Recent content by Bilbobaker

Cider is far different from wine.. it is low alcohol and typically a faster fermented beverage not aged. Fruits are all cider bases.. you have to add sugar or honey to bring them up into the wine range of alcohol to age and store them.. Ciders are best with apple blend for the malic bite it gives.

I'm a big fan of degassing and adding sparkloid too..

Could you post a picture of the carboy from the front view showing the sediment and such? I sure wonder how this wine tastes... Hope to be making some soon. So far pie cherry, pear, kiwi, cranberry and blackberry are my all time fave fruit wines but this looks and sounds promising.

But some yeast's needs are different.. a cold ferment is sometimes delicious.

A couple of my Cranberry wines took forever to ferment and ended a bit on the sweet side too.

Would this wine benefit from the addition of some saffron after the last racking? Be an interesting bonus for color restoration, additional aromas and even add a nice bitterness or a tannin like mouthfeel. Mmmm that does sound good.

Cranberry wine is slow to ferment because of the salicylic acid in it. It is a worthy and rewarding wine in the end.

I put sulphates in the water of my airlock to prevent molds etc.

Mix it with some frozen 100% concord juice or the like and it's pretty good wine at a years aging. Straight elderberry wine is harsh and needs several years to mellow. That's been my experience.

As long as you have proper sulfate levels you are good to go. Elderberry wine can take some time to fully ferment if the sugar content was high and to taste good it needs to bottle age for several years in my opinion.

Best to continue racking on monthly intervals until lees are no longer present, or Sorbitol and filter. I find that using sparkloid speeds up the clearing of most wines.

I often jump start a new batch of frozen fruit into wine with the lees and pulp from the first racking of a previous batch. Taken from the primary bucket fermentation vessel. It is extremely fast and produces great wine. I only do this one time per two batches.

If you want a gut busting laugh give a mango seed with some fruit still on it to a horse.

I think it's because of the salicylic acid in Cranberries. (maybe that's Oxalic acid... I can't remember) A great wine isn't it.

Too Cool. What fun.