Bryan's Wine & Beer Making Site
fine wines since 1981 ...
My blog on wines, beers, and making both.
I participate on Wine Making Talk, a wine maker’s forum. My time is mixed between general discussions and helping others — especially newbies — with the wine making process, problems, and general advice. For...
Things sometimes go wrong in wine making, meaning the final product is not what was intended. Typical problems result from an undesired yeast or bacteria growing in the wine, or oxidation from too much...
I made 3 different wines from fresh grapes last year (2019) — Malbec, Merlot, and Zinfandel. I purchased five 36 lb lugs of each, a total of 15 lugs (540 lbs of grapes). If...
Renewed Fermentation When I racked the barrel on 03/28/2020, I discovered the specific gravity had dropped from 1.000 to 0.992. This is good, as the lower SG indicates that all sugar is consumed and...
The Wine Making Process Continues! (Slowly) After a few weeks, the wine dropped sediment as expected. It’s typical to drop a lot of sediment in the first few weeks — this includes yeast cells,...
I decided before I ordered the 2019 grapes that I was going to make a second run. As I stated in Episode 5, there’s no reason to not make a second run. Starting the...
Most people have no idea what a “second run wine” is, so this is a good place for an explanation. A “second run” or “false” wine is a wine make from the left-over pomace...
So far we’ve gotten the grapes, crushed them, and detoured into my acquisition of a grape press. Now it’s time to inoculate and get onto the fermentation! Years ago I kept my wine and...
Welcome to Episode 3! Before getting into fermentation, I’ll talk about a purchase I made, which in movie terms is a prequel. I got REALLY enthusiastic about making wine from fresh grapes. I haven’t...
Welcome to the second installment of Winemaking 101! Today’s post describes the crush, what it is, and why we do it. What is crushing? It’s crushing the grapes to let the juice out. [Yeah,...