starting again in little Texas..

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Mr Gas

Junior
Joined
Dec 5, 2017
Messages
6
Reaction score
5
Hello from sunny southern Alberta :)

So when my partner and I, hardly a fair partnership for her as she has the brains and the beauty lol, got started winemaking together we had between the two of us a couple of standard fermenters, and 2 or 3 italian glass carboys and a regular carboy.

Of course, it doesn't take much sampling and you never have enough ready to go what with all the aging and degassing times, So i stumbled upon a facebook ad for a local chap who was selling his fermentor and 3 italian glass carboys and haggled him down to 50 bux CAD, and my beautiful partner said it was a steal, so I told him we would take it. As i was on the road working, she would have to tie up the deal if she wanted to steal it. She offered him 60$ if delivered and they accepted. Later his daughter dropped off the goods.

Turns out he had recently lost his wife, and was getting rid of the equipment as it saddened him remembering the great times him and his wife had together making wine and beer, so he threw in all his remaining equipment, which we thought at the time was a 4th carboy, and since carboys were what we really wanted anyways, we were ecstatic.

She called me on the road and told me about our score, the fourth carboy,and to both of our surprises the fermentor was huge! She thinks it could do 3 or 4 batches at once.She put the MOAF, that's MOTHER OF ALL FERMENTS, aside in the basement for the time being till i got home. Couple of hitches later, when I'd saved up enough to get two wine kits of the same kind, she pulled it out to fire it up, opened the lid to sanitize it, and holy smokes! Inside was a standard fermenter, racking cane and hoses, two and a half bags of corks, at least half a dozen degassing bungs and vents,and a few other miscellaneous items! It was like winemaking jackpot!

So now we have 6 italian glass carboys, and one standard, the MOAF, 3 regular fermenters one of which has a bottom tap we use for filling bottles from, etc.

Seeing as I don't have the looks or brains, I'm more the resourceful one and bankroll of the operation, so at least I have a few redemptive qualities to bring to the partnership lol. I'm also the chief cook and bottle washer, ok maybe just the bottle washer. I get our magnum bottles, and we only use magnums so far, from a small town bottle recycler where he sells them to me for what the gov would pay him, I just have to pick them out :)

On side tangent, last time I was rerecycling bottles into our stock, I found the perfect one. She was nice green/brown glass and wasn't a screw cap, but alas the original owner was to handicapped to work a corkscrew correctly and the cork was inside the bottle. She said, that bottle is toast you will never get it out, challenge accepted! I filled the bottle with water, bent the end of a coat hanger into a V, got under the cork and pulled up! voila :)

So, in conclusion it's great to be here, looking forward learning lots, and my first area of study will be vacuum degassing, hence the handle ;)

Cheers!
 
Welcome to the forum!

So how long have you guys been making wine? What do you make your wine from, kits?
 
Thanx for all the replies :)

As I'm working on the road, I can only confer from my own personal experiences. My beautiful partner has far more expertise than I have, as she used to make wine to save money and to supplement an income while in college and probably more from before. I've had a wine making kit for 20 years but really only made a few batches from kits. She has always made from kits as well, but in the future I can see us experimenting from juices, or even scratch for variation and better ROI. She's the brewer, but has very traditional and conventional methodology whereas I'm more the one to reinvent the wheel. She's a big fan of the cab/savs, I prefer a blush, but my palette is still developing and over time hope to be more eclectic.
As we're both divorced, this is the nature of the thread name "starting again." We have the opportunity to meditate on what and how we want to evolve toghther, and have results by design, instead of taking what comes to us :)
Wine making is a great hobby for us to to together, and through practice and experience who knows what opportunities are available. It's also a great way to learn together, not just about brewing, but how to facilitate teamwork with complimentary attributes, and have a "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" conclusion :D
 
Got the latest status update today.
She bottled 48 bottles of cab/merlot and pinot noir, and they are standing up in bottles finishing degassing. There were 3 extra bottles, one of pinot noir and and two cab/merlot for sampling to check on the offgassing after two weeks to see if they are still gassy.
She flipped over the riesling, from the fermentor to the carboy.
And and she started a rose which i can't spell because i don't know how to make "agoo" mark lmao.
This happened in an 8 hour span, she worked till 4.
Everyone has been labeled and degassed she says, as its committed (corked).
She used the hand vacuum pump for degassing the pinot noir in the bottles.
Apparently it was obnoxiously gassy.
She observed the merlot and pinot noir are very gassy, the cab/savs are more friendly for newer winemakers iho.

It is readily apparent I need to build a degassing system, for Christmas for her...
 

Latest posts

Back
Top