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Question about methodology: some wine recipe books I have call for discarding fruit and racking into secondary after only 3-5 days in primary. They make a distinction between the first 70% of sugar consumption that happens in the first 5 days, and the second 30% that ought to happen over the...

Hello friends. When I bought my current supply of Fermaid O and Go-FERM, I put each into two plastic baggies. I did not label the baggies. Now I do not know which is which. One of them is considerably darker brown than the other. Can y'all help me out? If I remember, Go-FERM is the darker of the...

My auto-siphon has recently gone screwy on me. Though it will still transfer wine from carboy to carboy, it has started leaking air over the entirety of the racking process. I have no idea how or why. I think the racking cane that goes into the tube isn't sealing 100%, allowing air in. I don't...

I started using the tailored organic staggered nutrient addition (TOSNA) protocol in my mead-making. I have yet to run any one-to-one tests between TOSNA and non-TOSNA brews, but I assume the former is significantly better than a one-time addition of Fermaid-O, and even better than a one-time...

I finally took the jump and made my first bochet. 4 lbs. Wildflower honey 1.25 gallons of water Lalvin 71-B Fermaid-O GoFERM OG: 1.095 It’s also my first time following a staggered nutrient protocol. I cooked the first three pounds of honey, and was shocked at how much it expanded as I boiled...

Five months ago, I posted about my idea for a Jolly Rancher wine involving 270 candies melted down and fermented. Well, three weeks back, I went ahead and actually made the unholy beast. I bought 2 pounds worth of blue raspberry Jolly Ranchers, melted them down into a syrup, and added enough...

So, as we all know, bananas foster is a dessert made from caramelized bananas, vanilla ice cream, brown sugar, butter, rum, walnuts, and cinnamon. I want to recreate this flavor combination in a wine (or mead, potentially). So far, I have the following ideas for a one gallon batch: Five pounds...

I started a raspberry wine on 11th October, 2020, and finally bottled it yesterday. My recipe was as follows: Six pounds of organic raspberries (because I'm better than you) 2 lbs. white sugar 0.5 tsp. pectic enzyme 3/4 gallon of water And that's it! Raspberry wine just like God intended. Two...

Two questions. First, let's say I've got some Fermaid-K on my hands, as well as some simple "yeast nutrient" (DAP), and I want to start using a staggered nutrient protocol for my meads. What's the simplest method to use? A bit of research revealed lots of lovely, albeit complicated, equations to...

I threw together some raspberry wine three weeks ago, consisting of six pounds of raspberries, 3/4 a gallon of water, 2.5lbs of sugar, and Lalvin 71-B yeast. The OG was 1.090, and the FG was 0.990. The problem is that it smells absolutely putrid. It started smelling bad almost immediately, and...

Hello friends! A month ago, I started fermenting a batch of Welch’s Concord grape/cherry juice. The OG was 1.120. I used Fleischmann’s bread yeast, and after checking yesterday, the gravity was at 1.034, so the wine is at this point super sweet. I’m hoping again hope I can encourage the yeast to...

After researching and thinking through a recipe for strawberry wine, I've landed on the following: 6lbs organic strawberries. Water to reach 1 gallon. Enough sugar to bring OG to 1.100. Juice from 1 fresh lemon. 1 cup black tea, steeped with two tea bags. 3 oz raisins, chopped. Fleishmann's...

Hello everyone! My question concerns the finer details of how headspace in secondary fermentation interacts with newly-made wine. On the one hand, one relevant concern is the surface area contact between wine and air. On the other, there is the total volume of air in relation to the volume of...

Hello dear friends. I'll cut right to the chase: I want to make a Jolly Rancher wine. And not just any Jolly Rancher wine, but a blue raspberry one to boot. From looking at the nutrition info label, I find that three Jolly Ranchers contain 11 grams of sugar. There are 454 grams in a pound, and...

Hello, homebrewing friends! After finding a gallon of unfiltered apple juice at Whole Foods that actually comes in a one-gallon fermenter, I'm planning on making an apple pie wine. My proposed recipe is thus: One gallon unfiltered apple juice. Two cinnamon sticks. One vanilla beanstalk, sliced...

I added two doses of pectic enzyme (one teaspoon in total) over two days to a cloudy wine, post fermentation. I’d read that even though pectic enzyme works best before fermentation, it can be added after to a brew that won’t clarify. As a note, it was Oceanspray cran-raspberry juice with a pound...

I've done a few rounds making apple wine, and C.S. Brews on YouTube has said they prefer their apple wines after giving them the chance to age for many months. I tend to agree. I have several questions, though. First, what accounts for the less-than-pleasant flavor of young apple wine (and...

I’ve seen this ingredient listed on several juices, but never been able to dig up much information on how it relates to fermentation: good, bad, or indifferent? Can anyone shed any light on this acid? Much appreciated.

I purchased two kinds of cherry juice at the store the other day, and because the jars containing them had openings that were “bung sized,” I made two micro-fermentations (they were each about 1/4 gallon). With the first jar of cherry juice, I added enough acid to bring the Ph from 3.95 to 3.65...

Today I discovered that bananas apparently have some magical ability to make yeast ferment extraordinarily well. A few weeks ago I posted here describing my issues trying to make wine out of Oceanspray cran-raspberry juice. The fermentation stalled out around 9% ABV, despite my using a 15%...