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After several months working on it off and on I was finally able to use my homemade air-blast sprayer today. It worked great. Should make spraying sulfur much easier. The main components are: commercial leaf blower, 3-point carry-all, Sprayer with 5 gpm pump and a 25-gallon tank.

Going to be harvesting Tempranillo from my own vineyard for the first time. Brix is currently 25. Using this calculator, a brix of 25 has a potential ABV of 15.1% which is pretty high IMHO. I am using Wyeast 4028 yeast which has an ABV tolerance of 14%. My question is should I reduce the brix...

Hi Everyone, Fairly new winemaker here in Caldwell ID. For our 2019 Syrah I bought new bottles from Amazon and they worked fine although a little pricey. As I start to think about this year's harvest I started wondering about where to source bottles since I'll be producing 30-40 cases this year...

Hi Everyone, I'm planning on experimenting with EM (extended maceration) on my Syrah this year. I've been reading articles on it and, as expected, there are varying opinions on how to approach it. My current plan is as follows: 1) Everything done in SS. 2) At the completion of alcoholic...

Hi Everyone, I have an older Ares15 crusher/destemmer and was wondering if anyone has ever tried to remove/disable the "crusher" component so it can be used as a destemmer only. I'd like to sort my grapes before crush and it seems like it would be easier if they were separated from the stems...

Hi Everyone, I'm planning on planting a cover crop this year and I'm having a heck of a time trying to determine how to water it. I am using drip for my vines so overhead watering of everything doesn't make sense. I've looked into drip tape but I would need such an unbelievable amount of it to...

Hi Everyone, In 2019 I purchased 1/4 ton of Syrah from a local grower. The primary vintner (commercial) of this specific vineyard chose the harvest time with an emphasis on Acidity and not Brix. Ideally the target Brix for Syrah is 24.5. At harvest time (Oct 23rd) the numbers were: Brix 29.3...

Hi Everyone, Has anyone used a Marchisio variable capacity tank for storing wine for more than 1-2 months? We have a single 200L variable tank and was planning on aging our 2019 Syrah in it for about 8 mos. I've read that the Marchisio seal is OK but not great and that we should consider a...

Hi Everyone, Is anyone aware of a good source for macro-bin at a reasonable cost? The bins themselves are not that expensive but the shipping cost is insane. I have a residential address which makes it even worse. I'm located in Idaho so there's not many resources for this kinda stuff. I guess...

Hi Everyone, Nice to find a forum like this! My wife and I recently moved to Idaho from California and an important criteria for selecting our new homestead was a place that supported growing grapes. That led us to the winemaking region in South Western Idaho. We planted 90 Tempranillo and 90...