I've been offered two 10l barrels for a very reasonable price. When I went to check these out there was this moldy looking staining on one of the barrels, other I couldn't see into.

So please help, should I get these or just forget them?

Tl;dr- got an extraordinary amount of 20-year-old wine from an old dead guy. Rather than see it go down the drain, I figured I might be able to doctor it. It's still wine, but he didn't rack enough so it has off flavors. Looking for things to do with it or ways to fix it.

Near where I live, a family was moving and they were finally clearing out their grandfather's wine room. Apparently he died 15 years ago, much of the things in this picture were marked 2000. All of it was covered with a thick layer of soot and mold which I have now scrubbed off.

He was not a particularly good winemaker, as I don't think he was making wine for the long term, he was just making things to drink. Clearly wasn't racking enough. That being said, I did find campden tablets in his stuff so I figured if it was sealed and full, it might still be drinkable. The family assumed everything turned to vinegar because they weren't really read on the topic. Also because they probably tasted wine from the giant demijon that he likely used to siphon bottles from every so often when he wanted a bottle of wine so it just had a ton of headspace constantly. Out of curiosity, I took all the wine other than the giant 54 l demijons.

So far I've only tried the white wine in the 5 gallon carboy which looks like he never racked again. It is wine, it's not vinegar. Is it great wine? No. The perfume has obviously faded, and I think so much extended contact with the lees has led to autolysis, leading to a somewhat... Meaty taste in the wine. That being said, it is a balanced wine. Tartness and tannins were where they should be.

I'm going to tackle them one at a time, but I think this is rescuable.

My thought process for the 5 gallons is to add back what is gone. If it's lacking perfume, why not add some? If I make fruit wine coolers, or vermouth, or bottled mulled wine, I might be able to cover its emptiness. Sugar itself would probably do a lot of work. Wine coolers might be especially smart since they dilute and add carbonation.

The bigger concern is the meaty note. I think first order of operations would be racking it obviously, and then hitting it with some sort of fining agent. Probably sparkaloid. I bet that by itself will do a world of good. Once I have the neutral wine base, I can do things with it. If anyone has a strong suggestion on how to get rid of that extended Lee's contact note, I'm all ears.

A lot of these wines are named grapes, and he had a crusher and the juicer so he was doing that part holistically. I don't know if all of these wines will be good, if any are actually vinegar though probably reduce them into homemade balsamic. On the whole though, I think there's a lot of value here if I play my cards right.

If anyone has any other strong suggestions other than drinking, I'm willing to listen. It's a lot of wine.

A scarce Soviet technical translation of a leading West German oenological handbook. The original, "Das Schönen und Stabilisieren von Wein, Schaumwein und Süßmost" (Frankfurt am Main, 1956), was written by Maximilian Mayer-Oberplan, a professional cellar-management consultant based in Koblenz-Ehrenbreitstein who had spent decades advising major wine estates on the Rhine and Mosel as well as in Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria. The Soviet edition was prepared for publication by N. K. Mogilyansky, Doctor of Technical Sciences and Honored Worker of Science and Technology, whose editorial corrections and annotations adapted the German text for a Soviet professional readership. Note: book in Russian

Recipe
- 3 liter of Strawberry Juice, Freshly juiced.
- 900 gr White Sugar
- 2 gr of Red Star Premier Cuvee yeast

Calculation
- Brix : 26
- Room Temperature: 20-25 C

I am planning to add some vanilla seeds for the secondary fermentation and aging.

Any suggestions to improve this?

I have not seen much info on this topic. I either see people bottling in plastic PET bottles or being super professional with the whole glass bottling set up and (expensive) corker. I know its very important for the bottle to be full, and to be completely sealed. I was thinking of bottling my wine in clean glass bottles that have housed kombucha and juice, and then pouring peelable wax over the caps so that they are 100% sealed. do you think this is a plausible way to bottle on a budget?

my next-door neighbor started growing concord grapes this year and wants to make wine with them. He's asked me if I have ever made wine before and I told him I only know some of the basics. Such as sterilization and a dark warm spot for fermentation. does anybody have any tips and/or recipes to share. he's never made wine either.

we have some time before the grapes are ready so we have time, but we have no clue where to start. is there anything we need to buy specifically that either will save us any hard ship or just make the process easier?

hello all! I have just begun my wine making journey. I have been relying heavily on Terry Gerry's book "The Joy of Home Wine Making", this subreddit and youtube to guide my entrance into the hobby.

I made my first wine, an apple cherry (2 qts 100% apple juice, 1 qt 100% cherry juice, 2.5 cups sugar, juice of 2 lemons, 1 campden tablet, 1/4 tspn pectic enzyme, 2 cups water), and just put it into secondary fermentation 1 week ago (about 3 weeks of primary). When I tasted it, it tasted not great but not horrible, kinda sour but I could taste the apple. it smelled kinda sour and mildly chemically (possibly sulfury from the campden tablet?). Now a week later i smelled it again and it now smells kinda like vinegar. I made sure to fill my secondary fermentation vessel with boiled (cooled) water so there's less oxygen in it, leaving about 2 inches of headspace in my one gallon carboy. so now i am a little stressed about my first ever child turning into wine-vinegar.

I was just watching a video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-isqeqrLbg , @ ~12 min) which uses 100% concord grape juice in the recipe, and the creator discusses how it's important to take your bung and airlock out and swirl around the wine to get some oxygen in there and to stop the yeast from clumping. The creator said that lack of oxygen is bad for primary fermentation. But I've read in other places that you basically only want a little bit of oxygen for primary, and even less for secondary.

However, I've also seen that when making fruit wine with whole fruits, you should open your primary fermenter and smoosh around the fruit bag to get the juices out and stuff, for like a week, which obviously gets some oxygen in there.

I'm also trying to make wine in the proper way but without buying tons and tons of expensive equipment (ive invested in 4 1 gallon carboys, airlocks, campden tablets, pectic enzyme, wine tannin, siphon), plus I live in an apartment and probably only want max 5-6 1 gallons going at a time.

I would love to know what the community thinks about letting oxygen into the primary fermenter on the daily!

Anyone have a suggestion for a label printer that's good for wine bottle labels? Been making mead for a couple of years now and I've started wanting to bottle it for gifts and possibly to sell once I get things sorted legally. I tried some 6-label sheets that can be used with my regular printer but I usually can't get them to line up properly and it doesn't print all the way across the label when I can. If anyone's got some suggestions that don't break the bank, I'd love some help.

So I kind of hid these from myself for 2 years and I’m wondering if they are still good to try they got left to ferment in a dark place and there they stay until a few days ago. No floaters or anything strange but I’m sure there is a yeast slurry on bottom that’s no good. What’s go you guys think

Incredibly clean and very strong, what is this colour? With no light its almost peach coloured, but it's way cleaner than grape store shelf wine

Berries picked two days ago, 7/17. Recipe is to fill a bucket with berries, mash them up and add a packet of yeast, then wait four days and strain out all the skins etc

My fermentation is still bubbling, and yesterday on the first day that I started by evening, the foam reached the top and I pulled out the airlock for a few hours so the foam wouldn’t puke out. Today things are quieter, a bubble every 3 seconds or so, but now I noticed all the gunk or debris inside the top of the bottle.

Do I just continue fermenting and worry about the gunk and debris later?

All signs point to an early harvest this year!

If you are interested in learning how to make wine or a seasoned winemaker - check out Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley if you haven't already. OakBarrel.com

We have beginning and advanced in person, hands on winemaking classes, equipment kits, equipment rentals and we bring in a good range of grapes for easy pick up in Berkeley. We also offer crushing and destemming!

I have a leak in the S bubbler, where the vodka is slowly leaking. Is that a problem? It’s not that fast, maybe a drop or two within 6 hours.

Hey,

I have made a few one gallon batches of a couple different types of wine, I attempted to make my first five gallon batch awhile back. I was so excited everything was going so well and I was on my last clearing phase when my glass carboy decided to get a divorce from its bottom. After about a year of wanting to get back into it, I finally decided to start to save for better equipment. However I have no idea what I'm doing, I want to stay away from glass and above everything I don't want plastic ( probably should talk to my therapist about my hatred for plastic)

I have been looking at the Spike colical unitank CF5, to my knowledge it's for brewing beer but I can't see why I can't use it for making wine. Are my instincts current on thar or am I missing something here? It seems like it would be easy to rerack and it doesn't let light in plus has temperature control systems.

I really want this to work but this is a going to be one hell of a journey to even save for the cost of one, and if it's a bad idea I would appreciate to know before I spend that time saving just for it to not work.

Just bought a new house with my wife, and we have an extra room in the basement that I’d like to set up as her wine laboratory so she doesn’t take up my garage space. And I’m looking for advice, and ideas for how to set it up for her.
She has processed 2-300 pounds of grapes the last 3 years, but this amount will probably go up to 500 per year with the new set up.
Room size is roughly 10x15 concrete floors and walls. With water and power.
She has a destemmer, a dozen carboys of various sizes, 500ish empty bottles, fruit press, and a bunch of other lab equipment, and supplies.

My main questions are
1. Is there a floor treatment like epoxy or something that won’t stain from inevitable wine spills.
2. Does anybody have a system to lift full carboys? My wife is 110lbs soaking wet and has a shoulder injury, so lifting a full carboys is nearly impossible for reracking the wine. I do it for her now, but she doesn’t like waiting for me to have time.
Any pictures of your room, and set up would be much appreciated.
Thank you

I am a first year winemaker, and the lead winemaker and I are preparing for harvest this year as It will be my first harvest. I mentioned to my lead winemaker that I have trouble visualizing tank space and tank use in my head, similar to aphantasia where I can’t really imagine things in my head.

I rely heavily on signs, having physical-visual interaction, and being in the same room to understand where things are and how things exist in space and how they can move around.
She is quite the opposite of me, where she can visualize where things are in space by just closing her eyes and she is able to see a mental map of everything.

She mentioned it’s going to be very hard for me, especially under pressure of harvest and when moving things when I can’t use signs or have to “visualize where things go in my head”

but she has never really heard of what I experience. Maybe she doesn’t understand how to go about this info?
Does anyone have any tips for the harvest who may share similar brains?

I’ve heard calcium bentonite is better for what I’m doing (wine, mead, as well as na stuff). Everything on my typical brew supply stores is sodium or unmarked and after doing research… it’s also sodium.

Where does anyone get calcium bentonite that isn’t marketed as being for face masks? I’d like it to be food grade/tested and not overpay because it’s for “beauty supplies”.