I’m so excited! I FINALLY get to make wine again after a seemingly un-endless hiatus due to major life events and changes.
Once my husband and I moved into our new home, I made sure one of the first rooms I set up was the “winery” in the finished basement. It’s still a work in progress, and it’s kind of pathetic when I look at how many pieces of equipment and winemaking supplies I actually have. It’s slim-pickin’s over here. I think eventually I’ll be able to remedy that with the help of E C Kraus!
So, I ordered a couple of different winemaking kits, as I am hoping to be able to run a couple of wines at once. I also purchased a Copper Tun heating pad, as I noticed it’s relatively cool down here in the basement and there isn’t really any good system to keep the heat down here at the moment. In retrospect, I really should have purchased two heating pads if I want to run two wines at the same time, since it is a little too cold for most yeasts to function properly. I’ll have to put that high on my list of winemaking equipment to purchase in the near future.
I purchased both a white and a red wine, and since it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to actually make wine, I decided to start with the white, since there are fewer steps and it’s theoretically easier than the red. The white I’ll be working on for the next several weeks is the Gewurztraminer from California Connoisseur.
Before I did anything, I read up on the water in the new city I live in, and turns out, like most municipalities, our water is chlorinated at some point during its treatment process. So, I poured off what I needed in a clean bucket and left it overnight to allow any residue chlorine to blow off.
The next day, after making sure I got all the moving dust off my equipment, I set up with my sterilizing solution (sodium bisulfite) and got to cleaning! I should note: I am using a brand new primary fermenter, so I will admit I didn’t sterilize it longer than I probably would have it had been used previously.
I added the water and bentonite to the Gewurztraminer wine base per the instructions. The temperature of the mixture was a little low (64^oF.) so I turned on the heating pad and brought it up to 68^oF. before measuring the specific gravity and adding the yeast.
The specific gravity ended up being 1.112 (1.113 after adjusting for calibration temperature of the hydrometer) prior to adding the yeast.
Finally, I added the yeast and crossed my fingers! Now I wait until Day 8 to see how things are progressing!
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hi folks! Leigh here!
I wanted to elaborate a little more on my last post, particularly the part about purchasing a stainless steel fermenter. Since it’s a pretty large investment (well, large for the beginner winemaker), I want to make extra sure switching to stainless steel from plastic is really the best option for me. So, I decided to look up some pros and cons about both plastic fermenters and stainless steel fermenters to try and help me in my quest for the appropriate vessel.
Some Pros of Plastic Fermenters:

• Least expensive option out there.
• Light weight, so easier to lift and move around if need be.

Some Cons of Plastic Fermenters:

• Easier to scratch when cleaning. Scratches are great places for hiding icky bacteria and other things you really don’t want in your wine.
• Oxygen can diffuse faster from plastic than it can from something more dense, so it’s really not a great option for long-term storage.
• Plastic tends to hold in odors no matter how well you clean it, which could affect your next batch of wine.

Some Pros of Stainless Steel Fermenters:

• Much easier to clean.
• Oxygen ingress is significantly less than a plastic fermenter, and the seals on stainless steel fermenters tend to be better/tighter than they are in plastic fermenters.
• Less risk of contamination since the steel will not scratch like plastic, you won’t be harboring any bacterial stow-aways.
• Stainless steel is more durable than plastic, so in theory it will last longer.

Some Cons of Stainless Steel Fermenters:

• They are much more expensive than plastic fermenters.
• They are more bulky and difficult to move once you get wine in them.

I’m sure there are other pros and cons of both types of fermenters, but just by reviewing these first few, I’ve already made up my mind. I like the idea of using plastic fermenters when you are just starting out as a home winemaker, as in the beginning you don’t really know if you’re even going to like doing it or if you’ll be able to continue making wine after your first couple batches. If you’re really getting into it and know you plan to continue making wine for a while, and perhaps know you’d like to increase your output, the upgrade to stainless steel (or glass) is more than worth it, in my opinion.
How about you all? Have you made the switch from plastic? If you are sticking with plastic fermenters, why did you decide to do so? Remember, there are pros and cons to each, so no one is “right” or “wrong”, but it’d be interesting to hear why others made the decisions that they did in terms of what kind of fermenter to use.
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hi guys!  Leigh here!
While I’m sitting here looking at potential homes to buy, I got to thinking—is there enough space in these yards to grow enough of my own grapes for making my own wine?  How much space and how many vines do I actually need?
After doing some reading, turns out the answer kind of depends on how much quality I want to get out of my wine.  If I don’t care about quality, I can just pack a bunch in together and see what happens.  If I do care about quality, I need to pay a lot closer attention to the types of grapes I choose, how far apart they are from one another, and how many I need to plant. All of theses factors come into play when growing grapes for wine.
One of the biggest considerations I need to make is related to the type of grape I should plant.  Do I plant Vitis vinifera?  Or do I plant native varieties?  This really all depends on the climate (including temperature and humidity) as well as the soil.  Not all grapes grow well under the same conditions, so depending upon where I live could make a huge difference in what I plant.
There is a great little “post” regarding growing grapes for wine that I read on Homebrewing.org, which confirms this idea of picking the right grapes for where you live.  This post also mentions what to expect once you actually plant the grapes, and how many vines you should plant if you’re sticking with small batch winemaking.
Once you plant the vines, you can’t expect to be making wine immediately.  In fact, it takes a good 3-4 years before you end up with a decent crop for winemaking.  So, if you’re in a hurry to make wine with grapes, obviously you’ll need to buy someone else’s grapes for a few years while you’re waiting for yours to grow and mature.  All the while you need to make sure you set up trellises for when the grapes start putting out their long, dangly vines, and you need to regularly prune them.
It is recommended that the vines be planted in a very sunny area, with good soil drainage and nutrient-poor soils.  When growing grapes for wine, stressing out the plant a bit is actually good for wines, as the plant will put all of its energy into reproduction (i.e. the grapes!!) resulting in super concentrated, higher quality fruit.
So, if I wish to continue making super-small batch wine like I am currently (i.e. using the 6 gallon fermenters and carboys), how much should I plant?  According to what I’ve read, it takes about 10 pounds of grapes to make a gallon of wine.  Therefore, in order to make a small batch of wine, you’d need to plant about 10-20 vines. I should probably keep that in mind when I’m looking for a new home, and hope the yard is big enough to squeeze 10-20 vines in!
Anyone else out there growing grapes for wine?

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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hello readers!  Leigh here!  I’m back from my wedding/honeymoon adventures!
Remember how I thought we would have been moved by now?  Well, we’re not….yet.  We at least know now that we are not staying in the state where we live currently.  Because of this, I’m holding off on any major home winemaking purchases as I can’t really start any new wines right now and it’ll be a pain to have to move more than we really need.
I don’t want to lose the momentum I had earlier regarding my desire to make my own wines, so I’ll spend some time thinking about my next major steps and talking with you about what I would like to do and how I plan to do it.
One thing that just popped in my mind, actually, is related to one of the wedding gifts we received.  Someone had purchased a juicer for us so we can make our own homemade juice.  I’m certain they had random fruit juices to drink in mind, but I’ve been thinking—could I use this same juicer to make a bunch of juice to be fermented into wine? Does anyone have any experience with using a juicer for winemaking?
I did a little digging around the ECKraus website, and turns out there is someone else who had the exact same question that I did!  Can we use a juicer for winemaking?  To some up in one phrase, the answer was “sort of”.
When you use this type of a juicer for red wines (i.e. one not made with winemaking in mind), the resulting wine will be lacking in body and color.  Wines get most of the color from the skins, seeds, and pulp of the fruit, and the juicer will just end up separating all that.  However, the juicer could be used for white wines (white fruit) since you don’t need the skins and seeds for that process!
Cool!  So, while the gift giver did not have winemaking in mind, I’ll certainly be using my juicer for making white fruit wines until I upgrade to a more appropriate piece of equipment like a grape press.
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.