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I haven't made wine in a few years, but I think I'm going to need some skeeter pee to get through this summer. Seems like most of my white wine bottles are screw top these days. I wonder if anyone has tried to reuse these with the screw cap? I have sunk a cork into these bottles before. Has...

My Chardonnay has almost stopped sending bubbles to the top. I don't have a test kit to tell me when MLF is complete. Time to rack off the fine lees, degas, kmeta, and bulk age for a while?

I'm upping my testing game. I'll soon be in position to do these things like a pro. I now have a pH meter instead of testing strips. I ordered a total acid test kit...be here on Thursday I've always had a hydrometer. The last thing I need is a way to monitor MLF. How can I do that? If...

I have 6 gallons of chardonnay going through MLF right now. I was using testing strips to measure pH, but I now have a meter and it revealed the strips were very accurate! I'm sitting at 3.7 pH and wondering if it needs more tartaric than I've already added. To the taste, it's a wee bit...

I have two 6 gallon batches going, Chardonnay and Sangiovese. Both from grapes, both were racked to secondaries, and racked again two days ago to get off of inch of lees in the bottom. Now I have MLF going with nice small bubbles coming up. But I see some larger ones as well and about 1/2 an...

It seems like my batches always slow down and struggle to finish after I rack them to a secondary. Reading Jack Keller's website, he mentions: Transfer does not mean rack. While the solids are strained off and discarded, the liquid and lees are poured through a funnel into the secondary. The...

I decided to try to kick it up another notch. I put one gallon of cider, 3 tubes of concentrate, about 3 pounds of sugar, pectin enzyme, and nutrient into the fermenter with Lalvin EC-1118. The SG showed 23% potential alcohol. Start your engines!

I made an improvised ice wine from cider, sugar, and apple concentrate. I used 1/2 a gallon of cider, 3 tubes of frozen concentrate, and sugar to bring the brix to 32. Added pectin enzyme, nutrient, and champagne yeast. After one week, I have 12% alcohol and I just cold stabilized half of...

Take a look at the picture. I've been making wine for a few years and have never seen this before. I googled it and found nothing. I did inoculate with ML bacteria two days ago...I've never used ML fermentation before. Any thoughts about if I have a problem? I'm working on a Pinot Noir...

Some of you might remember my Lemon wine was slow to start. It's been fermenting for about 6 weeks now and I still see bubbles coming up from the bottom. It's SG is right at 1.00 The recipe says to rack it when dry. My question is, when I see bubbles coming up from the bottom, does that mean...

My lemon wine must has a sour smell. It took over a week to get fermentation going strong. While it's fermenting well now, the smell is kind of sour. Not sulfur like rotten eggs, just sour lemon. I'm wondering if the chopped golden raisins went bad in there. This stuff smelled great when I...

It's been a week and my Lemon Wine (Skeeter Pee) hasn't taken off. I started it with a cup of warm water, a bit of sugar, and a packet of yeast. It was foaming pretty good before I added it to the must. A week has passed and nothing is happening. Do you think I should try to get it going...