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So last night I tried to degas my wine before adding the chitosan and sulfites and whipped the crap out of the wine with a wine whip. It never seemed to fully degas. I am going to bulk age for several months to help it degas more naturally but if whipping the wine how do you know you got all...

does new wine of different varieties taste similar? Like I said, I thought this one had promise but am concerned maybe it was exposed to too much oxygen or something. I ordered another kit of a different variety and from a different brand but am not thinking that I am just wasting money.

What does new wine "taste" like? It seems that this Zinfandel kit tasted a lot better before it was sitting in the bottles. I seem to remember there was lots of promise in this wine and now that I tried a bottle 1 month later I am not so confident.

I am trying to have patience but I think it is more curiosity than anything. I knew going into it the vino italiano kit was cheap and not good, I did that one just to see what the process was like. I have/had much higher expectations for the cellar craft and was surprised that they had very...

This is my second wine kit and I cant really seem to tell the difference between the first kit and the second. The first kit was a cheap Vino Italiano Shiraz. The second kit was a Cellar Kraft Lodi Zinfandel that was considerably more expensive. The problem is, I cannot seem to tell much of a...

It's obviously been a while since this topic has been brought up so I have a little bit of experience to fill in the blanks. When I use my jockey box, I just get a block of ice and rest the cold plate on top and then surround to plate with ice. Over a 5 day camping trip I need to replace the...

Yep, even paying full price for the amazon one is cheaper than the furring strips I would imagine. Then considering the time and effort, way better deal. I found they smell good too :-).

I did a lot of research on the wine rack build and here is what I found. Keep in mind I am a novice at everything, from brewing beer, to wine making and wood work...I really don't know if I have any real talents except for drinking. But here is what I found. Wood is expensive, at least here...

It was a dry yeast, I did rehydrate it, but it seems to happen with the liquid yeast as well. I felt I generally did a decent job of aerating the worth but I do remember skipping that step this last time. Do you reccommend shaking the wort after a bit to wake the yeast up after a week or so...

I am new to brewing kinda, some of you probably have seen some of my posts. I don't consider myself a novice as I have close to 50 brews under my belt but I have consistently had problems hitting my FG points. My latest was a vanilla bourbon stout. It finished after being in the primary at...

I can see how the buckets would expose the wine to oxygen more than a carboy, but it really is for a brief period of time since it is the last step as I bottle, but why is straining any different than filtering?

So here is what I ended up doing and the results. After the primary I racked into a 6 gallon plastic secondary, when I did this, I used a paint strainer bag to get rid of as much of the big stuff as possible. There were a lot of those oak finings I had described before. When it was time to...

I am getting ready to bottle my Zinfandel kit wine that came with some fine oak shavings (not entirely sure why they didn't use cubes) and there seems to be a lot of sediment in my wine after racking from primary to secondary. I was wondering if I can cold crash to get the sediment to settle...

If you mean by bulk aging letting it sit in the carboy for months no, but it will be in there for another 3 weeks or so.

How much head space is too much head space. After racking from primary to secondary on my Old Vine Zinfandel, I added almost a 750 ml bottle of wine to lessen the head space, I racked again for clearing and lost some of that, but not sure if there is too much head space for this process. The...

Sorry for the noob questions but now that the wine is fermenting it recommends stirring everyday for 10 days, do I just fold the top layer gently in the rest of the must? It's not a vigorous stir is it?

Ok, so now it is in the primary but not without a few issues. I was pressed for time, which I know is my first mistake, I started putting the kit together and realized I didn't do step one, I dont have the instructions with me, but it was to add packet 1 to 4 cups of warm water and stir, I...

St. Pug, You pour into a carboy not siphon? No concerns about oxidation at this point? This seemed to be a huge concern when making wine, making sure there is as little oxygen exposure as possible. As you know I am still new to this so I don't have all the specifics figured out yet.

How do you go about sanitizing your towels over the bucket or is that even necessary? Also, do you do this for the duration of the primary or just the first few days?

I am going to do my second wine and went with a higher quality kit with grape skins this time and read that it would be a good idea to use a 7.9 gallon bucket so I ordered one, not realizing that it did not come with a lid. I have read on other posts about fermenting in buckets and just draping...