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I feel like this Havarti make went really well. 3 gallons pasteurized non-homogenized Jersey Milk 6 drops Annatto 1/4 tsp MM100 1/8 tsp Flora Danica 3/4 tsp CaCl2 3/4 tsp single strength liquid calf Rennet 1/4 cup coarse flaked non-iodized Salt Initial pH of milk was 6.61. I diluted the 6...

After the problems I had making the Pepper Jack, I decided to make a plain Jack. 2 gallons low-temperature pasteurized non-homogenized Jersey milk 3/8 tsp CaCL 3/8 tsp Rennet 1/4 tsp MA 011 1 tsp salt saturated brine I followed pretty much the same process as in my Pepper Jack make, except...

My next cheese will be a Monterrey Jack, as Julie suggested in my Colby thread. It'll be a Pepper Jack. I'm planning on using habanero, jalepeno, and red pepper flakes. Yes, all three. I want it to be pretty hot, as that's how I like it. Once again, I'm planning on a two gallon batch...

My next cheese will be Colby. This will be my second cheese since resuming the hobby last week. Even though I expect that Colby will be similar to the Farmhouse Cheddar I just made, I chose it because it is another cheese that seems fairly easy to make. I need to practice with easy cheeses...

I'm about to buy a couple of summer wine kits to make some light, easy-drinking social wines for summer BBQs and parties. The type of wines I'm referring to are the RJS Orchard Breezin' kits and the Mosti Mondial Summer Breeze kits. For these kinds of events, I'd like to avoid bottles. I...

I have about 60 bottles of wine left from three different kits that I'm considering just dumping. I mean, uncork them and pour them down the drain. I could use the bottles and the space they occupy for better wines. I'm not very good at describing wine faults. Two of them seem harsh...

The first pee I made, which I recently moved to secondary, was from a slurry that had no oak in it. It does have a nice pink color from the red wine slurry I used. Now I am planning my next pee, and I want to use a slurry from a red wine that will have oak powder in it. Is the leftover oak...

I followed the recipe on skeeterpee.com using 7 pounds of sugar, 8 cups of water, and 1/3rd cup lemon juice to make the invert sugar. I cooled it some, then added it to 3 gallons of water in my fermenter, then added 2 quarts of lemon juice, then added more water to bring the volume up to about...

I want to start my first skeeter pee very soon when I rack off one of the wines I've got fermenting right now. I have several choices for the yeast slurry, all from red wines that are still in primary fermentation. Are any of these unsuitable yeast slurry candidates? Which might work best...

Instructions in Mosti wines are quite different from the WE and CC wine kits I've made. I don't have experience with other kit brands, and I don't have a great deal of experience in general. I just wonder why Mosti is so different, and whether it would be OK to treat them like the kits from WE...

I have made the Mosti Mondial Renaissance Amarone kit in the past, and I was very pleased with it (one of my top two personal best wines to date), so I bought another kit yesterday and started it last night. The kit I made a couple years ago came with a bag of raisins. This new kit came with a...

I'm about to start an old Cellar Craft Showcase Collection Red Mountain Cabernet kit that has been sitting in a corner of my dining room for a long time. Lot #K12912SA translates to Nov 12, 2009, I believe. That's nearly 26 months old. I haven't opened it yet, but the grape juice looks...

I've just started an old Mosti Mondial Alljuice Masters Edition Carmenere Mondial kit that has been sitting in a corner of my dining room for a long time. The date code is 91028, so I think that translates to 10/28/2009. Pretty old. I opened it up and smelled it. It smelled fine, like grape...

I've just started an old WIneXpert Limited Edition Italian Dolcetto kit that has been sitting in a corner of my dining room for a long, long, time. That kit came out in April 2009, so it's really old. I opened it up and smelled it. It smelled fine, like grape juice. I tasted it. It...

I've completed about a dozen wine kits, and I'm very confident in my ability to make an excellent wine from a kit. Now I want to try making a wine from grapes. I want to start planning now for the fall harvest. My initial goal is to produce 12 gallons of finished red wine. I don't care what...

I've been making kit wines for a few years, not that many overall, but I've had very good results from my efforts so far. One thing I'd like to do is to make wine from fresh grapes. There are a few things that have held me off from that so far. The major impediments have been lack of test...