Recent content by Levers101

Is your tap water from a well or from the city's pipes? Is it chlorinated or chloraminated if it is city water? If it is chlorinated, doesn't chlorine often lead to harsh, astringent flavors? Just being a peer reviewer if you're trying to do a scientific experiment. ;-)

Yeah, your problem is that with ascorbic acid and tannins around the test will read a false-positive because SO2, ascorbic acid (vitamin C), and tannins all react with the color creating compound (iodine + starch) and reduce the iodine to iodide. Another method is called the "method of...

1) Add potassium metabisulfite to the must (grape juice). 2) Let stand for 12 hours. 3) Add yeasties. Ferment. 4) Go to The Winemaking Home Page and read about winemaking.

I have a strawberry wine that I made this summer and would like to get it into bottles after stabilizing and sweetening. I know I need potassium sorbate to inhibit any fermentation of the back-added sugar, but is it absolutely necessary for me to add metabisulfite to stabilize? My problem is...

Just because Splenda is an organochlorine doesn't mean that it is anything at all similar to DDT, PCBs, ect. the only commonality that these molecules have with Splenda is that they have carbon and chlorine. They have completely different chemistry. If you want to be worried about...

My take is that if you add sulfite at the time of whipping it should help to guard against oxidation of the wine since sulfite (and metabisulfite) both can be oxidized by oxygen to sulfate.

Not exactly sure what caused this. It cleared up after sitting overnight. Probably was the grape tannins I added that didn't have time to settle. The yeast is currently tearing through the sugars in the must at quite the clip. It certainly paid to add 3 5g packets of dried yeast (Lavlin...

I just added 1/4 teaspoon of potassium metabisulfite to 14 lbs strawberries in 2.5 gallons which I intend to make up to 5 gallons of water. However, after adding this along with pectic enzyme and grape tannin the whole mess went from a nice strawberry red to a hideous brown color. Is this...

:mug: rmck1, What do you do research in? I got an unexpected vacation this week because half of our university campus is flooded, been spending it trying to catch up on brewing, but my LHBS also got flooded. :( Still waiting on small things like Campden and grape tannin to show up via...

Oh, man, what did I get myself into. Apparently you need to know the % acidity of wine so it doesn't spoil? Its not that I can't do an acidity titration... but this makes it so much more like work than a hobby. (I'm an environmental engineering/chemistry grad student.) Anyone have any SWAG's...

I would also suggest a Kolsch, or if you have the equipment for lagering do a Pilsner. I had the most favorable comments from an Austin Homebrew Czech Pilsner kit from your typical Busch/Bud drinkers. Which, of course makes sense being that these beers at one time or another were based on...

How long would one age a strawberry wine?

Any recommendation on acid additive? And grape tannin? Some recipes I see call for them and some don't so I imagine it isn't necessary. These things seem weird to the purist in me who thinks that if it isn't sugar or strawberries it shouldn't be in the must.

Freezeblade, what was your OG on that or the mass of strawberries/gallon of water? I don't have any idea what 7.8 lbs of strawberries will give me in terms of an OG. I have decided to freeze them for the time being. I was against this in the first place since once I freeze something like...

Does anyone know what the alcohol tolerance of Munton's Standard Dry yeast might roughly be? At the moment it might be my only option for making a strawberry wine from fresh strawberries.