Primary Fermenter Size
updated 07/30/2024 A new member on WMT asked about container size, e.g., how big should the primary fermenter be? Overflow This question is a great one — if a primary is too full, a...
Category: White Papers
This type of blog post is a technical paper regarding wine or beer making.
Safe Pressure in Wine Bottles
updated 07/27/2024 Inexperienced winemakers (and sometimes experienced winemakers) may get a refermentation in the bottle, producing a light spritz or pushing out the cork. This post addresses what is safe and what is...
How Long to Keep Sorbate?
updated 07/27/2024 What is sorbate? Potassium sorbate is used in conjunction with potassium metabisulfite (K-meta) to “stabilize” wine, to prevent a renewed fermentation after backsweetening a wine. In laymen’s terms, sorbate + K-meta act...
Calculating Chaptalization Sugar
updated 06/25/2024 This post is inspired by yet another question on WineMakingTalk, asking about how much sugar to buy to chaptalize 50 gallons of cider. Sugar is currently on sale and the questioner knows...
How I Blend Wines
updated 08/13/2024 A common question among home winemakers: How does one blend wines? I mean beyond the basics of pouring varying amounts of wines 1 through X into a beaker. How is the decision...
Making a Twenty Year Kit Wine
updated 05/24/2024 Recently a friend posted on WineMakingTalk — he wants to make a wine to lay down for twenty-one years, in honor of his new grandson. He makes kit wines, and asked for...
Oxygen is not the Boogie Man in Winemaking
updated 05/22/2024 A common question from new winemakers is about oxygen exposure. It’s commonly believed that even brief exposure to air ruins a wine. I was once asked, “My wine was exposed to air...
Expansion in the Carboy
updated 03/17/2024 Last night I racked 4 liters of Cabernet Franc, as I needed topup for the barrel. The plan was to take a tasting sample from the barrel and the topup wine for...
Glycerin in Winemaking
updated 07/16/2024 I first started using glycerin decades ago when making liqueurs from extracts — it was a less expensive way of making good liqueurs. In a blender put 1 bottle of extract (1...
Conditioning a Wine Barrel
This morning I picked up a new barrel — well, new to me. A member of our local grape purchasing group needed to eliminate a barrel, so he gave away a 2 year old...