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That was my experience! The amount of wine bottled was only 50-60% of the original volume of must. I did better the second time, because mid primary fermentation I moved the whole lot to a big glass carboy without an airlock, so I could see what I was doing when I siphoned it off the pulp and...

In my experience, this is a thing with mango wine. I've made it twice using canned mango pulp and a recipe from here: Homemade Mango Wine Recipe The pulp is very fluffy and fine and it just doesn't compact down, so you lose a fair bit of the volume. There is pectic enzyme in the recipe, so the...

Agreed - my advice to any new winemaker would be to start a LOT the first year or two, so you can drink some technically too early and also have some to age properly. Get ahead of the process!

Aaaargh - I just racked the blackberry wine that I started in September, and once again it's getting stinky! When should I degas it? I was going to take the advice of Seamonkey84 and degas it in the primary this time, but I forgot. It's gone from primary to secondary plus today's racking.

I have found this guide helpful: https://web.archive.org/web/20010409220855/http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/problems.asp scroll down to "Flavors, Tastes and Smells."

Thanks for all that great info! If I can still get the juice today, I'll use bananas - what size batch did you add one pound of bananas to? Also pectic enzyme, EC-1118 because it ferments easily, and perhaps some tannin powder or strong tea. If it seems too acid for my taste after a couple of...

A local grocery store has Ocean Spray Cranberry and Concord Grape 100% Juice on mega clearance. Has anyone made wine with this specific one before? I'd need about 8 bottles for a 3-gallon batch, and I'd probably need to add more sugar. Should I consider including one or two bottles of something...

Sadly, yes Jack Keller, Jr (1944 - 2020) - Obituary

This will be 30 bottles of blueberry-blackberry and 30 bottles of blackberry, dry, some time next year. Yum.

I do three-gallon batches - for instance today I'm transferring a batch of blackberry from two primary buckets into two 3-gallon carboys and a 4.6 litre jug (or maybe a 4-litre one). I'll rack it 2-3 times before bottling, into two clean carboys and a successively smaller jug - I have a...

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I second Jack Keller's blog, and also the EC Kraus website, and the recipes forum on this site. A few years in, and I almost never add acid blend. Most of the recipes call for it, so that's something to watch out for, because you can always add more acid but it's difficult to reduce it. Also...

Well the thing is, if you collect used wine bottles that originally had corks, from recycling or restaurants or ones you bought at the wine store or whatever, you're getting bottles from all over the world. Some have the labels that slide off nicely with a bit of a soak, and some have labels...

All of the above - and some of them just won't come off no matter what you do, at least the glue residue. Which sucks if you really liked that particular bottle! I've resorted to Goo Gone and the pot scrubber as a last resort, and some bottles have gone back to the recycling depot.

Yes! Here on Vancouver Island the blackberries are just starting to ripen. Two days of picking after work and I have 5 lb in the freezer, but I need 45 lb to make up for a lack of affordable Okanagan cherries at the grocery store this year. Fingers crossed for the August peaches. My garden did...

This happened to me with a ginger wine that contained raisins - which turned out to have been coated with oil as is common with dried fruit. My notes say it was slightly greasy when I moved it from the primary bucket to the secondary glass carboy. I racked it three times before bottling, and...

Stirring yes - degassing no, not the fruit wines. I'll give that a try later this year. Thanks for the suggestion! I'd still love to find out what makes blackberries different from raspberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, blueberries, plums, peaches, cherries - or if anyone else has had this...

Three years later, and I just bottled yet another batch of blackberry with this same problem, which had developed in the secondary fermentation. I did a load of research last spring, and I added yeast energiser as well as yeast nutrient this time, which I think helped but didn't completely...

Here's how I deal with topping up - this is 6 gallons plus of blueberry-blackberry wine started last month. I have a selection of different sized glass containers, gathered over time from recycling depots, and bungs to fit them. The carboys start out with a friend such as this three-litre wine...

Lol no kidding! We're having a worse plague of fruit flies than usual - so I'm trying to take the lid off as few times as possible. Hence bunging in all the ingredients at the same time.