Search results

I am wanting to make plum wine, but don't have quite enough plums. Any reason not to mix them with what I have in my freezer, which is dandelion flowers (again, not quite enough on their own) and/or elderberries from last summer????

Hi, one of my favorite wines that I've ever made was cherry wine (made with cherries that I found in the freezer from 2016 and 2019). The wine was so delicious. But as I'm picking cherries this year, I'm wondering--do I really need to pit the cherries? Couldn't I just make the wine with the...

I found a whole bunch of frozen cherries in the back of my freezer, so started a 1 gallon batch of cherry wine. Put in all the usual things (including 1 Campden tablet), waited 24 hours, pitched EC1118 like I have with every other wine I've made in the past two years, and . . . . nothing's...

I'm only asking because last year (2020), I pressed 32 gallons of cider, bottled most of it that autumn, and then only a couple months ago bottled the last two 5 gallon carboys (didn't have enough bottles before then), and have a huge stockpile of bottled cider. If there hadn't been a pandemic...

I know how to do this making cider, because it's juice, but how do you measure the specific gravity with all the fruit mashed in your initial fermentation vessel, so you can estimate the final alcohol level? By the time you discard all that pulp, a fair amount of fermentation has already taken...

Hey folks, I made a bunch of cider last summer when my apple trees went completely nuts making apples (32 gallons altogether). The first fifteen gallons tasted awful (I didn't know about yeasts and temperatures), but after aging for six months greatly improved. But I still had two 5 gallon...

Hey folks, I started making a bunch of different fruit wines last winter, and we drank a bottle of one of them last week, and I was amazed at how delicious it was. It was pineapple cherry (with cherries from my Montmorency cherry trees that I'd frozen in the summer). I had bottled it last...

So....I opened my first waxed farmhouse cheddar after a month--it was delicious (but not very cheddar-like), smooth and creamy. But it had mold growing in the cracks of the cheese that I had waxed over. Evidently I hadn't heated the wax hot enough to kill surface mold? Or maybe because it was...

I didn't think that it could possibly be true. This was my first foray into cider making, and I fermented my first batches at WAY too high a temp (mostly in the upper 70s and 80s), especially for the yeasts I had, and the resulted cider tasted AWFUL. But now, four months later, it's really...

I had my third round of farmhouse cheddar drying on the counter, just about ready for waxing when I discovered that mice had nibbled on several places on it. What do I do???? I cut off the nibbled places, and the cheese tastes great, but it definitely needs aging. Do I just keep drying it...

I'm completely new to wine-making (and cider-making), but have I have three batches going, and the last one--pineapple/cherry (with frozen pineapple from the grocery store and some frozen cherry puree from my own pie cherry tree from last year), and when I poured it out of the primary into a...

I pitched the yeast (Premier Blanc) for my last batch of cider ten days ago, and it was really really slow getting started, and then only foamed for a couple of days. It's about 52F. I realized that I didn't put any yeast nutrients in when I started. Is it too late now? Will it help? Will it...

We're starting to open up some of the ciders I made with purchased apple juice from a local cidery, and so far, they've all had a really nice fizz to them. They were from gallon batches, and I didn't do a secondary fermentation, just bottled them after the primary (I mean, going from one gallon...

This is the last batch of cider for the year, and after many hot months, it's suddenly quite cold, 58F in the building where the cider is. I have my last 5.5 gallons in a carboy, 5 campden tablets sitting for 24 hours, then pitching the yeast, and then.....nothing. It's been over 48 hours and...

Since all my cider is well into its fermentation, and it's a whole another year before apple season again, I thought I'd try some wine, but I guess I didn't really follow the recipe as far as sugar goes. I was going for blueberry and raspberry with frozen berries, and was thinking I had enough...

I started my fermentation adventures just this year, making several batches of cider (almost all of which were terrible because I didn't realize the yeasts I used needed cooler temperatures), and wasn't really thinking of anything else, but then I saw this winemaking forum, and started looking...

Is it bad? This is second fermentation carboy. Looks kindof like a white scum, in the top of the neck near the airlock, and then maybe on the sides inside..... (Sorry I had to take the picture with a flashlight; it's a little dark in the basement.)

For those of you fermenting in gallon jugs as opposed to bigger carboys, where do you rack your cider to after your primary fermentation? Into another gallon jug? If so, then what do you fill it the rest of the way up with? Do you rack it straight into bottles? Also, how long should the...

I was hoping someone could tell me about what happens when your ferment is too warm. It's been bloody hot here, and no practical way to cool things off (even the basement has been 80F. I've done several batches, and the three batches (with SafCider yeast and Cider House Select yeast) both with...

Hi folks, I'm a new cider-maker, and I have a number of different batches in the works (4 gallons with purchased sweet cider from a local cider mill and 21 gallons with juice pressed from my own apples), but with both the commercial juice and the juice from my own apples, there's not enough...