I am a winemaker and I use used wine bottles.  Used cork type wine bottles are becoming harder to find.  I was told by a winery around here that corking screw cap wine bottles is OK to use as they both have the same inside neck diameter.  I tried corking one filled water and it seemed to work fine. I would like to get your thoughts on this.
Thanks
William  P.
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Hello William,
As you have already discovered, it is very possible to put cork stoppers into screw-cap wine bottles. This works out great for someone in your position who is having trouble finding cork-finish wine bottles.
I have also seen many other home winemakers cork screw-cap wine bottles over the years with no issues, but I’ve also seen a few home winemakers run into problems, as well, so before you rush out and buy corks for your screw-cap bottles, there are a few things I would like to point out:

• The first issue is with the bottle itself. Most screw-cap wine bottles are made of thinner glass, and are more fragile. The screw-cap bottles we carry are just as heavy as cork-finish bottles, but many are thin and tend to chip or crack more easily while being washed or sanitized.

• Contrary to what your local winery states, the opening of these screw-cap wine bottles vary, and more often than not, they are a different size than a standard 3/4 of an inch opening of a cork-finish wine bottle.

• With cork-finish wine bottles the barrel of the neck is perfectly straight to accommodate the insertion and even sealing of the cork. With many screw-cap wine bottles the barrel of the neck is slightly bell-shaped. Or in other words, the shoulder of the bottle starts higher. This can cause a cork stopper to expand more at its bottom than at its top. Over time, this contortion can actually pull the cork stopper down the neck of the bottle into the wine itself.

• And last, putting a cork stopper in a screw-cap bottling does not look all that great. If you plan on drinking all the wine yourself, this doesn’t matter, but if you plan on passing out some as personalized wine gifts or what have you, then you might want to take into consideration that corking a screw-cap wine bottle can look a bit tacky.

If all you can really find are screw-cap wine bottles, you may want to consider sealing them with actual screw-caps instead of corks. From an aesthetic point of view, it won’t look any worse than corking the screw-cap bottles, and there are some that say screw-caps actually keep and age some wines better than cork, but that’s another topic for another blog post.
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 bought two wine making kits from you that makes 6 gallons (30 bottles). Last night we bottled the first wine and got 25 bottles. Is this about right considering you do lose some during racking? Approximately how much waste do you normally have due to sediments in the bottom?
Mary M
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Hello Mary,
While there will be some waste, there should be nothing close to the five bottles you lost on your first batch. You should be losing no more than one bottle when making wine from with a wine ingredient kit. This is a common issue among beginning winemakers who are just learning how to make your own wine. It’s also an issue that brings up a great wine making tip.
Most of the wine that is being lost, is being lost unnecessarily during the racking process. Racking means to transferring the wine off the sediment into a clean fermentation vessel. This is a process that is normally done three times if you are following the directions that typically come with a wine ingredient kit.
It’s only natural for the first-time winemaker to want to leave as much sediment behind as possible with each racking. The intentions are good, but the result is an excessive loss of wine, such as what you have experienced.
To get the most wine out of every batch, you want to get as much of the wine as possible during the first two rackings, even if it means some sediment is coming along with it. You will still be leaving 95% of the sediment behind. It is only when you get down to the all-important, last racking that you will want to lose some of the wine because of sediment.
What you will find is by the time you get to the last racking there will be so little sediment in the fermenter that there will be very little loss by leaving it all behind.
If you stick to this method of racking your wine you will be pleasantly surprised by the results. It’s more wine, and it’s less hassle.
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 got some pH test strips but do not know what the optimal pH of wine is.  I was also wondering if pH can be adjusted at anytime during wine making process?
Thanks,
Joe
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Dear Joe,
Thank you for the great questions about the pH of a wine. pH is an integral part of any wine and needs to be correct for the wine to taste balanced. The pH also needs to be in a reasonable range for the wine to be stable. If the wine’s acidity is to low it can become more susceptible to spoilage and oxidation.
Fortunately, if you make your wines using box wine kits, the pH has already been taken care of for you. Measuring the pH is not necessary when making wine with these kits. You also do not need to measure the pH of your wine if you are making a wine from a trusted wine recipe.
Having said this, there are times when measuring the pH is needed… If you don’t have a wine recipe for the fruit at hand, or if the fruit tastes unusually sharp or tart tasting, you may want to measure the pH and make any necessary acid adjustments to the wine must. Anytime you are making wine from fresh wine grapes or have a wine must made up of 100% fruit juice such as apple wine, this is when to measure the pH of the wine.
In these situations you will want to take the pH measurement before you begin the fermentation begins. If the fermentation has already started, CO2 gas will throw off the pH reading. A second time that a wine can be tested is right before bottling, however the wine should be degassed first. For this, I would suggest using a degassing paddle. It attaches to a hand-drill. This will allow you to remove all the CO2 gas left-over from the fermentation so that you can accurately measure the pH of the wine.
When measuring the pH of a wine, you are generally looking for a reading between 3.4 and 3.8. The scale runs backwards, so a reading of 3.0 is more acidic than a reading of 4.0. To make any acid adjustments you will either dilute the wine must with sugar water or you will add acid blend.
The big take-away here is: before fermentation and before bottling is when to measure the pH of a wine. And, this is only need if you are making wine from fresh fruit.
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.

Refractometers are an invaluable tool for any grape grower, large or small. Refractometers can let you know when its time to pick. And, they can do it with only a few drops of grape juice taken from throughout your vineyard. The alternative would be to extract enough juice from the grapes to take a reading with a wine hydrometer. This could take up to 200 berries – crushed and pressed.
For more info on refractometers and how to use them to time your grape harvest, take a look at another recent blog post, Refractometers Let You Know When To Pick!
How a refractometer actually works is quite interesting. They can tell you what percentage of sugar is in a drop of liquid just by how much light bends or refracts as it passes through it. To see refraction in action put a straw in a glass of water. The straw in the water doesn’t seem to connect with the straw that’s out of the water. That’s refraction.
If you were to dissolve some sugar syrup in the glass of water, the straw would seem to be even more disconnected, and as you continued to dissolve more and more sugar, the “two straws” would seem to get farther and farther apart. This is the whole premise that a refractometers works upon to tell you what level of sugar is in your grapes.
A drop of grape juice is put between the refractometers prism and light-defusing plate. How much the light bends as it passes through the prism and down the barrel of the refractometer, tells you how what percentage of sugar is in the sample. As you look into the eyepiece you will be able to observe the refraction against a scale.
Because of how a refractometer works – it’s simplicity and quickness – anyone who has a vineyard of any size will find it extremely useful. With just a few random samples, you can get an accurate picture of how your grapes are doing.
Whether you have two acres or just two vines, visit our website and see the refractometers we have to offer for keeping track of your vineyard this season.
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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.

This is the question every budding home wine maker wants to know, “How can I tell how much alcohol is in my wine?” The problem is, this question is usually asked about the time they’re ready to bottle their wine.  Unfortunately, for the amateur winemaker, this is far to late in the process to make any accurate determinations.
What Needs To Happen
The easiest way to know how much alcohol is in your wine is to take two readings with what’s known as a wine hydrometer: one reading is taken before the fermentation has started and the other reading is taken after the fermentation has finished. By comparing these two hydrometer readings you can determine – with great accuracy – how much alcohol is in your wine.
Very simply put, a hydrometer is a long, sealed glass tube with a weight on one end. By observing how high or low it floats in a liquid you can determine a reading.
“And what are we reading?” Essentially, we are trying to figure out how much sugar is in the wine or wine must. The higher the wine hydrometer floats, the more sugar there is in the liquid, and the opposite holds true as well.
During a fermentation, sugar is what yeast turns into alcohol. If we know how much sugar there was in the wine must before the fermentation, and we know how much sugar there is in the wine after the fermentation, we then know how much sugar was consumed by the yeast during the fermentation. From this information we can determine how much alcohol was made during the fermentation and is now in the wine.
It all sound complicated when it is all explained in detail this way, but in practice it is very easy to accomplish. All you need to do is:
1. Take a wine hydrometer reading at the same time you add the yeast to your wine must. The hydrometer has a scale along it called “Potential Alcohol”. At this point in the wine making process, you should be getting a reading of around 10% to 13%. The reading is the point where the surface of the liquid crosses the scale. This reading indicates how much alcohol the wine can have if all the sugars are fermented. Write this number from the gravity hydrometer down and save it for later.
2. Take another reading with the hydrometer once the fermentation has completed. This reading should be somewhere around +1 to -1 on the Potential Alcohol scale. By comparing these two gravity hydrometer readings you can determine your wine’s alcohol level. Take the first number you wrote down and from that, subtract the second number.
The Calculations
As an example, if your reading before the fermentation was 12% and the reading after the fermentation was 1%, this means that your wine has 11% alcohol (12 minus 1). If your first reading was 12% and your second reading was -1%, that means your wine has 13% alcohol (12 minus -1).
Another way to think of it is you are monitoring how far along the wine hydrometer’s Potential Alcohol scale the fermentation is traveling. It started at 12 and ended up at -1. That’s’ 13 points along the scale.
Further Information
You can find more information about using a hydrometer to make wine in the book, “First Steps In Winemaking.” Also, the article, “Getting To Know Your Hydrometer” has lots of additional information about using your hydrometer when making wine.
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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.