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I guess you can easily adjust acid at bottling time if it's not tasting right or have an exceptionally acidic pressing but malic acid fermentation benefit is possibly more useful for wines than cider ? I like 71B a lot for certain wines because it's gentle enough to preserve much of the aroma...

My wine is fermented in an unheated garage and I don;t use any electric aids - there have been a few cold nights but buckets and demijohns wrapped in old fleecy car seat covers have managed to keep going slow and steady. My experience with packeted yeasts is that the tricky bit is getting the...

That's a lovely deep colour

A pair of dairy farmers not that far from me in UK have done similar commercially ... Black Cow Pure Milk Vodka | The World's First Pure Milk Vodka ... except it's only 80 proof and about $30 for a 700ml bottle, even at the current appalling exchange rate ! Not exactly a "world's first"...

Nice. Black raspberries are what they use to make Chambord liqueur and they do contribute a really lovely flavour. If you're in to spirits at all, try using them in an infused vodka which you can hold back on the sugar with. Very nice indeed !! Can't get them round here any more, sadly the only...

Took the plunge and bottled up the gallon of cherry-vanilla melomel made last year after 14 months or so bulk-ageing. It's been a problem-case from start to finish - got caught in a 90-degree heatwave just after pitching a D47 yeast last year and had nowhere cool to move it to. Finished...

So, in the end I bulk-aged 15 months or so, stabilized with sorbate and a camden tablet, back-sweetened with about 150ml of natural French thick clear blueberry syrup in a UK gallon, and bottled it in 375ml bottles. One clear for the visuals and the rest green. It's still got quite a kick, loads...

Hi. I'm on about Day 5 of a primary 1 (4.5L) gallon batch of Blackberry / elder wine (still on the skins) which I had originally intended would be a rich port/Madeira style wine intended for long ageing with possibility of a final brandy-fortification after seeing how the wine developed through...

I have similar issues - some messy jobs been outstanding since October - the chances are so infrequent lately when I do finally see the car pull away I'm rushing around like a man possessed praying she didn't leave a handbag behind or something to come back for :no: :D

Mulberry wine is amazing - I made some "madeira" (just raw darkish sugar added in stages to ramp up the alcohol tolerance of the yeast as much as possible) back in the 1980s in Southern Africa. The bottles came back to Europe with me when I left and I still have a bottle remaining. Had the last...

Ah - OK. Is the orange blossom honey you back-sweeten with processed ? The honey I usually buy in Europe is all raw honey and it contains natural yeasts so has a decent chance of fermenting from its own content in the presence of water (i.e. the water content of the mead). If the Camden's been...

It tastes how the blossom smells and contributes a summery floral note to the nose. A bit like honeysuckle does, though that also gives honey notes to a wine - I've got one of those on the go right now too ! All florals can be elusive in a fermentation or in presence of high alcohol content...

Thanks - loads to think about there for future batches and I'd much rather back-sweeten with a natural honey than a processed artificial sweetener substitute. But then the price of that is the addition of chems so guess you're swapping one processed component for another !! In this case I...

Thanks - that's very interesting. Does the Xylitol addition affect hydrometer readings like sugar would, or do you just have to do it on a taste test until you like it sort of thing ?

Trying to decide whether to bulk age or bottle my melomel which was made with blueberries, wisteria petals and a blend of lavender and lavender-wildflower honeys. Also wondering how long to age it. The wisteria is still evident in the finished melomel and has survived being completely blown out...

Blueberry and white wisteria melomel

I've just made a batch of blueberry and wisteria blossom melomel, started June 18th and racked (2nd time) July 7th. Lalvin 71B yeast, start SG 1.085 end SG 0/992. It's crystal clear and not showing signs of activity now. Got a bit caught out by volume loss to racking - our demijohns in UK are 5L...