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Thanks Sadu, I've gone with the aquarium heater idea standing the fermenters in the water. Hoping for some small improvements now I can control temperature throughout!!

If you have the room keep it for a couple of years. I've made wine with a bad smell a few times and it often mellows. You can always sweeten later if the smell dissipates?

Looking for a bit of advice on heating equipment. It's bloody cold in the north of England making temperature control difficult (freezing at night and boiling in the day with the wife insisting on having the heating on all day). Very concerned about temperature control for my fermenting wines...

I typically use 3-4lbs of fruit per gallon and it works for me. You still get plenty of strawberry flavour with that method so crack on and I wish you well. It is going to be like rocket fuel with that sg though!!

I started a pumpkin wine a week ago (couldn't bear to throw out all that Halloween pumpkin) and just racked into secondary. It looks and smells ok (very strong taste) but boy does it look bad. It is currently dark brown and looks extremely off putting, does the colour lighten? I just used...

Just read another thread about clearing using gelatine. Better option than bentonite?

I always add a ton of hops both in the boil and dry hop which always seems to result in a hazy beer. Not a problem as taste is what it's all about but I just wondered if adding bentonite in primary might help? Would appreciate any thoughts before I ruin a perfectly good beer? Cheers

Bernardsmith you were 100% right. When you posted I was almost offended that you suggested that I had not allowed the wine to degas! Well I've just opened up a bottle from the same batch and have a sparkling mead! Not what I planned but nonetheless very nice indeed! Every day is a school day!!!

I've experienced losing a few bottles of wine before where I lay the bottles on their side and the cork slides out. I find that leaving the bottles for a couple of days upright solves this. However, I ve recently lost a couple of bottles of wine where the cork has slide out after a few months...

I left a carboy without the Bung for about a week (like an idiot) and it turned out OK

The carbonation turned out very good and the wine has less sediment in the bottle as well so what was an accident will now become my usual way of achieving a fizz!! Ie ferment dry and add 2 teaspoons of sugar per 750ml bottle!!

They are 750ml bottles so hopefully I've not created bombs!!

Normally I achieve this by bottling when the gravity is about 1.01. However, this year I was away and the must has fermented dry. In order to try to create a fizz I added 2 teaspoons of dextrose to each bottle and also kicked up a bit of the sediment to ensure that there is an element of yeast...

So I split the brew into 4 1 gallon (uk) demijohns. 1) added 60g of centennial and 40g Columbus. 2) added 200g strawberries (crushed up) 3) added 150g rhubarb and approx 50g strawberries 4) added 200g raspberries. Let sit of fruit, hops for about a week and then bottled. The rhubarb beer...

Cracking stuff, I make rhubarb wine and rhubarb + other fruit wines every year. All initially based on yoopers recipes. However, I would recommend checking out a video on YouTube from Christopher Edwin about extracting juice from rhubarb without leaving it in the primary. I swear by the method...

You can get cork plugs which allow the wine to breath a little when ageing, that's what I always use!

Well experiment over so in case anyone is thinking about trying, I added 400g of chopped rhubarb to a gallon (uk) following a week in primary. I left the beer on the rhubarb for a further week and then bottled. Very pleased with the results but the rhubarb taste is strong. Will be trying again...

I agree with rtrent, I've made a red with welches before and it had a taste of bubble gum about it. Luckily I only made one gallon and used all of it for cooking. Never again!!

I often use a Canadian blonde coopers kit with 500g of dry malt extract and a kg of dextrose (from craigtube) and dry hop the crap out of it to make a strong ipa style beer. Thinking about doing exactly the same but instead of adding the hops adding rhubarb to make a saison. How much rhubarb...

Thanks, I may rack and get as much out as I can and then leave in the cellar (which is freezing).