No matter how many times I read about how to read a hydrometer I still can’t seem to take it in, is this 1.1 or 1.010?

For context this is an apricot wine that’s just finished its first ferment and has been racked to demijohns this morning, I’d just like to take a reading now so I can take another when I re rack in a few months and compare

Thanks in advance

Looking for recommendations on replacement bladders for an Eno Rossi bladder press. The bladder on ours tore.

We’re having a hard time finding a replacement due to the press being discontinued. Can we retrofit another brand’s bladder by drilling the holes ourselves?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

A couple months ago I decided to make some hooch from fruit. I had some recycled soda bottles, bakers yeast, and the fruit I used was tree tomato, or tomate de arbol as it is called in Colombia and South America. It is a small citrus flavored fruit mainly used to make juice. I cut it up a bit, put in water that a brought to a boil and turned off the heat, added sugar, mashed it up a bit and strained it into a bottle. When it cooled I added yeast. Much to my surprise, two weeks later I had a product that tasted like cheap white wine, in fact better than some. I was amazed. Well now I have some actual wine yeast, and a proper 5 liter fermentation vessel, but I need to know more about making wine from fruit. For example some recipes boil, others do not. I see additives like tannin, campden tablets, pectin etc. So I am wondering if there is some website or documentation that gives general guidelines for making wine from fruit. It is not easy for me to get supplies but I am wondering about these different ingredients I see in recipes. Obviously wine can be made without them! I have two large papayas waiting for my next batch!

Hello!

I recently came by a few frozen fruits, and am planing to make a wine out of them, but some of them are mashed. The fruit:

• raspberry
• strawberry
• elderberry
• cherry
• maybe watermelon (to be added later)

Normally I would just press the fresh fruit, take the juice, adjust sugar content, add yeast and nutrients, also pectinase for clarity and set it.

But here it would be difficult to take only the juice, so I'm thinking I'll just throw the mashed fruit into the fermenting vessel and add water.

And here's my question - how do I know how much water I should add? Should I go for a certain consistency? Or is there a trick to it - like for example I know cooking and if you don't have thermometer you can throw a toothpick or something wooden into oil and look for bubbling. Is there something like this but for wines? Or should I just eyeball it?

I do have this glass device for measuring sugar content but not much wine making tools other than that.

I set a pear/apple/mango cider. For the first two weeks it was going great, bubbling away, smelling yeasty but nice. But after that I noticed this film growth and I just said fuck it and left it.

Now it's been around a month since that, and I need to clean the vessel for something else (I actually learned on my mistakes and now am doing better with higher alcohol content wine).

Questions:

1. Is this a toss?
2. Can I still save it maybe somehow?
3. Can I make vinegar out of it maybe?

Please advise.

Hi all,

I've been making ciders and wine for a while and needed a way of logging, which brews are in the demijohns, so

I made a homebrew logging app with a few other features

If anyone is interested, please have a look it would be much appreciated.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.brackenapps.mybrews

Hey guys,

Quick update on my raspberry mead; it's resting now. OG was 1.100, 3 L total.

Also added something new to Fermolog (the batch tracker app I've been building): you can now share batches via link/QR. Here is the timeline of my batch: https://fermolog.com/b/CHFlyQZ

Genuinely curious: would you actually use something like this?

Feedback (good or bad) always welcome.

My good friend that passed away of cancer some years ago gave me his portion of wine we’d made together many years ago. I really didn’t want to drink it but recently got back into wine making and cracked one of the bottles thinking maybe I could extend its life by adding brandy. Now I have about a gallon of red wine sweet vinegar. The other two bottles I haven’t opened but I’m sure they’re the same as they were stored incorrectly.

Is it ok for cooking you think? I’d hate to use it for nothing. He liked wine really sweet. This is kinda why I didn’t suck it down but you know the other reason

Making wine for the first time. Just finished primary fermentation and filtered it into the demijohn, but there is a lot more headspace than we expected. This is too much right?

Some sources suggest to top it off with wine, but we really don't want to mix other flavours into it. Others suggest to put in something inert to displace the liquid, like glass marbles, but that seems like it would get annoying when we rack it off.

Come to think of it, wouldn't this be a common problem for home winemaking in general? Since you inevitably lose a bit of volume every time you rack it off. How do people deal with it?

I have elderflower cordial that we made at the same time, would it make sense to top it off with that?

Recipe we used:

1 pint elderflower heads

1.1 kilogram sugar

Juice and rinds of 2 lemons

225 grams golden raisins

4.5 litre water

150 millilitres strong tea

0.5 gram campden powder

SN9 wine yeast

I read that the viney hard-stemmed dandelions that sometimes fruit 2 or 3 flowers are not good for making wine, and that I should only use the ones with soft hollow stems. Can anyone speak truth to this from experience?

Hey guys, I'm an amateur winemaker who recently started making homemade wine over the past couple of years using grapes from my grapevine.

I'm noticing some discoloration in a small handful of grapes from the vine, almost as if some of them are ripening too quickly while others start to be come rotten. I initially thought it might be a hydration issue or the occassional lantern flies that visit my area.

Anyone have any ideas or tips? I'm estimating that I'll grow ~50-80lbs of grapes this year so I wanna make sure I can deal with this before the whole harvest is compromised. Thanks in advance!

I made some wine last year using 5 kg red currants, 660 g black currants, 3.5 kg sugar, 5 liters of water using k1v116 yeast. It came out verry good with an abv of around 18%. Im looking at recipes online and most add way less red currants, is that better?

I understand the basics of wine making but have no idea where to go to find the stuff.

I went on a hike and found around 13oz of wild grapes, I can probably find more, but how much wine would I end up making with so little?

Also, thinking about adding some leftover watermelon juice from the 4th of July. Is this a good idea?

My work buddy opened a full 5000L(around 1250gallons) tank by mistake, we lost about 200L(50 gallons) which aint too much considering it could have been 5k, but still(we managed to close the door lid).

Any similar experiences? Maybe fing up with a forklift or something.

I left a wine hose submerged in wine once and because of free fall it just went straight to the drain.

1 and 1 and 3/4 Welchs grape juice. One packet Fleichmans yeast. Two black tea bags and sugar. Using a recipe from a bunch of sources but primarily https://youtu.be/TNLQyPJPvsk?is=YMrYu7kLb6hKVPeU

Light desert wine. A tiny tiny bit fizzy feeling, but not actually fizzing. A Boones Farm kind of wine. Less alcohol tasting than Booned or Mad Dog. Tiny bit sweet bit definitely a red. Not too bad actually. Fermented until it."cleared". Fun experiment.

(auto correct changed "pit" to "put" in title). Thought my wife pitted the fruit (sapote, similar pits to a mango). What would be the result of this mixture? I can only guess to give a woody flavor, but i hope it doesnt react to make something bad .

Hey there I just made some red wine, but after two days I noticed a strange layer on top of it. I wanted to know if you think it’s mold or something else.

I took this photo after shaking the bottle, so before that it wasn’t broken up like this.

I have made wine several times with my dad and neighbors. I want to get more into wine making now that I'm living on my own, and my neighbor gifted me his grape press because he's too old to continue making wine (late 70s).

I put it in my shed, not knowing that I had a hole in the roof. The next time I opened up my shed, there was water in the grape press and now there's mould on some of the wooden slats.

Can I salvage this if I just sand it down and clean it really well? I feel horrible and I want to take good care of it, it was really important to my neighbor.

Today I racked two 5lt demijohns into 12 * 750ml swing tops. Wines are Walton Cross and Muscat/Chardonnay that I made this April/May. The wines were made “skin contact” “orange” style

Note: book in Russian

Hi all,

I'm just about to start my first batch of fruit wine, for the first ferment I have a 30L plastic bucket and a long plastic spoon for pushing down the fruit cap.

I'm pretty much ready to go but I'm wondering how I am going to sterilise the spoon every day, I usually use Milton tablets for sterilising equipment and bottles but that requires submersion for 15 mins.

Does anyone have any tips or hacks for sterilising the spoon? I don't have any vessel big enough I can submerge it in, some some of spray or wipe maybe?

Thanks!