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I’m learning by trial and tribulation how to grow grapes and lost a few plants along the way. I have a couple of rows of Pinot noir 777 on 3309 root stock. I need to replace five and am struggling to find a source as I live in Washington which is very restrictive for shipping of grapes. I’ve...

You’re fine, the environment is hostile to anything that can harm you. You pretty much have to work at infecting beer with something and if you do, it is nothing harmful, just unpleasant tasting.

You working grapes that can’t ripen in our climate? I’m up in Arlington and wouldn’t touch those varieties, just grow PN and those only hit 20 brix this year, harvested a week before Halloween before the rains came.

Yup, hope to find some fellow folks from western Washington with some PN growing experience.

Generally brewers use spirit barrels for aging which are too harsh an environment for typical beer spoilage critters like bret, pedio, and lacto. So if the barrel was freshly emptied and handled properly it’s not much a worry. Wine barrels would be more typically used for sour beers where the...

I was last active on this forum a decade ago when I was dabbling in some wine kits and fruit wine so figured I should re-introduce myself. Now I live on some acreage and decided to plant some Pinot Noir clones to give me something difficult to do while my wife is working in her vegetable garden...

Wait a second, aren't the folks selling something the exact folks we shouldn't be trusting about the product :)

Holy crap, just re-read what I wrote...apparently getting distracted at work and not proof reading makes for some interesting typos. The greatest challange in homebrewing is being consistent IMO. To achieving this means keeping things, well, consistent, and LHBS's grain mills are used by...

I'm with Rocky and G8Keeper, a decade of brewing and still using the hydrometer that came with my first kit. Hopefully winemaking won't be the straw that breaks its back.

Fly, sounds like the harvest went well and you hit your numbers. How's fermentation going?

Getting the hop and protein sediment from the boil in the fermenter isn't ideal, but it won't ruin anything either so you probably had something else going on in your first attempt. Well, if you make whiskey, then you know how to mash so this shouldn't be too hard, its just more important to...

Did you get the gravity pushed down any more or just bottle at 1.022?

Yes please do like tingo and make sure they know you want to own it. Please don't get a keg and forfeit the deposit and think that as buying it, it is theft and really hurts the brewer, most of which are on razor thin profits and can't afford to lose kegs like that. If you get one for $30 expect...

I would avoid the ebay refractometer. Get one from a reputable dealer like morewine.

Or if it stalls out you can say the hell with it and through some brett into like us beer guys do :D

I cross my fingers and hope the GFI does its job and if that doesn't the panel backs me up if things go really bad...but, I have mine setup to a Ranco controller so I figure it doesn't stay on too long. However, I am working on a significant re-engineering of my setup that will use something...

Perfect thanks, I'm in the mental planning stages of some sort of temp/humidity controlled storage area. Now that I have started making it, my closet isn't going to cut it anymore, temp swings too much.

Try a Belgian beer, might change your perspective :). My experience has been that micro-breweries (even some of the larger ones like Sierra Nevada) are very customer friendly, I did a lot of bottle research and they put me directly into contact with their guys directly involved. The macros...

Alright, gonna have to experiment some day when I get to that point, right now I'm holding off on pulling the trigger on my first Vadai until I get a solution for temp/humidity control built. But, even then it will be only kit wines for a while. You did make sure to get the cheap, "burn your...

Yeah, I bet those would be an issue, never have come across anything like those without Modelo in them...and the foil is a pain to remove. I'm willing to bet the bottle design is proprietary and the manufacturer is in Mexico or some other Central/South American country making it a double no-go...