispensing System Replaces Wine In box. Decorative Box Wine Dispenser Cocktail Beverage Dispenser Wine Storage Holder for Kitchen Bar Countertop Fridge Wine Party… (Grape) This is a really attractive new product. Mine just...

Go with the bags. I use the bags for my whites, and my reds go into a stainless steel fustino that I was lucky enough to snag in a little winemaker shop in Capitola, CA 20 years ago. They were selling it for next to nothing, not knowing exactly what it was for. My wife and I had just returned...

Hardware stores in Italy (in Tuscany, at least) sell stainless steel wine containers in many sizes. They're called fustini (singular fustino). Many of the pizzerias have one sitting on the counter. They take them to the local winery of choice to get them filled. I found one in the states, in a...

That's exactly what I do. Several years ago I bought a set that included three mylar bags, spouts and a small wastebasket-shaped thing with a hole in one side that accommodates the spouts. Been using that set ever since. Nothing lost to spoilage.

I use an Inkbird, too, but keep the sensor pressed tightly against the outside of the fermenter with a piece of foam packing stuff (to isolate from the ambient temperature), secured by a wide silicon elastic strap. I normally use both a brewpad and a brewbelt because my wine cellar/brewing room...

This is not much of an exaggeration. I lived in FL for a few years many years ago and I had a friend whose family moved there from NC when he was a very young child (so he was practically a native). He was well off, but he didn't own a jacket. When it got cold, he just went around shivering...

Which model Sureflo do you use? There's a wide range of prices.

I use a Pentek 5 micron filter with my AIO Wine Pump on my reds, too. I don't find any loss of color, even with my most robust reds.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like wine. Apologies to Groucho. Anyway, what I do for the first stages of fermentation is make a very large fermentation lock our of a plastic hose the same diameter as the fermentation lock hole in the lid, I insert one end of the hose in that hole and...

Sign me up for the Montepulciano, too!

I made beer fairly regularly for a few years. One batch I made in the mid '70s, living in Florida, tasted almost exactly like Heineken. I swear it did. Never repeated the feat. All the rest of the beer I ever made, before and after, always had a slight apple ciderish flavor. I always used...

Here's what I do: First, I push down and twist on the sleeve to stretch the bottom of the sleeve to make some space to slide a sturdy-bladed utility knive underneath. Next, work the blade upwards (away from me) slowly, tearing the soft aluminum capsule as the blade goes up. I'm very careful when...

When my Dad passed away in 2013, the fridge in the basement bar was the same Hotpoint that my parents bought when they got married in 1940. It still worked perfectly. The one in the kitchen was a GE they bought in 1957. It, too, still worked perfectly.

On the occasion that I make wine from a lower-end kit that does not include skins, I will add body to the kit with Sun-Maid Zante Currants that I crush and add to the must. Zante currents are sun-dried black corinth grapes, which are a vinifera-style grape. It has worked for me.

I think that's why they call them "Forte", isn't it?