Recent content by kmdakota1

i did use pectic enzyme in the beginning. this looks like little pieces of pulp from the strawberries and not so much a haze. It's been in secondary for about 35 days. should i leave longer? there's quite a bit of lees and sediment in there, what about aftertaste? Or should i just rack and...

In about 10 days I will be racking my strawberry wine where it will sit for about 2 months to age. It has been in the secondary for almost 45 days. It has a lot of sediment and has cleared pretty nicely but there is still some sediment in suspension that you can see just hovering in the wine...

how long could you let it sit under vac? could you put it on say the night before bottling and just leave it? for sure it would degas by the next day. also, i have this exact tool i've used hundreds of times for mechanical reasons. could you elaborate a bit on how to make fittings for the #6...

completely normal. it's the gas being released, like farting! just wait till you start doing it more, you'll love that smell! my whole basement smelled like fermenting strawberries the other night. at no point is it ever gonna smell delicious (or taste) until it's done and some decent aging...

midwest supplies is great! used to get all my stuff there until Mr. Steves Home Brew opened up just down the road. Although, I may still order from Midwest cause the guy at Mr. Steve's is arrogant, acts like any other brewing method except his is wrong!

when a recipe say "rack again then bottle".... does it mean rack it and wait another month then put right into bottles, or does it literally mean to rack into another carboy then put into bottles. why would you do all that extra work if you could just bottle it from the carboy it was in...

no, i don't have a meter, would be nice though. was referring to the titrets. never used them before. i certainly would like a more gratifying experience this time around after 7 years of not brewing. maybe it would be worth spending the insane price they want for 10 test tubes! also, how...

any reason you don't use campden tablets in your must? how old is the must? given the circumstances you may want to consider a tablet in your must, but then you'll have to wait at least 24 hours until pitching yeast. it would certainly help anyways if you're worried about "funkies".

yes i agree, made wine 7 years ago when i first started and only used one step. it was a "no rinse" cleaner that was apparently ok to get in your wine. every single batch i made tasted funky which was why i quit! I started brewing again last week and am now cleaning, rinsing, sanitizing and...

also, there is a difference between cleaning and sanitizing. these two things are very important.

did you use a campden tablet in your must? did you pitch the yeast yet? would be ashame to abort a fermentation prematurely. where did you get the 4 liter container? was it used for anything else? i think you'll be ok while still in the fermentation process but i'm no expert either. you'll...

I just racked into my secondary. I initially put a campden tab in when i made the must (1 gallon). I did not use any for the secondary. they say to add every other racking and then at bottling. so my next racking i would add a tablet, next racking no tablet, next racking tablet then bottle...

I'm not too sure about this but i don't think pectic enzyme will help you out too much at this point. usually, it's put in when you make your must to extract and break down the fruit to get better flavor when fermenting. 10 gallons is alot of wine and i would imagine will take longer to clear...

it's fermenting now. gave it a good stir this morning. I used cote yeast in food grade pail. also another question. i want to filter my wines this time around but don't want to spend a fortune for such little batches. i saw that one that basically looks like a garden sprayer with a filter...

ok, so i got the itch to get back into it after an overwhelming batch of home grown strawberries. last time i brewed i didn't know that much about it and didn't sanitize any of my stuff. this time around i'm really focusing on cleaning and sanitizing. using easy clean and star san. i pitched...