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I started a banana/pawpaw/mango wine on the 19th of October. I peeled and simmered 15 pounds of ripe bananas and poured the hot banana sauce over 10 pounds of pawpaw pulp in a 5 gallon paint straining bag. I added 2 quarts of mango nectar, a quart of spring water, 2 tsp pectic enzyme, 4 tsp...

I planted some hardy kiwi vines last year. No fruit yet on most of them, but next year I'm expecting to see some. Has anybody made wine from them?

I have the opportunity to get some free carboys that are currently being used to turn wine into vinegar. This is one instance where I'm thinking it would be ok to violate the "no chlorine" rule. I was thinking I would bathe them inside and out with bleach and detergent, rinse thoroughly a few...

I got about 40 pounds of aronia berries last year and made a 5 gallon batch of wine with them. The berries are very astringent, like persimmons, so I figured it would be a high tannin dry wine. Unfortunately, at the second racking (I really mean the first racking from carboy to carboy after it's...

I have access to some frozen muscadines that are in Oran, Missouri. I travel to St. Louis regularly and can bring them with me. We're talking about a few hundred pounds. They are $1 a pound.

I saw these barrels at my local Walmart a couple of days ago. $88 for what appears to be a 60 gallon oak barrel sounds cheap, but I don't see a 60 gallon batch in my near future. Oh, I have yet to have the presence of mind to turn my phone upside down when I take a picture that will be posted...

I picked a few gallons of muscadines in the last week. Varieties that have produced ripe grapes so far are Triumph, Ison, Eudora, and Delicious. Tara will be next in a few days. I have Majesties coming in a week or two. The hulls on the pavestones are from some critter, likely a raccoon or...

Last winter the extreme cold killed my muscadine vines down to the ground or almost to the ground. I spent the summer training the vines that sprouted from the ground or the stumps back up to the wires on my GDC trellises. Now I find that rabbits are chewing up my vines as illustrated in the...

I had a large number of muscadine vines that died back to within inches of the ground this winter, so I'm pruning them back. I'm wondering if anyone can answer a question about this. Several of the vines have a shoot coming out of the trunk 4 to 8 inches off the ground. Many also have shoots...

I pruned my muscadine vines about March 11. Now there is this orange goo on some of them. I'm guessing it's where they bled clear stuff and something is growing on or in the sap. Does anybody have any idea what this is?

On September 26, I harvested my first Majesty muscadine grape. The cultivar was developed by Florida A & M Dr. Jiang Lu. It is the largest muscadine variety developed to date, exceeding the previous one, Supreme, by about 25%. Majesty berries average 16.5 grams, whereas the average weight of the...

My elderberries are being decimated by 2 kinds of caterpillars. The plants are in my muscadine vineyard. I have only seen one such insect on the muscadines, but they're all over the elderberries and other assorted weeds. I've been flicking them off and stomping them so far. In addition to the...

Does this muscadine vine look like it has enough leaves to ripen the grapes without being stressed?

What's this?

I've been pruning muscadines the last few days. I'm noticing some of them are not bleeding. I'm seeing green in the cut ends. I don't recall seeing them not bleed before. This has been the coldest winter in Southeast Missouri in decades. I'm wondering if other muscadine growers have seen this...

I have a red muscadine wine I started on 10-28-13. It's still forming bubbles in the carboy after 90 days. I don't recall any previous batches going this long. I started it at sg 1.120 and used 71b-1122. I pressed it on 11-1 at sg 1.042 back into a bucket. Two days later on 11-3, at sg 1.006 I...

I'm asking muscadine growers to chime in with their different varieties and what they think of them. I noticed a post by a member mentioning a number of varieties of muscadines he's growing. I think I have 13 varieties of muscadines. Hard to say exactly because some of them were mis-labeled at...

I bottled some muscadine wine today. I took the specific gravity and the hydrometer sunk below the scale a distance which would be about .986 or.988. Is this possible? I used Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast. I didn't have the hydrometer when I started it. But I added ten pounds of sugar in five...

While hiking in the woods at Fairfield Bay, Arkansas, I sawwild muscadine vines all over the place. Not one vine did I see with a trunk bigger in diameter than my little finger. I saw vines that had trunks smaller than a pencil that were loaded with tiny grapes If I can figure out how to reduce...

I am going to blend some elderberry wine with some muscadine wine. Does anyone have experience with this? I have dry elderberry, dry muscadine, and sweet (sg 1.040) muscadine. I can figure out how much sweet to put in the dry for what I'm looking for. What I need to know is how much elderberry...