These bottles are samples of some of my first wines (they're mango, pineapple, etc.) that I bottled after 5 to 6 months of production and I'm letting them age for 2 years. Some of them are almost a year old, but I'm seeing that some of them have particles floating inside them, rings of residue on the edges of the liquid surface and on the bottom of the bottle as well. Is this dangerous, bad, should I be worried? Or is it not so bad? What could I do to avoid this in the future and do you have any other tips?

Hi everyone,

I am making a 54 L batch of Cabernet Sauvignon and believe it encountered stuck fermentation. The hydrometer stopped at 1.010, it’s been there for 72
hours now they’ve been fermenting for almost 20 days

I learned how to make wine with both of my grandpa’s and tney do their primary fermentation in the damigiane with an airlock leaving a good amount of headspace.

In the 54 L damigiane, i added 2.2 lbs of sugar to bump up the potential alchol content. I did this by dissolving the sugar in some wine first

i had 4 extra gallons that was left over from what i left for headspace plus what wouldnt fit, it is important to note (THE EXCESS 4 GALLONS DID NOT GET ANY EXTRA SUGAR, JUST WHATEVER THE MUST WAS, 1.090).

Both batches, the one with the sugar added and the one without the sugar stopped at 1.010, which is weird since I would have expected the one with the sugar to finish higher

I do not know what yeast was used, all I know is the yeast comes pre-inoculated at the bottom of the juice pails, but it’s likely Lalvin 1118 or Lalvin K1-V1116.

The excess 4 gallons will be used to top off tr 54 L damigiane after racking. But until it gets to 1.000
or less, i don’t think it’s smart to rack

The temp of the room is around 65-68… so i’m leaning towards temperature??

Help please

I had 3 groups of Reddit wine makers come out for fruit this past weekend. The Petite Verdot went first … I would guess close to 150 pounds picked. About 150 pounds of Cab Franc was picked and about 650 pounds Cabernet Sauvignon was picked. I still have 50 or so pounds of Cab Franc and about 3 tons of primo Cabernet Sauvignon. Let me know if you want to pick some Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.

Got some homemade grape juice from a family member, didn't want it to go bad so decided to make redwine. The grape juice consisted of 4 cups of wolf grapes, and 2 cups of sugar. Has a pretty thick amount of foam on top, some of it is from the grapes too. Is this fine to leave for a few weeks until fermentation stops? Then rack it? Not looking for perfection but leaving from the house for a while and another person will be doing what is left over in the process. Any advice helps! Once again not looking for perfection! Thanks!

Hey guys hey. I have some grape vines that produce grapes that I have in the past made wine with. I crushed these grapes put them in a carboy with some campton Talbots letting it sit then picturing the yeast. It bubbled great for a couple days. Racked it. Then racked it again. Couple weeks later I got this growth on the top. Does anyone recognize it? Is it trash or safe to drink?

Hello... I'm a complete novice that's curious to try planting maybe 5-10 plants as a hobby with my daughters. Does this land in the picture look like it would be suitable? It's in Okanagan County, Washington.. and the elevation is about 4100 feet (1,275 meters). The climate is desert-like... hot summers with a lot of sunlight, very cold winters. I see lots of wine plants near the Columbia River basin... but our land is maybe 1000-1500 feet higher elevation. Not sure if this would make a lot of difference. And I'm not sure if the soil type you see in the photo is ideal. If you dig down 1-4 feet it gets more claylike. And there are rocks galore.

Hi there,

So I’m trying to do wine from polish grape. Usually I using classic wine jar(based on my research it’s called Demijohn** **in English). All looks great fermentation started after two days.
Then I wanted to do experiment and put grape juice(Moldavian table grapes) into fermentation jar. Similar proportions. But after 7 days I can smell the process, see the foam in jar(in know, there is too much space right now), but no airlock activity.
There is no mold, and I can see the lees at the bottom of jar.
What is wrong with my batch?

Hey everyone,

Like a lot of you, I get an absolute headache every month trying to accurately track running production totals, map out Small Producer Relief (SPR) bands, and translate everything into the exact box orders HMRC asks for.

To make my own life easier, I built a web utility called Duty Sorted to calculate the math automatically. I’ve made a standalone version of the calculator 100% free and un-gated for the community—no sign-up or card required:

👉 [\[Link to your free calculator page\]](https://dutysorted.co.uk/spr-calculator/)

To show you how it breaks down messy edge cases, here is an example of it calculating a 5.5% draught beer batch (1,000 litres) for a producer nearing the threshold:

Tax Type Code: 356 (Beer from 3.5 to 8.4 percent, eligible for draught relief)

Pure Alcohol: 55.0000 litres

Full Rate: £19.45 per litre of pure alcohol

Duty Due: £1,069.75 (rounded down to the penny)

It even triggers alerts if your annual production crosses the 4,500 hl limit so you know exactly when SPR stops applying.

If you're a small cider maker, brewery, or distillery filing these monthly, I hope this saves you some spreadsheet math this month.

Check it out and let me know if you notice any weird edge cases with your specific tax codes—I want to keep updating it and making it better for the trade! 🍻

Hi

I crushed grapes and added it to bucket and pitched ec1118 24 hours after adding some campden

It's been 7 days and we're currently at 1.015, should I press pulp, add it back to bucket then move it to secondary before it's finished fermenting to minimize oxidation?

Using last years cherry wine I made 🎃🍁

My second ever batch of wine was beauty berry wine. I followed a recipe that said add lemon for acid. Black tea for tannin etc. Then it says for wine like this you need to add cinnamon sticK and star anise. My God does it taste like latex wine now. Guess all I can do is throw it down the sink?

It's a monster energy drink infused wine that a bunch of people in my life requested I make. It smells amazing and I hate it lmao

I’d like to use my hose outside for cleaning and various other things during winemaking at home. My city uses chlorine in the tap water.

Any home winemakers out there have some insight on what they’re using? Ideally I’d like something with a higher flow rate.

Do I just buy a carbon filter from Home Depot or something? What are you using?

Bottling day!

This gallon of frontenac got left in the garage and forgotten about during a move. Airlock dried at one point but was later refilled.

Kahm? Other harmless pellicle? Mold?

How should I proceed? TIA.

Edit: smells like wine...

Hello,

I'm making some home wine from grapes. I'm fermenting in an open top barrel and am looking for solutions to heat/maintain heat on my ferment. Does anyone have any suggestions? I looked into aquarium heaters, but I was reading the rubber and plastic on those aren't tolerant with high acid/alcoholic solutions.

I'm thinking maybe a heating belt to wrap around. The circumfrence is 116.5" at the widest part. Right now I have a space heater that I'm moving around. Trying not to run it too much though as I don't have a tarp to tent.

Picked up 150lb of Lemberger from a vineyard on the east banks of Keuka lake, NY last week.

- Brix: 19.5, TA 0.75% pH 3.14
- Crush & destem, added 50ppm kmeta
- 36 hour cold soak @ 50f
- Pitched RC212 along with fermaid O and optired
- Second dose of fermaid O @ 15 brix & co-inoculated with VP41 MLF
- 3 daily punch downs

So far color and flavor are fantastic although the grapes seem to be better at holding onto their juice than cab cabernet family varietals.

Anyone worked with this grape before? Hoping to make a medium to full body single varietal with this batch, aging it in stainless steel for a year then bottle for another 6-12 months.

Any tips/pointers appreciated!

I took a look at my plum wine and there was a thin solid film on top. I took a sterile swab and pulled the film out. Any ideas what happened? Everything else is fine in terms of smell and look. There may be a light yellow haze on the glass near that spot but I could just be seeing things.

I have 9.5 gallon bags (didn’t get a weight yet) of cleaned and cut peaches in the freezer. Got a slight idea of what to do though reading and YouTube but was hoping someone would share a recipe they like. Looking to make a 5 gallon batch. Also any tips and tricks would be appreciated. Trying to make something not too dry do my wife will like it. Thanks in advance, hope everyone is having a good weekend!

Can anyone tell me what this is? Its from my grappa most

Hi folks, I've a little experience with Mead making, but on trying my hand with a grape harvest from a friend, the whole bunch tastes rather vinegary 6 days in. I initially kept the must together in a mostly closed (but not airtight) bucket for about 6 days, and was planning to seal it now after removing most of the solids - but it just tastes like vinegar. I'm unsure if this is an issue of allowing it too long before starting proper fermentation, or due to the fact that I didn't sterilise the must beforehand (simply added K1-V1116 yeast thinking they'd outcompete the others). No other signs of spoilage, just quite acidic. Think just more than you'd expect in some white wines.

Would appreciate any tips or tricks, both in terms of how to rectify and when it's too far gone :)

So I have three buckets of different grapes for trying to make a red wine. The grapes are from different Vines, but all were ripe and have about 10% abv of potential alcohol. I added about 1 gram of sulfite to every bucket and added some nutrient after crushing. I took my usual red wine yeast and let it sit in sugary water for a day while covered. Then added to all three buckets and put the lid loosely on top.

The first bucket started fermenting nicely after about a day with the peels being pushed up (I push them down every day with a sanitized ladel).

The second bucket didn't start after 72 hours so I added more yeast. Nothing. Then took some Juice from bucket 1 and 2 and mixed and added yeast to that and poured back into 2. It has started now after 5 days after crushing but has a layer of pellicle.

Bucket three has resisted all attempts so far. I tried the same as with number 2 but to no avail. The air of bucket three stings in the nose a bit. The taste is fine if slightly sour (put not much more than the others).

Could there be too much sulfite in the batches still? Bucket 3 was treated with sulfur against mildew about two months ago, could that be the issue? How can I get fermentation started. I can't measure pH but sugar content in 1 and 2 is dropping but 3 is the same .

Also do I need to do anything about the pellicle in 2?

Thanks so much for the help.

Hello all !

I am purchasing 6 gallons of juiced grapes tomorrow and plan on making my first batch of wine. I have on the lower end of moderate experience and some equipment from making beer a bunch of years ago but just looking to be pointed into a direction that will help me as start my first time with wine. I have the following equipment right now:

6 gallon glass carboy
5 gallon glass carboy
Drilled stoppers
Airlocks
Starsan
Siphon
Cleaning brush
TBD juice

A Reddit link I was too inept to realize was already there or any advice would be appreciated. I have a friend from work who buys this juice and puts an airlock on it and just hopes for the best nothing else added, wondering if that’s the way to go or I need some other supplies.

Thank you!!