Recent content by Rhys79

I only punched it down the first three days or so. Haven't touched it since. It will need to be transfered to a couple of 1gal jugs soon, need the bucket for a batch of cherry I'm getting ready to do (got a few pounds of tart cherries for free).

Well, it's been going for about a week now. Smelled absolutely horrendous the last time I poped the lid off to punch down the blueberries. Here's hoping for the best!

I will once it's down under 1.030 and I rack it off the fruit. It'll go into a couple of gallon jugs at that point. I have my choice of gallon jugs, a brew bucket, or 5gal carboy. I prefer to keep fruit in the brew bucket, much easier to clean than the carboys. This is my first mead, and...

My first batch of mead (blueberry) shows virtually no airlock activity. I can tell when I open it up to punch down the blueberries that it is fermenting, but I only have a 2.5gal batch going in a 6.5gal bucket, so I'm guessing the CO2 is just compressing in the headspace. The airlock is...

OP: Can you phrase that as a question??? And Yuri is correct, brandy is a distilled liquor. Wine doesn't just miraculously turn into brandy if you leave it sitting around. Most domestic beers are 4-9% ABV, wine is typically around 12% ABV (7.5-15% according to the FDA definitions). Brandy is...

Ok, just started a blueberry mead. I had a 3lb bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer (the tiny baking kind) and I didn't figure they were enough for even a gallon batch of wine, but throw in 5lbs of honey, and a gallon and a half of water, and a blueberry mead it will be. This is my first...

Wasn't aware of that, thanks for the info! As far as I know it's not supposed to get terribly warm through the weekend. High 50's on the high side.

The closest to now I can get is Sunday.

Yeah, and I get to go pick more this weekend, the 100lbs was just what I could reach and was ripe. If the frost last night didn't destroy them, I can probably get another 50-100lbs. There were a lot of bunches that weren't quite ripe enough to pick, and alot that probably were, but I needed a...

I'm generally a beer brewer, haven't gotten into all grain yet. I got about 100lbs of grapes for free, so I had to do something with them... Half went to wine, and half went to jam and juice.

Correct, concord grapes are significantly lower in sugar than standard wine grapes. Most fruit wines require at least some sugar added as well. This may be my first batch of wine, but I did my homework before I ever started.

Wine needs to be about 13% alcohol to be self preserving, hence the added sugar to bring the OG up high enough to hit that level. It's just the way it's generally done.

The sugar will vary with the sugar content of your grapes. I added enough sugar to bring my OG up to 1.105. It's up to you how much if any you add depending on how high you want the potential alcohol to be.

Let us know how it comes out, should be interesting :tank:

The gums are all thickening agents. As long as you don't use alot of the smoothie concentrate, I don't see it causing a huge issue. I'd try a small amount in a bottle of applewine and let it age for a few weeks just to make sure there won't be any adverse effects. Malic acid is one of the...