I've read a lot of wine industry reports and articles on closures. The current consensus is that Stelvin screw caps seem to work best, though there's a lot of resistance among traditionalists that's keeping screw caps from becoming more wide spread.

Nobody has yet been able to produce synthetic corks that can keep oxidation at bay for any real length of time, significantly decreasing the shelf life of a wine.

Plastic bags in boxes also seem to do very well, though the...

summersolstice

I’ve been making wine and mead for a long time but I’ve been brewing for a little over a year. The wine and mead making process is simple: formulate a recipe, sanitize your equipment, mix the ingredients and wait. Yes, there’s a little more to it than that but essentially that’s the process. I’ve made a batch of mead during my lunch break from work and still had time to eat lunch. Of course there’s the waiting – like one to two years – but that doesn’t require any effort or expenditure of time....

summersolstice

I should know better than to get into a hurry when I make wine or mead, or when I brew. I bought some fresh pressed local cider a couple of weeks ago, intending to use it to make a cyser. I finally got around to doing just that about a week ago.

I cleaned and sanitized the primary and gathered all my ingredients together. I carefully measure out 18 lbs of honey and added hot tap water to get the honey into suspension. As I was stirring the honey I hydrated my D-47 according to the...

summersolstice

One of the most exciting aspects of our hobby is creating a beverage that totally satisfies our expectations and many of us wonder how variations in a recipe would impact the flavor or aroma of a finished product. I see a lot of questions regarding changing a proven recipe: how would substituting yeast strain B change the outcome or what would happen if I added or substituted this ingredient? To me, seeing the outcome of such variations in my creations is half the fun of this hobby.

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summersolstice

I’m a big fan of meads made with fruit juices and concentrates. Yes, I make some fairly complicated meads but I also like to throw together a quick mead made with frozen concentrates or bottled juices. They’re ready in 3-4 months and, though they may be a little one dimensional, they’re popular since I usually back sweeten with pure concentrate and honey to produce a medium sweet mead.

I just put a little hot tap water in the primary, add a quart or two of honey (depending upon the...

summersolstice