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I was planning to use Lalvin 71-B due to its ability to metabolise some of the malic acid. I think what I might do is take a gravity reading, add sugar if necessary and then pitch the yeast. Worst case scenario I add water, and yeast again if necessary. If I could get the blackberry...

Hi all, I put a fair bit of effort into blackberry picking this year, and for my efforts I ended up with 9.5 liters of pure blackberry juice. I froze and thawed the berries and then pressed them with a screw press. I have a made a few blackberry wines in the past but all with the addition of...

I have had great success with various hazy wines with just an addition of pectic enzyme. You will be surprised how quickly it clears too, and being a plum wine full of pectins this will almost certainly help you. Next time you rack it, add some and see what happens. It wont alter the taste or...

You are correct its not illegal to own a still in Australia, and its a common enough hobby too. All the home brew supply shops sell them for the legitimate purpose of distilling oil, along with all the goodies you need to distill spirts. It's one of those things that is socially acceptable...

Well I dont think there's any harm in having a go! Unforunately the only high % spirit I can get here is called "Spirytus", its 95% but costs $70 per 500ml bottle, so i have only used it once making Limoncello. I have freeze concentrated a small amount of Strawberry wine before, and it...

Should have mentioned, we already have far more apricot jam than anyone could reasonably hope to use in a year! The problem you see, was that a large orchard nearby suffered a massive storm and they had so much windfall right on the eve of their picking season they advertised the windfall...

For a while now I have had quite an abundance of apricots in my chest freezer, at a guess maybe 20kg or so and I have recently been pondering over what to do with them. I have already made plenty of apricot wine so I dont think I need to do any more of that. One thought I came up with that...

Hi all, I have a situation where I wouldn't mind a bit of advice. I just put on a new batch of Blackberry wine, its been in the primary for 2 days and I now find that I will be travelling away from home and wont be back for 5 weeks. So either it will get a ~4 day ferment and I rack it...

From my experience it does make a difference. One wine in particular I made turned out fine generally speaking, but with no plum or distinctive flavour at all. Just a sort of bland sweet flavour, it was well balanced, good mouth feel and colour, but no aroma and nothing like true a plum wine...

I have made a few plum wines now so I feel I can weigh in on this one. My best plum wine to date has been a 'Mariposa' plum wine, my friends practically begged me for more of it and now I have hidden the last 3 bottles because I want to taste it when its gotten some good years behind it, say...

Im guessing that you're not really interested in bulk aging it for a while then? My experience with cider making is that they have all become absolutely crystal clear over a period of about 4+ months. I have 2 ciders which are now at about 8 months and at last racking neither of them had any...

The last 2 years I have made 2 apple ciders which I have named 'Road Cider', basically because I have collected all the apples from roadside trees. Not far from where I live apple orchards dominated the landscape around the late 1800's and early 1900's, and many are still in operation but its...

+5.8 Tasmanian leatherwood mead =674.3

I have used champagne yeast for a few ciders, Safale S04 for a couple and now a couple with WLP775. I really do like the ciders made with the S04 but i wish I had found WLP775 sooner, it leaves such a fresh apple flavour and character I cant see myself using anything else from this point on!

For what its worth, the very thing which got me into brewing fruit wines was tasting a Morello Cherry wine which my friends father made, and it was 15 years old! It was so good I immediately started brewing fruit wines, and I havent stopped since.

I have read about apple wine but what would the general process be? Do you normally begin with whole frozen apples?

Guess there is only one way to find out! I normally use a juicer which is incredibly labour intensive considering I like to make 25L at a time so this time around im looking to purchase a press, it should encourage me to do more ciders if anything.

Hello, I am planning to make a cider soon but am in an interesting situation whereby I have all frozen whole apples. A friend and I drove around an area known to have wild roadside apples and collected about 50kg in one evening from 6 different trees, but agreed we were both too busy to do...