BREW IT YOURSELF, story

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Brew14Me2

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Hello All,

I just wanted to share a story that may help someone avoid something I overlooked. I ran across this website: Brew-It-Yourself.com and decided since it was close to me, I would stop in. I drink a few bottles of wine each week and it can be expensive and at times I just can't find something new for my taste. So I wanted to learn more about Homemade Wine.

I met the owner, Ray, who had to deal with me for about three hours. It was hard to make my mind up. He was very helpful and understanding, answering all my questions, telling me stuff I didn't know to ask and not pushing me in any way.

He was using a language I never heard, strange words like fermenting; you don't even want to image what I thought that was.

Anyhow, even though he suggested one gallon kits to start, I wanted the big one, a full five gallon kit. So, he walked me though the process about a dozen times and then I asked him to do it again, gathered everything I needed including a thermometer I don't even want to guess what it was originally for. So there, I had everything I needed to make 6 gallons of Island Mist.

About a month later, I decided to try and do it. I had everything laid out in the kitchen and used an gallon of distilled water to mix my sanitizer and began the process. Well, I called Ray about three times to be sure I was doing the right thing at the right time. To my surprise, it was going well. Add a gallon of this, a bag of that, a half gallon more of this, sanitize that, pour the contents of this into that and stir, check the gravity, sanitize, OOOOOPPPs where is my sanitizer. Looked around at all the empty distilled water jugs and couldn't tell which one was the sanitizer. The one I thought was the sanitizer about half full had no smell to it, so I took a whiff of the new batch of wine and GUESS where the SANITIZER went!!! You got it...

So I had to call Ray, who tried to minimize the damage and not laugh at me. You know when he hung up he busted a gut... But he did help me minimize the damage and start over. It's a funny story so :) laughing is OK...

The lesson learned is don't use a container you can mistake for distilled water to mix your sanitizer in and always make sure you have someone like Ray around to help you though the first few batches.

This is a nice place and there are some great reads...

Best Brews To All...
 
What drives me crazy is when the labels fall off the jars and the mice eat the labels.
 
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