I am making a Cab Sauvignon from the California Connoisseur wine kit. I also plan on making a Merlot next and would like to blend some of the two wines before bottling. I would like to save half of the Cab in a 3 gal carboy and bottle the other half. However, at what step in the process is it best to store the bulk Cab while I am making the Merlot? After Stabilization and Clarification?
Name: Darryl M.
State: Montana
Hello Darryl,
I’m so glad to get a question on blending wines. This is something I always love to talk about. It’s also something that I feel is greatly underutilized in home winemaking. Thanks for the great question.
You want to get the wine to the point of being ready to bottling before putting it in a carboy to be bulk aged. You want to get all the steps in the provided winemaking directions out of the way before leaving the wine to rest. That means making sure the wine is clear. I would also suggest that you add a dose of potassium metabisulfite to any wine that is going to go through a bulk aging of any kind.
One thing I would like to point out is that the Cabernet Sauvignon you made is not 100% Cabernet Sauvignon grape. Smaller amounts of other grapes are blended in as well, probably some Merlot grape. We don’t exactly, because the producer of this brand does not provide this information. The same will be true for the Merlot. This is no different than the Cabs and Merlots you buy commercially at the store. They have small amounts of other grapes blended with them to round out the character of the wine.
Because of this and because all small-batch wines tend to come out slightly different each time you make them, It is impossible to know ahead of time just how much of each wine you will want to use in a blending. Something like 3 gallons of one and 3 gallons of the other seems clear-cut and simple, but it may not be the optimal blend or ratio for your two wines. In fact, you may be making a wine that taste worse than each of the wines used to produce it. It is possible. With that being said, don’t assume a particular plan of action without basing it on some type of test-tasting first.
If I were in your shoes I would bulk age the entire 6 gallons of Cabernet Sauvignon. Once the Merlot wine is ready, then I would do blind taste-testings with an array of different blends/ratios of the two wines, by the glass. Have one person blend and the others taste without knowing what’s in each glass. Whatever blend is the most like is the blend you apply to the rest of the batches. Go through this step and you’ll be blending wine like a pro.
As a side note, this makes a great party event. Invite your friends and have them help determine the blend to use with blind tastings.
If you do not want to commit the entire 6 gallons, that’s okay. I understand. It’s hard to have 6 gallons of wine sitting around when you could be drinking on it, but to get the most ‘bang’ out of your blending efforts, this is how I would proceed.
There’s a great article on our website on blending wines that I would urge you to check out, Blending To Improve Homemade Wines. It goes into both the art and science of blending wine in much greater detail than I can go into here.
Hope this helps you out.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

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I will be bottling my first batch in the next week or so. Planning it out, I would find it much easier to dispense the wine via the spout on the large fermentation container. However the wine is finishing up its process in the 6 gal carboy. The question is, is it safe to move the wine from the carboy to the fermentation container at the moment I am ready to bottle? I would certainly be sure I minimize oxygenation and everything would be sterile. Thanks for your reply.
Name: Larry
State: NJ
Hello Larry,
Actually, it would be preferable for you to move (rack) your wine from the carboy to a bucket fermenter at this stage of the winemaking process.
The #1 reason for this would be to get the wine off the sediment. You should expect to have more sediment at the bottom of the carboy at this point. You need to get this sediment away from the wine.
Before bottling it is recommended that you add a sulfite such as Campden tablets or sodium metabisulfite to the wine. This will help to preserve it while it is aging in the wine bottle. To do this you will need to stir the sulfite into the wine. If the wine has sediment on the bottom you will be stirring this sediment back up into the wine. That’s a bad thing. It’s also awkward to stir a wine while it’s in a carboy unless you have something like a degassing/mixing paddle.
The #2 reason is the reason you stated: as a matter of convenience. Starting a siphon out of a carboy and maintaining that siphon and controlling its flow all at the same time can be difficult. It is much easier to deal with a spigot that has an on and off and does not require a siphon to be maintained.
A Quick Tip
Just as you stated, you do not want to splash the wine around any more than you have to when racking the wine into the carboy. Keeping the air exposure to a minimum is important. This can easily be done with a siphon hose. Start the siphon and make sure that you fill the bucket fermenter from the bottom-up. In other words, make sure that the siphon hose can reach all the way to the bottom of the fermenter you are filling. By doing this you will be eliminating all the splashing and keeping your wine safe from oxidation.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I think I’m obtaining an off-taste with my Muscadine wine because it needs additional degassing. I degas the wine once after the 7 day initial fermentation. Can I also degas again after 30 days and right before the first rack? I understand that the degassing technique may place unwanted oxygen into the wine…..what do you recommend? Thanks
Name: Hermanator
State: Missouri
Hello Hermanator,
I would never recommend degassing the wine more than one time. The later you can wait to do this in the wine making process the better off you will be, preferably close to bottling time.
You are correct in your assumption that degassing could saturate unwanted oxygen into the wine. The oxygen can permanently damage the wine through a process of oxidation, causing the wine to turn amber or orange, and in more advanced cases, giving the wine a raisin flavor. For this reason great care needs to be taken not to splash the wine when you are degassing it.
Splashing the wine is what allows air to be engulfed into the wine. One simple way to degas without splashing is to use a degassing paddle. This is essentially a spinning paddle that goes down into the wine, agitating it from within. Another blog post, Degassing Homemade Wine, has more information on this subject.
The whole purpose of degassing is to cause any lingering CO2 gas from the fermentation to release from the wine and dissipate, but after reading your question I get the feeling that you may be trying to degas something other than CO2. This type of gas is usually not referred to as an off-taste. It simply causes the wine to be fizzy, no different than beer or soda pop. Also there should never be any reason to degas a wine more than once, so I’m wondering what’s going one.
One possibility is that your wine’s fermentation is being dragged out and you are wanting to degas it each time more CO2 gas gets trapped in the wine. But I get the sense that something else might be going on here. Bacterial infections can cause various gases and organic compounds to saturate into the wine. The general effect on the wine in such a situation could be described as an off-taste or odor.
With that being said I would suggest that you treat the wine with a sulfite such as Campden tablets or sodium metabisulfite. This will do two different things for you. First, it will easily destroy any bacteria that may be in your wine. Second, it will help to drive out any gasses that are still in the wine. A two for one. Just follow the directions for a single dose on the container it comes in.
I think it would be helpful to take a hydrometer reading, if you haven’t done so already, to confirm that the fermentation has actually completed and not just puttering along at some undetectable level of activity. You should expect a reading on the Specific Gravity scale between .994 and .998.
If you have never added a sulfite to the wine since the fermentation has completed, then a bacterial infection is very possible. Fortunately, adding sulfite at this time will cause this issue from getting any worse.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

My wife has a terrific recipe for red sangria, requiring red wine, brandy and triple sec, as well as fresh fruit. If I make my own red wine (e.g. Island Mist Sangria Zinfandel) as directed, can I add the correct amount of brandy and triple sec at time of bottling so that the beverage is “ready to go” upon opening?
Name: Joe B.
State: MD
Hello Joe,
There is no reason why you couldn’t add both the brandy and Triple Sec to the wine before bottling. This is called fortifying the wine and is commonly done with certain styles of wine. But, I have some things you might want to consider first.
The first is that the Island Mist Sangria Zinfandel Blush already has a significant amount of fruity flavors. There is such a thing as overkill. Adding this to your wife’s Sangria recipe is a totally different beast than adding is to an ordinary red wine.
This particular wine ingredient kit also comes with a flavored sweetening pack. This means that the wine will be sweeter than the wine you probably have been using to make Sangria in the past. You didn’t mention it above, but if your wife’s Sangria recipe calls for sugar, you may need to adjust the amount, down, when using the Sangria Zinfandel Blush as the wine.
Here’s what this all really comes to. You need to bench test it first. What this means is after you make the Sangria Zinfandel Blush, take a wine bottle worth of it and try it out with the brandy and Triple Sec and whatever else your wife’s recipe calls for in correct proportion. Be objective. Does it really taste better with the additions or not?
This is the safest way I can think of going about this. The last thing you want is 30 bottles of something you don’t really ever want to pull out of the wine rack. Or worse yet, 30 bottles of something you can’t even drink.
Bench testing is pretty much the rule-of-thumb when making any kind of alteration to a wine recipe. It cost nothing to do and it keeps the batch of wine isolated from any mistakes or just plain, bad ideas.
Thanks for the great question. I hope this information gave you a better sense of how to handle the Sangria.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I bottled a batch of strawberry wine which had cleared up perfectly, but then within a couple months, small light colored particles appeared in the bottles. If the bottle is shaken, some of the particles dissolve, but after an hour or two they reappear. The wine tastes great, but with the floating particles, it’s difficult to share it with others. What could the problem be? I have another 6 gallon carboy to bottle in a month, and I hope I can prevent this from happening again. Thanks for your help!
Name: Gary B.
State: PA
It sounds like you have acid precipitating out of your wine. What you are seeing is acid crystallizing and then drop out.
A wine can only hold so much of any one particular fruit acid in solution. What the wine can’t hold will eventually form as crystals in the wine. This is basically what you’ve described. The amount of acid that can be held is affected by temperature. The cooler the wine, the less acid it can hold and the more likely you will experience these acid crystals.
For the wine that you already have bottled, there is not much you can do that wouldn’t involve re-bottling. Since the flavor of the wine is not affected by this particular wine fault, I would not recommend doing anything to it other than enjoy it.
As for the wine you have yet to bottle, I would take a small sample, maybe a pint or a quart, and let it set in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 days. What you are looking for is to see if these crystals will form under such a cold temperature. If no crystals form, then everything is fine for bottling. If you do see crystals, then you best option you have is to chill the entire batch of wine for a week or two. Then rack (siphon) the wine off the acid crystals that form and settle.
This is a process know as cold stabilization. I would suggest that you read over the article, Maintaining Temperature Stability In Your Wine to gain a better understanding of what’s going on here.
What you can do in the future to prevent this from happening is a couple of things:
First is to always use a blend of fruit acids for adjusting the wine’s acidity. This is the reason why we have Acid Blend. By using a blend, no single acid becomes too abundant and more than the wine can keep saturated.
The second thing you can do is using an acid testing kit to know how much Acid Blend to put into the wine. A wine recipe can only make a good guess as to how much fruit acid is needed to bring the wine into balance. But if your fruit is particularly heavy in acid in a given year, the acid called for may be too much. An acid test kit resolves this problem by telling you how much acid is in the wine must before you add any acid. The directions with the kit also tells you what acid level you are looking for and how much Acid Blend you need to add to get there.
I hope this information helps you out . Acid precipitation is an issues that all wineries have to deal with, so don’t feel like Mother Nature is picking on you. The good news is that on your next batch the solution is simple. Cold stabilize if necessary. And, on future batches you can avoid having this problem all together by using and acid test kit instead of following the guestimation called for in a wine recipe.
Happing Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I took the stopper out of the carboy briefly to clean.  I noticed a vinegar smell!  Is the 6 gallons of wine junk?  Or should I sample to confirm?  Help!  Air lock may have gotten low !!!!!
Name: Danny V
State: WI
Hello Danny,
I guess my question to you is, does it really smell like actual “vinegar” or is it just an odd odor? I ask this because many times a person will smell something unusual in their newly fermented wine and immediately assume it to be vinegar.
In reality, a wine fermentation can put a lot of strange odors in a wine, but most of them are temporary and will leave during a siphoning (racking) of the wine or when sulfite is added to the wine. The SO2 gas from the sulfite will expel the odor.
With this knowledge at hand, if you still believe it to be vinegar, then sulfite such as sodium metabisulfite or Campden tablets, needs to be added to the wine, immediately. Vinegar is caused by a bacteria. The sulfite will kill the bacteria very easily. By doing this you can be assured that your wine will not become any worse.
As far as saving the wine or making it better, there’s really no hope. Vinegar is essentially a volatile acid with an Unagreeable taste and smell. The only way to remove it would require to heat the wine. This would allow the volatile acid to leave as a vapor, but would destroy the wine in the process.
In the future, not only is it essential that you keep the air lock from going dry, but it is also essential that the wine be treated with sodium metabisulfite to handily destroy the vinegar bacteria. A dose should be added 24 hour before the wine yeast and again, right after the fermentation has complete. A third dose should be added right before bottling the wine, as well. By doing these simple steps, you should never have to deal with vinegar again.
I would also suggest you take a look at the article, There’s Vinegar In My Wine!. This is an article on our website that goes into the subject matter in much greater detail. There you will learn more about what vinegar is, how to control it, and how to test for it in a wine.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi. I have a quick question. I made a Barley Wine that I let condition in an new Toasted Oak Barrel for 6 months then another 4 in bottles. It is fantastic stuff. Love it. I wanted to know how long I can leave Campden tablets dissolved in water to clean the oak barrel. Can I leave it in there until I use it again…what are your thoughts? Thanks
Name: Fernando Durand
State: FL
Fernando,
If I’m understanding you correctly, you want to know how long you can leave a sulfite solution in the oak barrel without having to replace the solution between batches of Barley Wine. This is a great question that I’d love to answer.
First it is important to point out that when using Campden tablets, sodium metabisulfite, or any other kind of sulfite with water, you also need to add an acid of some type or the sulfite will not be an effective sanitizer — preferably citric acid. The acid is what causes the sulfite in the liquid to be free and not become bound to the water, making it innocuous.
If you are using using a sulfite in a crystal powder form such as sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite, you will want to add two teaspoons of it for each gallon of solution. You want to use enough solution to fill the oak barrel completely. Along with the sodium metabisulfite you will add 1 teaspoon of citric acid per gallon, or half the amount of the sodium metabisulfite.
It you are using Campden tablets, the you will want to use 16 tablets for each gallon. You still will want to add the 1 teaspoon per gallon of citric acid as well to the oak barrel. Be sure to crush the Campden tablets thoroughly before attempting to dissolve it into the water.
Now going back to you original question, how long is this solution good for? The short answer is 6 month. For any time longer than this, you will need to replenish the sulfite in the solution. The citric acid will still be fine. No more needs to be added. But every 6 months a full dose of either Campden tablets, sodium metabisulfite or potassium metabisulfite needs to be added to the solution in the oak barrel.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

When racking [siphoning wine] I’d like to add 1/4 teaspoon of sulfites. What is the best method to do this? Should I add and mix the sulfites in the carboy before transferring it to the empty one to protect it from the oxygen exposure, or put the sulfites in the empty carboy so the wine will mix with it when being received?
Name: Roger C.
State: Connecticut
Roger,
I don’t know as it’s too critical either way. The important thing is that the the sodium metabisulfite gets dissolved complete and blended thoroughly throughout the wine.
The way I like to add winemaking ingredients such as the sodium metabisulfite, yeast nutrient, acid blend, etc., is to take a quart or so of the wine or wine must and dissolve the winemaking ingredient into it. Then blend the quart back into the rest of the wine batch.
It is easier to determine when the particular ingredient has dissolve completely in a smaller sample. Secondly, it is quicker to get something like sodium metabisulfite to dissolve in a quart than it is 5 gallons. In a quart you can be assured that when you agitate it in any way, that all the winemaking ingredient is responding by dissolving. In 5 gallons when you stir the batch you are usually only affecting some of the dose. It takes more effort and more time to do it this way.
Once I know if that the sodium metabisulfite or whatever has completely dissolve in the quart sample, I then blend it back into the rest of the batch. You don’t have to worry about dissolving any more. You are just worried about getting the quart sample evenly blended through out the wine.
Having said this, to answer your question more directly, you could take a quart of the wine while it’s siphoning and dissolve the sodium metabisulfite. Then pour it into the new carboy. You could do all of this while five gallons of wine is still siphoning.
Another blog post that is somewhat related to this subject is When Do I Add Campden Tablets To My Homemade Wine. I goes over a little bit about know how much sulfite to add to a wine throughout the wine making process.
Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I am making a red wine. I am trying to get the right level of acid. I used a titration kit and got a reading of 15% tartaric. When I used pH papers it had a pH level of 3.8. What do I do follow the tartaric? I am worried that if I do it will be to acidic. It already tastes sharp and sour.
Name: Justin Maddock
State: Missouri
Hello Justin,
We have some conflicting information going on. Your titration reading indicates that your wine if ‘very low’ in acid. Your pH reading indicates that it’s a ‘little low’ in acid. And, your taste buds are indicating that it is ‘too high’ in acid. The only thing I can say with this type of information is that you need to get to the bottom of what’s really going on with your wine before doing anything to it.
Depending on the type of wine, you should be expecting a titration reading between .55% and .75% tartaric. A reading of .15% would not taste anywhere near sharp, in fact it would have an impression closer to flavored water, so I doubt if this reading is correct for whatever reason.
The pH reading is believable. This is because it is not way whacked out and the fact that taking a pH reading is simple, straight-forward and hard too mess up. For most wines you would like a reading between 3.4 and 3.6. Your reading of 3.8 indicates that your wine is a little shy of being within a normal range. Remember that the pH scale works backwards. This means your reading of 3.8 is less in acid than the 3.6.
Then we have your personal taste perception. You stated that it taste a little sharp or sour. In reality your own personal taste is what really matters, so we could forget all about the rest and say that your wine has too much acid — for your own personal tastes — and lower it by whatever means. But I have found that most home winemaker’s would rather rely on technology than on themselves.
With that being said, I would do a titration test on a commercially made wine with your Acid Test Kit and pH papers. If you don’t have one, just go buy the cheapest wine you can find. If you do not get a reading around .60% or .70%, tartaric with the Acid Test Kit, then I would be suspicious of how old the titration solutions are, or your ability to administer the test. Your pH papers or litmus papers could be too old to be accurate as well, but not likely. It takes several years for these to become too old to use. But since you spent the money on the wine, I would test the pH as well to see what your get.
If you don’t get a reasonable reading with either of these methods, then you need to either get them replace with new, or contact one of our very, very nice customer service representatives on the phone and they will step you through the testing process. Another blog post that you might like to take a look at is “Using An Acid Test Kit“. It’s a two-parter that goes into a little more detail about how to use the Acid Test Kit Like I said before, I would not recommend doing anything to the wine until you get readings that make sense.
Happy Wine Making,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

I started a fermentation with 10 lbs. of cleaned orange fruit, 6.5 lbs. of sugar, 3 gallons of water, yeast, pectic enzyme etc. I forgot to take the original specific gravity. If I remember correctly when I racked the first time my reading was 1.030. I just racked it a second time and am getting the reading of .990. Any way to accurately figure out the alcohol content or not? I’ll know better next time. Smells like its got a kick to it.
Name: Barney
State: Louisiana
The short answer to your question is, “Not unless your willing to spend some bucks on lab equipment”.
As a home winemaker, determining the alcohol level of a finished wine without a beginning wine hydrometer reading is difficult. Knowing the beginning reading along with an ending reading make it just a simple matter of easy math to figure out, but when you don’t have the beginning reading, determining the alcohol level quickly turns into a science project.
Without the beginning reading the wine hydrometer is no longer of any value to you for this purpose. It’s good to know that your wine is at 0.990 on the Specific Gravity scale, indicating that the fermentation did complete, but beyond this it is of no help. You’ll need to rely on some other piece of equipment.
Your first option is to use a Vinometer. The big plus to using this apparatus is that it is not too terribly expensive. The big minus is that it is not too terribly accurate, either. And, if your wine has any significant residual sugar in it, — which yours does not, with a reading of 0.990 — the measurement will not be accurate at all. In fact, it will be in another ballpark.
The Vinometer is fairly simple to use. I works off the surface tension of the liquid, in this case the wine. You start by filling up a thin channel in a glass pipe or pipette. Then turn the pipette upside-down to allow the wine to run out. You determine how much alcohol is in the wine by observing how much wine stays in the Vinometer verses how much falls out. There is a scale along its side to help you do this.
Your second option is to use an Ebullioscope. This apparatus is much more expensive but much more accurate. It is basically a lab-quality mini still. You take a measured sample of the wine and bring it to the boiling point of alcohol, which is lower than water, and essentially steam all the alcohol out of the wine. The steam is collected in a closed environment, then cooled and measured in relation to the wine sample size. As you can start to see, unless you’re a small winery, this is probably not to practical.
While the Ebullioscope is very accurate, it is not completely accurate. Other trace amounts of volatile elements do rise with the alcohol steam, otherwise known as “essence”, so there is even a third way to measure the alcohol level, one that is ultimately accurate, and it’s the way the big boys do it. That is to use chromatography.
What it means for the home winemaker, or even the small winery, is send it to the lab with a large check, and they’ll tell you what the alcohol level of your wine is with great accuracy. What it means for the large winery is they’ll send the sample to their in-house lab and run it through a piece of equipment that costs thousands of dollars.
Another blog post that you may want to take a look at that is related to this subject is “Controlling Alcohol With A Gravity Hydrometer“. It goes into a little more detail about actually using the hydrometer to determine the alcohol level of your wine.
I guess the moral to this blog post would be to, “Never forget to take your beginning wine hydrometer reading!” It is vital to determining the alcohol level of your homemade wine. Without it your pretty much out of luck.
Best Wishes,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.