Search results

So I recently acquired a gallon of avocado blossom honey and 5# of basswood honey. Has anyone every worked with avocado blossom before. I won't use the whole gallon for anyone recipe, so I can experiment with lots of different things. Any suggestions?

I'm glad to be back on the forum. So much has happened that when I looked back on my blog and my notes, I realized I hadn't made any wine since before I moved from Minneapolis. It's been over a year ago. I have been making more and more beer this last year and been working on my braggots...

I pureed some pineapple and put it in the fridge and promptly forgot about it. My roommate remarked that the lid was askew on one of thecontainers. It wasn't off just tilted. I put the puree in a jug (sanitized) and tossed in some wine yeast to see what would happen. yeah. totally slipped my...

NVM I misread the freaking recipe and apparently it's been way to long since I made a wine not from a kit.

Hi all, I joined up over a year ago and was practically a fixture on the forum for awhile but as we all knkow life has a way of stepping in and forcing us to reorganize. I made the decision to drop everything in minneapolis and move back home for a number of reasons. A friend's terminal...

So a good friend has an organinc vineyard and tons of dandelions which I can pick as much as I want. The problem is I get them picked but by the time we get home I'm too exhausted to start in on the petal-cutting. i would like to just throw them into the freezer and come back to them another...

I found two 5gal. carboys. One basement and one in the garage (that one was in a box). I washed them both out with PBW and rinsed them well with hot water. The one that was used for bottled water (coolers) I saw had a white film on the bottom of the bottle. Does anyone know what that might be...

Ok I'm inspired by the fact that I came home from the club around 1245am and didn't want to go to bed or sit in my house, so I came out to the front porch wth my laptop and a bottle of pinot blanc I made and am sitting here unwinding. I'm drinking straight from the bottle (that's one more glass...

Surprise of the day: Muscat is a white wine grape. Well if there are red varieties they didn't throw those into the batch that went into the can I got. I opened up the 2 cans of this Muscat concentrate and was a little surprised to see the color was a a golden raisin color. I imagined a deep...

I know there are quite a few folks on here who also make beer and I had a question about forced carbonation and bottling. Is is possible to use one of the mini-keggin systems, like TAD, attach a hose and bottle filler and use that to carbonate, add to bottle, then cap it? I'm thinking about...

So I'm thinking of porting one of my wines. It's in the secondary and has fermented to dry but not cleared. I was wondering if I have to wait until it clears to add the brandy or if I can just add it now. The second part to that question is whether or not it will clear on its own? I have only...

I bought a bottle of wine conditioner to give a few of my less-bodied fruit wines a bit of 'help'. So far I've added it to a 3gallon batch of cranberry-raspberry I made and will be bottling soon. I then added two teaspoons to a bottle of a blueberry spice that I opened (oh that one will have to...

Finally got around to starting the Pinot Blanc kit. It's bubbling away and I can't smell a thing, which is a good thing I suppose. What I'm confused about is why I have to add bentonite to the water before I added the juice. I thought you use it as a fining agent, so why would add it before it...

OK I might rethink every doing this again. I decided to try making wine from tea. Passionfruit by taza to be exact. It's been in the primary for over 10 days and activity is slow but steady. I'm going to move it to the secondary today or tomorrow because I will eb out of town for a week. I...

This is the first braggot and I was looking for and found the simplest recipe. I changed it around but just a little and it seems to be going nicely. I have a general question about the odor and that was whether or not folks found that the smell is stronger than the actual flavor imparted by...

OHHH just got a refractometer so now I'm going to start taking a reading with that and with my hydrometer to compare. Anyone else use a refractometer? I'm a little obsessive about wanting to keep it clean and not smudge or scratch the plate while cleaning it. WSG

I just bottled a batch of blueberry and I had some left over and tasted it. I won't say it was bad, too early to tell. It's watery but it has a strong alcohol taste and I'm wondering if I should dump it and start over or if after 4-6 months it'll get better. WSG

I just bought a VR white wine kit and I've never used this one before. I am hoping for some summer drinking (the next 2 months). I've made their merlot and I can't wait to drink it after it ages a bit.

I've read that OJ can be used as a yeast starter for dry yeast and I did a quick search (Ha I did use the search button before posting) to see if anyone had used any of the Wyeast brands with a starter or if they just pitched it. I have also posted this on another forum, but I believe many...

Yesterday I was degassing my wine and I grabbed what I thought to be the sorbate, put it down and then promptly forgot and grabbed the potassium meta. Will this hurt the wine? I was planning on bottling on Tuesday. WSG