Recent content by weltercat

Bob Howdy! I too am fairly new too this. I have been brewing wine since 2006 and really enjoy the hobby. My father in Montana has an orchard and large garden so I am sort of approaching it the same way as you. Concord grapes, plumbs, strawberries, apples, blackberries, pumpkin, and wild picked...

I have a big cooler that I fill with bleach water. I scrub the bottles then soak them for a couple of hours, then triple rinse them. Which is cheaper than sulfite solution. At least I think.

With Blackberries and I assume most other fruit wines as well you can increase the body of the wine by adding more fruit and less sugar to achieve the proper SG level.

I too am sorry to hear about this experience. I spent 3 days picking dandelions and separating the flowers from the stems to have enough flowers for a 5 Gal batch already this spring so I know how much work it is. My fingers were black with the dandelion juice for over a week after this. I...

My best: Blackberry, Plum, Kiwi-Grapefruit My Worst: Blackberry Melomel maybe it just needs more time but it tastes bad so far.

I would stay away from anything that has potassium sulfate or benzoate in it as it may give you a hard time getting started fermenting. If it's the only thing you can find you could try using campten tablets and Red Star Premiere Curvee yeast. That stuff is pretty robust and seems to be very...

I have a question that I hope someone can answer. I have been making wine for a couple years now and have had mixed results. I have made some pretty good stuff if I do say so myself. I am currently brewing a couple batches of pumpkin wine from leftover pumpkins at Halloween, wild picked...

I thought I would try this one out because it sounded kind of good. I started it back in august and just bottled it. Wow! it is really good, I am definitely going to start a five gallon batch. I used a grapefruit recipe from Jack Keller's site and just added Kiwi Fruit as well.

That is a good question. The difference between hard cider and apple wine. I always thought that cider was unpasteurized apple juice that turned hard because of the wild yeast. Wine to me is yeast and sugar added to apple juice and getting a little higher ABV from wine yeast. It sounds like you...

It was definitely the potluck. Several people came down very sick from it and I have been drinking the wine since with no problems at all.

I have made a couple batches of Mead this year. I started them back in July of this year. I added two pounds of wild huckleberries to both batches for a little color. I really screwed up the first batch when I sulfited and sorbated it too early as well as back sweetening it with a bottle of...

Wow! What great advice. I cannot wait to try that. I too am a Linux user (Ubuntu) so I use openoffice and gimp as well but I usually use sticker paper and cut out the labels. I just cant wait to try the hairspray trick and milk.

I am really glad to hear that Luc because I have the same needs as far as my carboys go. I try to bottle as soon as the wine is stabilized so I can start something else. I little over a month ago I started two batches (5 and 6 gallons) of pumpkin wine from Jack Keller's website since I had...

I have been making wine a little over a year. I have had good results with my blackberry, plum, apple, dandelion and mead but I have a question for anyone who may be able to answer or point me somewhere I can research it further. I Just bottled some blackberry wine that I had started back in...

Thanks for the advice here guys. This is really great. I do not have any excess honey this year. I am in a semi urban setting here in south <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Seattle</st1:place></st1:city> so I keep the number of hives in my yard to less than six. I am down to only two...