Recent content by brewbucket

no yeast dies at 7.5% ABV of sparkling wine. (And if it did it would result in cloudy wine that would never clear )

yes, unfortunately this is what I am doing so far - keeping the log, changing one thing at a time, learning the influence of hops, grains and temps on the final product, I wish I'd be The Big Lebowski and don't give a **** :)

year right, how can you tell it is perfect? I am just saying it is the best of my brew that I have tasted so far. which btw came from by replacing 2-row with pilsner and sitting in secondary for 2 month (I think pilsner is the main reason but how can I know?) I am definetly putting the...

it does not affect the flavor as long as it settles down (and it does unless you drink it right away :) ) : dissolve gelatin in 3/4 cap water at 170F and let it bloom for 30 min, than add it to your secondary basically i add it all the time. it less needed with kits than with all grain...

not sure what you mean, please explain

considering it takes about 2 month to get from the trial to result how do you fine tune your receipts? I have just tasted the best beer I have done so far - what should I do with the next batch? Do the exact same thing? Try to eliminate the costly components? I know when the beer is wrong (i.e...

I think when I make wine, the staring gravity is 1.090 and it ends up 12% ABV using wine yeast (whcih is more alcohol tolerant) 1.12 for the beer is insane, it will never gonna clear because the year will never going able to finish its job at such high alcohol percentage

higher mashing temperature would produce more non-fermentable sugars, thus higher final gravity. You don't want to start bottling it however until it stable AND more or less cleared (which only will hapen after all fermentable sugars are gone).

I ended up doing a blueberry/blackberry/raspberry/strawberry mix, will post if it comes any good

I would add some gelatin to speed up clearing (after couple of cloudy beers I now always add it when transferring to the secondary). It also helps with getting the final sediment from bottle carbonation to stick to the bottom of the bottle (as opposed to being fluffy and getting disturbed every...

1) would it be a problem to use 2L soda bottles (that I use for beer) to bottle the sparkling wine? Like bottle material leeching into the wine because of few extra percents of alcohol (7.5% instead beer at 5%)? 2) is disgorging absolutely necessarily or is it possible to pour it carefully...

doing this recipe right now using Tettnanger instead of Glacier and German Pilsner instead of Pale. Will report back in 2 months with the results :)

Wild raisins is not the same as wild grapes (that have actually grape leaves) here are some more pictures of wild raisins: http://foragingpictures.com/plants/Wild_raisins/

usually bringing yeast to it's ABV limits is not a good idea because: 1) it produces lots of byproducts at high abv 2) creates clearing problem when there still some sugars left but yeast can't finish them off giving it has cleared and adding lots of aging, it may be very drinkable with...

Does anyone have a good Wild Raisin wine recipe? Also when you usually pick them - do you wait for the whole bunch to become ripe or pick only ripe ones from the bunch?