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Been interested in finally trying some different yeast strains when we do a barrel of Barbera this year. We crush into 3 open barrels for fermentation so I may try a different yeast in each. I have heard good things around here about D254 and Renaissance Avante (ADT-36). But I haven't really...

Considering doing a field blend GSM this year. Does anyone have recommended percentages? I enjoy a good Chateauneuf du Papa, and have seen breakdowns ranging from 8-1-1 to 5-2-2

I'm looking to see if anyone has had a similar experience: Several years ago we fermented from juice buckets. I remember those wines had a strange taste to them that I would describe as a slight chemical or plastic-like taste. Whatever it was, it made the wines pretty much undrinkable (to my...

My brother bought a used 60 gallon barrel from a winery going out of business, about 3 years ago. He was told that a sulphur stick had been burned in it. Fast forward to today and we are ready to retire our current barrel. I was reading about sulfur burning (we use the citric acid+ sulfite...

This is my 3rd year making rosé. The first year, I pulled 5g of juice from freshly crushed Barbera at 26 Brix and fermented with 71B. I put the bucket inside a larger bucket in my basement utility sink and filled the outer bucket with cold water, and added ice a few times a day to keep the...

Been making wine from grapes and juice buckets. Every juice bucket we've made, for about 4 years, has this slightly odd and off-putting taste to me. I can't really describe it, and it seems like some people I ask don't even notice it. Last night, my cousin described it as a mild "smokiness"...

A month or so ago we noticed that a few of the carboy airlocks had completely evaporated. Yesterday we went through all 10 carboys in preparation for bottling soon. We discovered that two (from different juice buckets) have this hint of vomit-like acidity. It's just enough to make them...

So we fermented a bucket of white juice late fall. After fermentation it had a really bad off-putting chemical taste and smell, and still does. I had no idea what could have gone wrong, until I gave a winemaking pro a taste, and he said it tasted like soap. He recommended I try fining with...

Hi gang -- so I'm tasting a very odd chemical taste in two separate batches of wine we did. Both fermented around 65-70F. The first was two buckets of rosé made with zin juice drawn off from the must of our main batch. Fermented for about a week with RC212 at a friend's house while I was...

We crushed Zin grapes down to 80g of must. Came to about 30 brix so we added acidified water to get it down to about 26. Added RC212 yeast and nutrient at 20 and 12. We had to go out of town, so we pressed at 10brix back into our fermentation barrels, assuming that it would finish up and we...

Just curious if anyone has found a recipe and tried to make a nice vermouth or lillet?

Hi -- pressed a batch of Nero Davola grapes 5 days ago. I was planning on racking after a day or two and adding malolactic bacteria, but I had to go out of town. I came back last night and discovered this stuff growing on the surface of the wine in both carboys. It doesn't seem to resemble...

So I made a batch from Barbera grapes last year pretty late in the season. I believe we used either RC212 or 71B yeast. When we bottled it recently the wine has a very fruity almost sweet taste. The FG is down past 1.000 so there is no residual sugar. My best guess is that because of the...

So I made some wine from Chilean Malbec juice with my cousins for the first time on our own last spring. The fermentation didn't quite finish (4 5-gallon carboys around 1.008 - 1.010). The wines taste slightly sweet. We'll probably throw in some yeast to try to finish them up. This past fall...