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You are right that the odds are in your favor for your first wine being "drinkable" if you start from a kit but you will likely never achieve a really excellent wine from a kit no matter how many "PhD's " work on it. it will always be designed around the lowest common denominator. I fully...

For me, I'm lucky to live in a region that produces a lot of grapes for wine so smaller amounts are usually available from someone somewhere. With decent fruit, its fairly easy to make wine thats better than anything available for $10 while still keeping the cost per bottle well under $10...

Looks Awesome :-)

How did everyone do this year in this comp? There are thousands of entries (and dozens of judges) but I do appreciate the impartial feedback from this type of competition. If not this one are there any other competitions anyone prefers?

If you're staying in or near Calistoga try the Hydro Grill, great food and a great place. Also the Calistoga Inn Brewery and restaurant is quite good. If you are heading up to Mendocino through Anderson Valley (where most of the wineries are) I recommend Husch, Navarro, Goldeneye and Elke...

Anyone ever heard of or tried these Oenosteryl tabs? http://www.gwkent.com/oenosteryl-effervescent-tablets-2-gram.html

Actual facts aside :h Most wineries around here use argon. Heres yet another perspective:slp http://www.vinovation.com/ArticleArgon2.htm

Just as reference for anyone here is an article from WineMaker :-) https://winemakermag.com/547-phiguring-out-ph

Oh yeah, I'm back and I'm In :-)

+1 for the previous comments!!

I've never had this happen with wine but I just had a large flip top beer bottle have its bottom blow off 2 days after carbonating. The corresponding element to this story is that this batch of bottles arrived with 2 bottles broken, having obviously been handled roughly. I never thought to...

Please do let us know, I'm thinking of getting one and would love to hear a report.

Great idea, I just bought this one on a recommendation from this forum and I've found it to be great! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0012LOQUQ/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20 And , No, I have absolutely no connection or affiliation with the sellers of these scales , just FYI :-)

Just for clarity, are you sure they didn't include TCA cork-taint as a type of cork failure? 9% is still astonishingly high but just curious. I use Diam composite corks and have had great luck with them, though I learned that I need to leave the bottle upright for a week or so after bottling so...

Too Funny :-) Well.. The problem clearly stems form my failure to read your post correctly; whereas you said "makes a little difference" I read "makes little difference" sans the "a" (the old hidden a trick :-) .

I would respectfully disagree with the first part of the above statement :-) While decanting can certainly offer a controllable level of aeration/enhancement (and many wines do require more than simple aeration) I've found that just about any (red) wine benefits from aeration into the glass.

Very cool stories! For me, I live in a well known wine-making region and you can easily go into just about any supermatket (let alone wine store) and find a very decent bottle for $20 or less. That sets the bar fairly high for home wine making.. but hey that makes us create better wine :-)

You can store an empty barrel by using (burning) sulphur sticks in them while they are empty. I was pretty skeptical about this but we've got several barrels and sometimes we just can't keep them all filled. The sulphur sticks work pretty well and I've even seen them used at a commercial winery.

Wow, bottling alone is tough. We usually have a crew of 3-4 but I think it could be done effectively with 2. We're usually doing 30-60 gallons so maybe it would scale down enough for 1 person but I still think you're better off with at least 2. We use one of these...

Great tip, I had no idea there were different versions. PBW isn't super expensive but if I can get the Oxi Free cheaper and locally that's a much better deal, Thanks