DangerDave's Dragon Blood Wine

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🤣. Well, I could have used better English, so maybe it's me who's been quality controlling too much this morning 🤣
Nope, your grammar ain't the problem. Perfectly fine, in fact exactly how I would've said it. I've just not had a lot of luck with my aging eyes. ;)
 
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This is my lime Skeeter Pee 4 days after adding SuperKleer.
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Oooo, nice! I see someone else must have had a Skeeter Pee Volcano when degassing. Or am I wrong? Anyway, I like your overflow bucket. Smart. The only batch I've done so far I had on the kitchen table, still in primary. I gave it a 2 second burst with my drill whip (which I had been using fine until now), and it bubbled over the pail, onto the table and the floor like my daughter's baking soda and vinegar volcano I helped her with when she was young. It's one of those times when all you can do is stare at it and go "oh, sh*#($ttt"! I'm sure glad it was SP and not Dragon Blood. I am much more careful now. lol
 
Oooo, nice! I see someone else must have had a Skeeter Pee Volcano when degassing. Or am I wrong? Anyway, I like your overflow bucket. Smart. The only batch I've done so far I had on the kitchen table, still in primary. I gave it a 2 second burst with my drill whip (which I had been using fine until now), and it bubbled over the pail, onto the table and the floor like my daughter's baking soda and vinegar volcano I helped her with when she was young. It's one of those times when all you can do is stare at it and go "oh, sh*#($ttt"! I'm sure glad it was SP and not Dragon Blood. I am much more careful now. lol

My carboys are all in baskets now because I once had one break and spill 6 gallons of wine all over my floor. I didn't know whether to cry or grab a straw. It took me HOURS to clean it up 🥺
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Oooo, nice! I see someone else must have had a Skeeter Pee Volcano when degassing. Or am I wrong? Anyway, I like your overflow bucket. Smart. The only batch I've done so far I had on the kitchen table, still in primary. I gave it a 2 second burst with my drill whip (which I had been using fine until now), and it bubbled over the pail, onto the table and the floor like my daughter's baking soda and vinegar volcano I helped her with when she was young. It's one of those times when all you can do is stare at it and go "oh, sh*#($ttt"! I'm sure glad it was SP and not Dragon Blood. I am much more careful now. lol
i use cooking sheet pans, a full sheet holds 2 carboys. but a while back i had a 14 gallon fermenter too full, filled the room, ran down the the hall and got to carpet at the edge of living room, since then, i have used only my 30 gallon brutte, i got 6 or 7 more just been to busy/LAZY to brave the copper heads to bring in 2 more from my tool storage.
Dawg
 
I've not had a lot of luck with bentonite so always use SuperKleer (also known as Dualfine) to clear my wines. I then filter it before bottling using the Vinbrite filter. It's not a fancy system, is inexpensive and does an adequate job... it help gives the wine a bit of polishing.

Thanks for the reply. I've never ysed it before, I've not had an issue clearing wine before and only used it as a last ditch effort to clear it. I've never heard SuperKleer been called Dualfine which might help me, I can't find a lot of the American branded stuff here in Aus.

With more fruit, it could possibly be pectic haze. What type of fruit? I’ve read that pectic enzyme (PE) will not affect the taste at all and is safe to use as much as required. It helped my first batch of DB, and I put double the recipe amount in my current two batches due to using fresh fruit. With DualFine they’ve cleared in 2 days! Next time it won’t clear like that I would try a dose to see if it helps. I’ve also read starch haze can be a problem with some fruit, like bananas.

I used around 1.5x the fruit in Dave's recipe and also used 1.5x pectinase for that reason. I tried cold crashing, everything I could think of and still couldn't get it clear. Oh well, as I said it tastes good and I couldn't find any corkable bottles due to covid so they will need to be drunk sooner rather than later.
 
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TOON BLOOD
That baby finished fermenting real slow. So did my sour cherry & blueberry, almost exactly the same. I had to keep reminding myself of all the times I’ve told others to just be patient... But 0.001 or less drop every day for 10 days? Oh well, I finally added the K-meta and Sorbate, and degassed (man, Siri doesn’t know ANY of these words 😉). Thanks again Steve, @vacuumpumpman ! It took a day, but you can get almost every bubble out under vacuum. A day after adding DualFine, my top-up vessels are perfectly clear,
View attachment 63245
and the carboys aren’t far behind.
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Those are some interesting bottles.........................Dizzy
 
Those are some interesting bottles.........................Dizzy
You're referring to the rectangular ones, I suppose. Yes, I like them. It's the only reason I drink Kirkland (Costco) spiced rum! (NOT! haha). I think the bottles are quite attractive with the etched ship. 1.75 L, and a mouth that will take a #6 1/2 bung to air lock or vacuum. I use them for top-up when there's not enough for a 1 gallon jug. I've considered bottling my Dragon Blood into some like DangerDave does with 1 gallon jugs to keep in the fridge, and just using the original caps, but bottles are easier to handle. We'll see. I was also considering using wine boxes, but again bottles are just handier.
 
Clear as a bell...................
Yes, and that's 1 day after adding SuperKleer. (Well, mine is called Claro K.C. and the package says add the Chitosan 24 hours after the Kieselsol, so it's 2 days after the first part, 1 day after the second part.) I really think my AIO vacuum pump helps a lot. It lets me get a perfectly degassed wine. At the beginning, just a few inches Hg makes it foam like crazy, but the more CO2 that comes out, the more vacuum I can apply, until barely a single bubble comes out with 22" vacuum. After that, I had 1/2" of crystal clear wine in those bottles before I even added the SuperKleer. I've done my backsweetening tests and it's time to start sanitizing some bottles. Woo hoo!
 
777D34C2-C900-42AA-B863-3A99CA412AC6.jpegThat was my Cherry Blueberry DB a couple days ago. Yesterday while backsweetening I accidentally dropped the racking cane Into the carboy while transferring to the primary for adding sugar. I figured I was going to have to let it clear again anyway, so went ahead and added the sugar. Now it looks like this. Good news is the Toon Blood is still Crystal clear! The bottles in front are from the top-up jug and a Cab Merlot kit I did.
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It sounds like you meant to say “no luck with bentonite so always use SuperKleer”. Or do you mean what you say?😉 All the kits I’ve ever done use both: bentonite up front (more effective/efficient during primary fermentation when the active yeast has everything in suspension), and DualFine/SuperKleer at the end, before bottling.
KC, how much Bentonite do you use up front?....................Dizzy
 
i reckon i figured wrong on my DDDB variant, black raspberry, blueberry, sour cherry, it clearly ain't a good choice for a quick drinker, i was going to bottle 3 carboys today, i bottled one carboy and of course tasted it, i hope bulk aging the other two will help, what's bad is each of them should make a killer wine on their own, i know for a fact the tart/sour cherry does, and i hear the the other2 do as well, and yes i taste all the way thru on my wines, so i do know what to expect on my finished wines, but my variant said it might very well be blah ,,,,
Dawg
 
I posted this question in the wrong forum earlier, so reposting it here where it should have. My first DB wine and I am using some wild alaska blueberries that I had in refrig instead of costco fruits. Following recipe exactly. Initial SG 1.080, temps 72-74. It got to 1.066 and stuck there. Some thoughts were low ph but I can’t measure it. Since then I timidly added one tsp of calcium carbonate which I had around. I also added one tsp of yeast nutrient. The ferment seems to have restarted. Now I wish I had only added one thing at a time! Overnight it went from 1.066 to 1.064. Any ideas of which addititive started it up again? It is probably not enough for 6 gal, so I’ll watch and see if it stalls again, then just add ONE of the ingredients.
In the meanwhile I’ll look for a inexpensive pH meter...Ideas? I have paper, but can’t read them with this dark wine.
Thanks.
 

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