Bryan's Wine & Beer Making Site
fine wines since 1981 ...
My blog on wines, beers, and making both.
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...
Feb 2020 – My niece asked me to make her another wine. A friend of hers is interested as well, so they agreed on a WineXpert Island Mist kit. These are “fun wines”, a...
October 2019 – I purchased 180 lbs each of Malbec, Merlot, and Zinfandel. Before the grapes arrived I decided I would do a second run from the pomace of each. The original intention was...
Most people have no idea what a “second run wine” is, so this is a good place for an explanation. First, a few wine making definitions that will help with understanding. I should have...
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,...
This is the first of a series of posts that describe my Fall 2019 wine making experience. An experienced wine maker may not find this all that exciting as I’m writing for friends who...
I have moved almost everything from my old site to this one — just a few white papers left. One is a information sheet I created in 1999 for a presentation to a bee...