Recent content by Ceegar

I'm confident my hydrometer is good. I have a 6 keg keezer and most of the time have at least 5 different beers on tap at any given time, and I don't have these issues with any other beer styles I'm doing. Plus I'm consistently hitting my target gravity on all brews using that same hydrometer...

Hey guys and gals. I'm not a newbie by any stretch, but even the seasoned brewer comes across a situation that just causes you to throw your hands in the air. I'm seeing the strangest thing happen on the last few batches of Belgian Wit I've made where my beer struggles to ferment down past...

My next door neighbor is an old Italian and he makes wine like this. He just gave me a bottle of concord made the same way. He doesn't use sulfites, yeast, clarifiers or any other chemicals, and he does it in big barrels. It tasted pretty good but had a weird aftertaste to it. That's how they...

The yeast would die if the wine reached the yeasts's alcohol ceiling wouldn't it? What is the purpose of using the camden tablets then when racking after fermentation is finished?

Newbie question - When has fermentation stopped? I have a 3 gal carboy of Loganberry where I can still see fermentation activity through the glass but it's not enough to show any activity through the airlock (no more bubbling). Should I wait to stabilize or is now the time? I would feel better...

I can't use any from the packed fruit because I used the whole 96 oz can but asking the winery to sell some loganberry concentrate is a possibility - my son's girfriend's mother works there so the chances might be good. The color of theirs is more reddish then what my batch looks like - mine is...

Thanks anyway - Well we don't have them here either. They are native of Oregon and they are a cross between European raspberry and Californian blackberry. I think I may have to either try a raspberry frozen concentrate, or I was even thinking of red grape. I'll have to experiment a bit. There's...

OK, not meaning to beat a dead horse, but I really want to try some sort of frozen juice concentrate, at least with maybe a gallon of this 3 gal batch I have. I guess the real reason for my post was to get some suggestions as to what frozen concentrate would compliment Loganberry wine - do you...

I have this corker and it works decent. The one problem I have with it is the rod that pushes the cork into the bottle is narrower that the cork itself and it always leaves a big indentation on the top of the cork. It also prevents the cork from going all the way in because it widens the top...

OK thanks - only reason why I ask is I know I like wines between 3%-5% residual sugars, and I even like some of the dessert wines with as much as 16%. That's the only thing I have to gauge my tastes on - I'm just trying to figure out how to get there now. I'll mull this over a bit - the math...

Ok, so if I have a dry as possibly can be wine and I increase the SG to 1.008, what will the residual sugar percentage be in the finished wine? When we are on the wine trail and tasting wines most of the wineries will list the wine's respective residual sugar percentages (e.g. 1%, 5%, etc.)...

or thinking or being creative. He would need all that crap if he were going to dabble in some fruit wines or meads. So you swear by the kits - concentrates vs fresh grape juice? I've been wondering how good they are. Sure, for the money you get a lot more wine, and it gives you the...

Just to get a grasp on the relationship of the SG reading in comparison to residual sugar percentages what would 1.008 equate to in terms of residual sugar percentage? Doesn't seem like a whole lot of difference between .990 and 1.008.

I have a 3 gal batch of Loganberry that is nearly bone dry now and I will be looking to sweeten it up when the time comes. I haven't tasted it yet so it might be hard to decide at this point which method to sweeten it but I was leaning towards a frozen concentrate of some sort. Does anyone have...

Well I've never brewed beer so I don't know what equipment is universal in both wine and beer making aside from the obvious hydrometers, carboys, racking equipment and the like. Depending on what kind of wine you will be making you will probably want to get a supply of yeast nutrient and...