How many wine makers do we have here?

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Thanks for the info.

Your pics look YUMMY!!!
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I love your setup. Good job!
 
WineMaking at home Seminar, August 12, 2011. Program 10:00 to 11:45.
The Georgia Mountain Research and Education Center, 3 miles south of Blairsville Square, on the east side of hwy19/129
Speaker , Dr. William Hurst, Extention specialist and Professor in the Food Science and Technology Department at the University of Georgia.

For more information, call Clare Johnston at 706 745 2655

for those interested, Blairsville Ga is about 100 miles north of Atlanta and the research center is located just outside Blairsville as you are headed toward Cleveland and Gainesville Ga.
 
I live in the Sierra Nevada mountains, right in the middle of California's best wine country (Napa is trendy, but we have the better wine in El Dorado & Amador counties). I just go from tasting room to tasting room & try them all! I am surrounded (literally!) by wineries and tasting rooms.

I like the idea of trying to make some homemade wine, though. That might be kind of fun.

DH works at a winery/tasting room, so we get discounts.
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hehehe. I'm not much of a drinker per se, not big on beer or mixed drinks, but mmmmmmm mmmmm I do love a good zinfandel!
 
Love Amadour County! And Zins are my personal favorite! Have you ever had Sobon's Old Vine (Amadore County) I've owned the wine tasting room and bar for about 6 years and it's one of our top sellers.
 
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Hi Muddstopper,

The carbouy is a plastic one that came from one of those office "water fountains".

We had a bad experience with the glass ones like that when we had our aquarium maintenance biz back in TN. Our first "big" client hired us to revamp his 125 gallon salt water reef system and he bought 5 gallon glass bottles of RO (reverse osmosis) water to use in the tank. Had one of those glass bottles slip out of our partners hands just to bust to a million pieces on the tile floor and flood the dining room floor. Said client was all over buying his own RO system (which we automated) for tank water after that.
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Since we're brewing in a 22' camper, we're sticking with plastic, which can be dangerous, too. We used to do pop bottle CO2 reactors as fertilizer in our fresh water, live planted home aquariums. One day, one of those bottles that I thought was done "fermenting" and had capped off until I could empty it went live and exploded. The plastic shards physically mowed down some of the stems of my tall sanseveria (mother-in-laws tongue) plant. Can't win for loosing, huh?
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We are going to try your suggestion, this next time around, on not adding all of the sugar at once. We need to get one of those bucket wrenches (for me) as I can't get the lid off of the fermentation bucket and a few other little things to make it easier on us. For our first batch and not really knowing what we were doing, the pear wine turned out really high octane.
wink.png
 
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Hi Muddstopper,

The carbouy is a plastic one that came from one of those office "water fountains".

We had a bad experience with the glass ones like that when we had our aquarium maintenance biz back in TN. Our first "big" client hired us to revamp his 125 gallon salt water reef system and he bought 5 gallon glass bottles of RO (reverse osmosis) water to use in the tank. Had one of those glass bottles slip out of our partners hands just to bust to a million pieces on the tile floor and flood the dining room floor. Said client was all over buying his own RO system (which we automated) for tank water after that.
wink.png


Since we're brewing in a 22' camper, we're sticking with plastic, which can be dangerous, too. We used to do pop bottle CO2 reactors as fertilizer in our fresh water, live planted home aquariums. One day, one of those bottles that I thought was done "fermenting" and had capped off until I could empty it went live and exploded. The plastic shards physically mowed down some of the stems of my tall sanseveria (mother-in-laws tongue) plant. Can't win for loosing, huh?
gig.gif


We are going to try your suggestion, this next time around, on not adding all of the sugar at once. We need to get one of those bucket wrenches (for me) as I can't get the lid off of the fermentation bucket and a few other little things to make it easier on us. For our first batch and not really knowing what we were doing, the pear wine turned out really high octane.
wink.png


Nothing wrong with using plastics as carbouys, as long as you are using the right type of plastic. Below is a chart of the different types of plastics and their toxcitiy potential.
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Looking at the left hand of the chart, you will see the three arrow triangle with a number inside it. These are the numbers you need to be looking for on the bottom of you plastic carbouys or primary fermenter buckets. A lot, if not most of the 5gal water bottles I have seen will have the number 7 inside the arrow triangle. As you can see from the chart, this is a strickly no-no and has a high potential for toxicity levels and shouldnt be used for making wine. If you are going to use the water botttles, make sure the number is either 1,2,4,or 5.

Just for info, while I was at the tractor supply the other day, I picked up one of the white tractor supply 5 gal buckets and it had a number 2 inside the arrow triangle and would make an excellent candidate for use as a primary fermenter bucker. I have also noticed the number 2 on other buckets such as sheetrock mud containers and hydraulic oil buckets. I dont think I would try to clean out the sheetrock mud or oil to reuse those buckets, but it does show how commonly available the better quality buckets are if you know what to look for. And now you do.
 
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After going to the wine making seminar this past week, we asked the presentator the question about adding sugar a little at a time, instead of all at once. His reply was, if it works, and gives the taste you are looking for, then its ok to do. He did have one warning, You need to start with a brix reading of 22% at least. This will yield a alcohol content of 11%. His reasoning is that any wine with a lower than 11% alcohol content can have a short shelf life and actually turn to vinegar, especially if it is exposed to oxygen while in the carbouy.

I dont know about you, but I dont have a hydrometer or brix tester to measure sugar levels. With that in mine, I will probably get one in the near future. In the meantime, I havent had any wine spoil yet, and as long as the wine continues to put bubbles in the airloc of the carbouy, I figure the wine is still makeing and the yeast is still consuming the sugars.
 
hmmm....my strawberry rhubarb seems not to be bubbling anymore???? It was bubbling like crazy in the primary then was transferred into the secondary 6 weeks ago, now nothing? Going to rack it again today...it smells ok.
 

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