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I have a question. occasionally bottle carb my mead and wine. Usually , I simply add a half teaspoon or a full teaspoon of sugar to 12 oz or Grolsch bottles. just bought a pack of carbonation drops (Brewer's Best) and the pack states that there are approx. 54 drops inside at a weight of 256 g...

I am making a gallon of strawberry wine. I added enough water to 2 lbs of sugar to make 1 US gallon. That should give me an SG of 1.090. I poured this syrup over 5 pounds of strawberries and allowed the fruit to macerate on the syrup with some pectic enzyme. I then blended everything and the...

How do you calculate the change in proof or ABV of a spirit if you add say, honey and not water? Can I simply use an alcohol dilution calculator and treat the volume of honey as if it were water or does the mass of the honey make the calculations more complex? Thanks.

In the last few weeks, I have become fascinated with the idea of dry hopping mead. Are there many mead makers on this forum who routinely add hops to their mead? My sense is that one oz of hops to every gallon for about 2-3 days is good, but if you have hopped extensively, what are your...

I want to add some peppery notes from grains of paradise to a batch of beer I am about to make. Have never used GofP before. Per gallon, how much should I add and should I boil these peppers before adding, and if so, for how long to extract flavors? Thanks

Trying to repair my ignorance: in wine making, I won't use my municipal water - although it tastes fine for drinking, making coffee, baking and cooking - because it does contain chlorine. I use spring water. But when it comes to making a wash for distilling spirits, how critical is it that the...

Does anyone here, who presumably also brew beer and /or make wine use Star San to sanitize cheese making kettles and tools or do you choose to boil everything? Is Star San, for example, only really good for cleaning surfaces (tables and counters) in the food world or can it be used as we do when...

If I have say, a liter of spirit at 70% ABV (140 p) and I add 1 liter of water, the spirit will be reduced to 35%. If that liter includes say, 300 g of sugar (same 1 liter volume) does the added sugar do anything to the ABV? Is the liqueur still 35%? I imagine it is, but I am uncertain. Thanks.

A question. I culture all my milk with whey from kefir I make from grains. I don't drink kefir so I have enough kefir to make a hard cheese about once every three weeks. I noticed a few days ago that one of the batches of hard kefir cheese i had been aging had developed blue mold. I have not...

Looking for a recipe for a good Swiss-type cheese and I have a couple of questions. 1. I see some recipes on Youtube that suggest the use of mesophilic ic cultures but aren't emmentaler cheeses not all thermophilic (the cooking temps are above 125 F)? 2. To maintain the more buttery/sweeter...

I am currently making about a pint of vanilla essence with 10 beans. But the spirit I am using to extract the flavor is about 170 proof. I think I will need /want to dilute this by about half before we use the essence for baking or wine making. (vodka is 80 p or 40% ABV). I assume I should allow...

I am currently making three batches of cider with different yeasts which I started at the beginning of February and I am really surprised that the batch into which I pitching Nottingham has cleared bright the fastest. I mean clear as in being able to read a newspaper through. Too early to offer...

A question out of ignorance. Oaking brandy. If I was making a whisky from beer I would expect to really oak that baby, but what about brandy? I have a small batch o brandy I am making from wild grapes that grow near my home. How much oak is used in brandy making? About the same as when making...

A few weeks ago I produced some spirits from whey wine. The wine was about 12% and the distillate was about 800 ml at about 68% ABV (136 p) . I macerated star anise in this for about a month to six weeks and yesterday, I strained the spices and collected the spirit. To this I added 1 cup of...

I frequently make a hard kefir cheese , which is to say, I am not using the kefir to simply culture the milk for 40 minutes or so but I am using kefir as the base for my cheese. What I have been doing is collecting about a gallon of the kefir and the straining, salting and flavoring with herbs...

Is there a good reason why I should not use a small sample of my last batch as the culture to make a fresh batch? I understand that over time the culture will mutate in ways I have no control and so perhaps produce flavors and aromas that I will not prefer... but how then does that not happen...

I thought I was buying rhubarb concentrate but this is now a blend of junk including HFCS as the first ingredient. But rather than toss it I made 3 gallons from this 1 gallon (rather than the suggested 5) and the wine tastes almost flavorless, certainly not rhubarb-y.. and I have made rhubarb...

I frequently make a block of hard kefir cheese from the kefir I make from grains. But I just realized that when I strain the kefir through a sieve to recapture the grains but allow the curds to fall through I am in fact damaging those curds. And that may not be a problem for those who eat /drink...

Just came across this Youtube video and while I still maintain Mozzarella is NOT an easy cheese to make, this video suggests that it might be a great deal easier than it seems. He uses 1 L of milk (OK he uses raw milk but fresh milk with Ca Cl should be OK) 20 ml of white vinegar 10 g salt...

For those interested in making a coffee wine or mead I just learned something this morning on a radio show called Milk Street Radio (June 4th). Bitter compounds from coffee are water soluble (in fact all the conventional tastes -sweet, salty, umami, bitter and sour are water soluble) but fruity...