Recent content by pmcginley

i highly recommend trying this wine recipe - as i mentioned, i think my 2014 birch sap wine is the best thing i've ever made. dry and crisp, no sourness, and a very particular earthy taste. it also improved dramatically after 6 months bottled.

and if i did determine it to be a pH issue -.is there anything i can do about it? how do i adjust pH? also, how do i determine what the pH *should* be? particularly curious about this question now, since i've just started a mead as well. :)

that also sounds like an interesting idea. is 1.040 about right for a fortified wine? so if i added, say, 1 part spirit at 40% ABV to 3 parts of my wine, i'd get something around 18% (that would also be a little less sweet). is that the idea?

possibly. i have no experience with pH. how would i measure and interpret that? is it something that could be different between last year's batch and this year's?

good idea, yes, i was thinking i might blend it with something, although there's no more birch sap to be had now until next spring. anyway, the 2014 came down practically to 1.000, and is great that way, so maybe i'd be better off blending it with something else that's not so nice that dry. i've...

to be honest, i'm not entirely sure what it was, and i haven't kept the packaging. :smack: it was some kind of all-in-one mixture specifically for restarting stuck fermentation, or so it said. it didn't introduce new yeast, it was just meant to somehow give a kick to the yeast that was there...

greetings all, i have been experimenting (with fairly good results) over the last several years with wines and ciders using ingredients from my property and spontaneous fermentation. my best result so far, imo, was my 2014 birch sap wine, which came out crisp, fresh and dry, so i was excited...