It’s bottling day!  Yay!
Finally, I am able to bottle my first homemade red wine—the Carmenere you may or may not have read about in some of my previous entries.   You may or may not also recall, I was a little worried about this wine, particularly since I had a semi-major “mishap” one morning involving a massive leak and some quick thinking. Basically, I had installed the spigot on my plastic carboy a little too tight, but for some reason it took weeks before any leaking occurred (kind of odd, but whatever).  When I noticed the small leak, I tried to tighten the spigot even more, since at the time I thought it might actually be too loose.  BAD idea!  Wine started flowing out and I had to think quickly to get the wine transferred into a new container as quickly as possible and as sanitary as possible in the short amount of time I had.
I ended up getting the wine transferred into my primary fermenter, since that’s all I had available at that time.  I did lose a little bit of wine, but considering how much I could have lost in that situation, I don’t think I lost much at all.
I was a little worried about keeping the wine in the primary fermenter for a couple of weeks, as I was concerned about possible contamination during the fast transfer, and the fact that there is a lot more surface area for oxygen to play around with on the wine than if it were in a more narrow carboy.
So, after waiting a week longer than I was scheduled to bottle due to some travel plans, the moment of truth had finally come!  First, I took a final specific gravity reading with my hydrometer, and it was holding steady at 0.997.  Good news, since I am convinced all fermentation was complete due to the fact that the specific gravity hadn’t changed in a long time.
Now, the taste—-was it going to be skunked?  A little off somehow due to all the “trauma” it went through a couple of weeks prior?  To my surprise, the wine actually tasted pretty nice!!!  BIG sigh of relief there!  I didn’t taste anything that was particularly concerning, and it tasted like it has a lot of potential for aging in the next few months.
I had purchased a couple of cases of wine bottles from ECKraus (since I had been too lazy to go collecting used bottles from wineries), and bottled 26 bottles of Carmenere!
As always, I didn’t filter the wine, since I don’t have a wine filtering system yet, but alas, what can ya do, right?  The wine did look pretty clear, though it probably wouldn’t have hurt to run it through a filter to be extra certain.  Only time will tell how it comes out, I suppose.
As long as the flavor and aromas develop in a positive manner over the next few months, I plan on serving this wine (in addition to other purchased wines) at my upcoming wedding.  What a fun way to share my wine with my family and friends!  I’ll certainly taste a bottle or two prior to wedding day as a sort of “quality control”, but hey, I would always serve this wine after everyone is sufficiently toasted so that they don’t notice anything off about it (if it is).
How are your homemade wines coming along?

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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 everyone!
So today I had to decide whether or not to go ahead and bottle my homemade Carmenere wine (batch #3 total) a week early, or hold off for another week or so.  If you recall, I had a mini disaster with my Carmenere in that I lost a little bit of it and had to quickly transfer the rest into my primary fermenter due to a structural integrity failure of the spigot on the carboy the wine was in.  It’s not the most ideal holding place for it, as the surface area of the wine touching the air is a lot greater than if it had remained in the taller, thinner carboy.  Alas, at the time I had no other choice but to hope for the best.
Anyway, if I were to follow the remainder of the instructions to a T, then I would need to bottle the wine on a particular weekend that I am scheduled to go out of town.  I had to decide then if I was going to bottle early or bottle late.  Part of me wanted to bottle the wine early, as I’m nervous about storing the wine in the primary fermenter as opposed to a carboy, but the other part of me wanted to wait because 1) I don’t like to feel rushed, and 2) I don’t have all the proper equipment to do the bottling anyway!  Whoops!
To put my mind at ease, I very quickly cracked the top of the primary fermenter to take a peek at the wine and also take a sniff, and everything looks OK so far.  I didn’t want to leave the top open very long, as I didn’t need to introduce any more oxygen than what was already in there to begin with!  Since I had that dramatic morning with the emergency wine transfer, I’ve sort of given up the hope that this will be a crazy good wine anyway.  Sure, I suppose it still might end up being awesome, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over delaying bottling since if the wine is bad, it’s gone bad already and there probably isn’t much I can do about it with the resources that I have.
So, what I will do instead is come up with a list of things I need to purchase in order to get this bottling done when I return from out of town, and put an order into ECKraus.
Here’s what I am going to get:
-Wine Bottles:  yes, I should have been saving up wine bottles to just reuse—which I had been!—but turns out I only saved enough for my Pinot Chardonnay and have barely anything left for the Carmenere.  Next time, I’ll go to a local winery and pick up a bunch of empties from them, but in the meantime, I’ll just go ahead and order some new wine bottles this one time.
-Corks:  I only bought enough wine bottle corks last time for one batch of wine, since I wasn’t sure how much trouble it was going to be putting them in.  After bottling the Pinot Chardonnay, I realized that the process is ridiculously easy and I am going to go ahead and stock up.
-What I’d like to get eventually but won’t be ordering just yet—A wine filtering system.  Yeah yeah, I know I keep saying I need one of these.  Yes, I’ll get one eventually!  I’m thinking for now I’ll try to be more careful to not mix up any of the sludge at the bottom of the container and I can decant the bottles later if necessary!

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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.

This question is somewhat long but well worth the read. Ron’s homemade fruit wine is not fermenting and he is at his wits end as to what to do about it. See what kind of plan of action we came up with.
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I have a question in regards to some issues I’ve had with my attempt at making a fruit wine (blueberry, specifically). I think I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I’ve lost this batch, but I’d like to try and learn from this so I don’t make the same mistake next time.
I started with roughly 17 lbs of frozen blueberries, which I defrosted. I mashed up the defrosted berries, added water, sugar, pectic enzyme and enough potassium bisulfite (all purchased from Adventures in Homebrewing) to reach a 50ppm sulfite level for 6 gallons of must. I let the berries rest for two days, and in looking at your instructions, the only thing I did NOT do was leave it uncovered. I did have it in a brew pail with a lid and an airlock on it during this time.
When it was time to start fermentation, I transferred the must into a stainless fermentation tank and splashed it around a bit, then commenced with testing the must. Brix was 23.4, so that was fine. The interesting thing is that the pH was low (3.1), but the TA was also low (around .40). I’ve always been taught to adjust to the acid level/taste more so than the pH, so I added enough acid blend to reach a TA between .55 and .60 (it was hard to tell exactly using the acid test kit). This of course would have likely lowered the pH even more, and perhaps this is my problem.
I prepared my yeast using a starter solution made up of GoFerm and warm water, and once it cooled to 104 degrees, I added the packet of Lalvin 71B. After 20 minutes and visible signs of active yeast, I then added half the starter volume in actual wine must to further acclimate the yeast, and waited another 20 minutes, at which time I had a good frothy starter going. I checked the temp in both the must (69 degrees) and the yeast starter (79 degrees) to make sure they were within 10 degrees Celsius of each other, and pitched the yeast into must, stirred it in and waited.
Given that 71B is usually a pretty quick starter, I expected to see some activity the next day, but I had nothing. And then nothing the next day. And then nothing the next day. By then, I assumed something went awry, so I warmed up the must a bit, still nothing. I make beer as well, so I have an oxygen injection stone and bottled O2, and decided to inject some oxygen into the must (I thought that perhaps by boiling the water prior to adding it to the berries, maybe I drove off all of the oxygen). Still nothing. With no other ideas, I added dissolved 6 grams of Fermaid K, mixed it into the must, made another healthy starter and pitched more yeast. And waited. Nothing.
At this point, since it’s been 4 days since I pitched the original yeast starter, I am sure I am on the precipice of having to trash this must, but I am at a loss for what else could be the problem? I am leaning toward the pH, in that since it was low to start with, and probably lowered even more after I added the acid blend, perhaps it lowered the pH beyond the limits of what the yeast can handle? Maybe with a pH that low, and knowing that the pH will rise during fermentation, perhaps I should have waited until AFTER fermentation to make the acid adjustment?
I realize it may be difficult to assess without seeing a full analysis of the must, but I thought perhaps you might have some ideas on what may have happened here.
Name: Ron F.
State: Virginia
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Hello Ron,
It is very hard to know what is exactly why your wine is not fermenting without being the one there doing it. All I can really do is take the information you have given and apply a likelihood of what’s going on based on my experience of helping thousands of others other home winemakers.
First I have to say that I do not think it is in any way related to pH. While your pH reading is low, it is not low enough to affect a fermentation to this degree. The best a low pH reading can do is marginally affect the fermentation. It would not stop it from starting all together.
The fact that you boosted the nutrients and oxygen and that the wine must was at the right temperature tells me we need to start looking at the yeast as the cause of your fruit wine not fermenting.
On our website we have the Top 10 Reason For Fermentation Failure. These are the top 10 ways in which we have seen fermentations fail — in order from most likely to least likely. I think we are potentially dealing with two of the reasons: #3 and #4.

• Sealing Up The Fermenter After Adding Sulfites
  From what I gather you understood that sealing up the wine must between the time you added the sulfites and the time you added the yeast was not the right thing to do. It is important to keep the wine must exposed and not sealed up. This allows the sulfite you added to sanitize the juice time to leave so that it does not destroy the yeast you are adding. I feel that this is a potential cause of why you wine must is not fermenting.
• Improper Yeast Starting Method
  I also feel that there is a strong likelihood that a most of the yeast — if not all — is being killed in the rehydration process. It is important to understand that if you follow the rehydration steps, exactly, a portion of the yeast is being destroyed in the process. If you do not follow the process, exactly, all the yeast can be destroyed. It is a function of temperature and time. If the temperature is warmer than the direction state, your are killing more yeast than intended. If you leaving it at the warm temperature for longer than the directions state, you are killing more yeast then intended. This is why it is important to actually take a thermometer reading of the water before adding the wine yeast. It is also important to actually clock the time you wait before pitching the yeast.

I don’t think you have necessarily have lost this batch. Taking the above into consideration, what I would do if I were in your shoes is to take another packet of wine yeast and sprinkle it directly onto the wine must. To be honest with you, this is what I normally do anyway. It will take a little longer for the fermentation to start, but you don’t have to worry about inadvertently killing the yeast.
Once you sprinkle the yeast on top, put the lid and air-lock on the fermenter. Wait and the first time you see any signs of activity, take the lid back off and leave the primary fermentation exposed to air. You can cover the primary fermentation covered with a thin kitchen/tea towel.
By handling it in this way, you are protecting the wine must while it is still, but then exposing it to the needed oxygen once the fermentation takes off. I would expect this to happen in around 8 to 12 hours, maybe sooner for you since you’ve added additional nutrients.
Ron, I’m so sorry are having such an issue with your homemade wine not fermenting. Hopefully this information will help you out and get thing on track!
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.

Bottling day for my Pinot Chardonnay has finally arrived! This is my second attempt at bottling wine from a carboy.
If you recall, I’d been letting the wine sit for a couple of months to help settle and clarify (per the instructions on the concentrate can).  At the end of this time, I decided that the wine was not yet clear enough so I added some clarifying agents to speed things up a little bit.  I think my fining agent might have been going bad (can they do that??? I’ve only had them for a couple of months), because it was kind of difficult to remove the substance from the pouch (it was solidifying and kind of “crunchy”).  Anyway, I added what I could in and a couple days later still seemed to do the trick.
At the same time that all this clarifying was going along, ECKraus came to the rescue and sent me my replacement carboy spigot that I had basically destroyed a week or so prior.  This meant that I could transfer my Pinot Chardonnay from the carboy that it was in into the carboy with a spigot, since I really liked bottling wine from the spigot instead of using the racking tube.  Well, to be fair, I’ve only tried to bottle using the spigot and have not yet tried bottling wine using the siphoning tube, but since it’s been going so well for me I figured why stop now!
Only “bad” thing that happened when transferring the wine from the first carboy to the “spigotted” carboy was that I accidentally mixed up the sediment on the bottom a little bit and so there was some little bits of things transferred into the wine bottles after bottling.  I suppose I could have let the wine sit for a longer period of time to allow it to settle out, however, I was inpatient and just decided to go ahead and bottle even if it was a little cloudy.  The only other thing that could have helped at this point would have been if I had a filtering system.  That’s still on the list of things to buy, for sure!
The most exciting part of bottling my wine was using my new hand corker for the first time!  The first time I bottled wine, I used those small corks with the plastic tops on them that I could just push in with my hand.  This time, I wanted to go a little more “authentic” and decided to put standard corks in my wine bottles.  Since I currently have a very small batch operation, I felt as though the hand corker would be more than enough, and maybe if I ever increase production I could upgrade to a larger floor corker.
I was admittedly a little nervous before I corked my first wine bottle.  How easy would using this device actually be?  How much “elbow grease” would I need?  Turns out—it’s super easy and I didn’t even break a sweat.  First, per the instructions on the corks, I boiled them for a short period of time to get them a little more able to be compressed.  Then, I simply followed the instructions on the box of the hand corker and voila!  Corking a bottle of wine couldn’t be easier!  Everything just went so smooth and at first I was convinced I must have done something wrong since I barely put any effort into the job.  I suppose if you do it correctly, it’s a cinch!
Now time to let the bottles sit upright for a few days while the corks expand, then off to bed on their sides they will go for a while!
All in all, bottling my wine from the carboy went pretty easily. I did get a little sediment mixed up, but I’ll have to chalk that up as a learning experience.
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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.

In several earlier posts, we introduced a few home winemaking terms.  There are many terms to learn in home winemaking, and this post, like all the previous posts, gives you a short introduction to a few of those terms to help you get started in home winemaking, or perhaps brush up on some of the terms you may not have seen in a while.

• Bottle Washer: Bottle washers are great little pieces of home winemaking equipment that you’ll end up using over and over again.  Prior to bottling your wine, you need a clean vessel in which to put the wine.  It can be really hard to clean a bottle due to its odd shape, and sometimes a bottle brush alone simply won’t cut it.  The bottle washer is a stainless steel hose-like piece of winemaking equipment that you can attach to any sink that has outside threading (like outdoor or laundry sink faucets).  This device, once attached to a faucet, will create a very high-powered stream of water which you can use to blast out dirt or soap particles from your wine bottles.
• Meritage:  The term ‘Meritage’ is often referred to as the “American Bordeaux”.   Created in California, “Meritage” is a mix of the words “merit” and “heritage”, and is pronounced similar to the latter word.  A red Meritage is a red blend that must incorporate at least 2 of the 5 red Bordeaux grapes. A white Meritage is a white blend that must incorporate at least 2 of the three white Bordeaux varieties.  You must be approved to use the term “Meritage” for your blends, and if you are approved, you must pay a fee to use the protected name.
• Sparkolloid:  Sounds like it’s straight out of a science fiction movie, but no, it is actually a term used in winemaking.   Sparkolloid is a fining agent made from clay, and is used to clear a wine after fermentation.  On a basic chemical level, the positively charged Sparkolloid ions become attracted to the negatively charged unwanted bits and falls to the bottom of the container.  Use this with Bentonite to ensure you have a clear wine.
• Yeast Hydration:  Just as people need water to stay alive, yeasts, too, need hydration to become active.   In order to jump start your wine yeast and get them ready to do their job of converting juice to wine, add them to about 4oz of water at no more than 100^oF.  Let the yeast sit and hydrate in the water for no more than 15 minutes, and then they are ready to start making some wine.
• Skeeter Pee: As unappetizing as it sounds, Skeeter Pee is actually lemon wine. It’s a very drinkable and become very popular, lately. There are many Skeeter Pee recipes out there, so good, so not so good so be careful.

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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.

Well, the last time we “spoke”, I had the unfortunate disaster of a busted spigot on my hands.  In addition to needing a carboy for my Carmenere wine, I also needed a carboy for the Pinot Chardonnay that had been sitting around for 2 months.  Racking time for this white wine was now!  Good timing, huh?
I still didn’t have another carboy and the primary fermenter was now acting as a carboy for the poor Carmenere wine.  I could have ordered a new spigot from ECKraus to fix the other carboy I had (with the spigot hole in it), but based on my schedule at the time, I really needed a solution like that day.  So, I’m afraid to admit that I cheated on ECKraus.  It was just a little bit!  The other store doesn’t mean anything to me, I swear, ECKraus!  😉  hehehe.
There happens to be a shop in the town where I live that sells homebrew equipment (in addition to other garden-type things) so I drove on over there to see if I could get a replacement spigot for my plastic carboy.  Unfortunately, however, they only carried one plastic spigot in stock, and it wasn’t the right size to fit on the end of my spigot wrench.  Additionally, they didn’t sell any wrenches that would work for me.  Hmmmmmm……..so, what to do?
Well, I made the executive decision right then and there to purchase a glass carboy.  I know, I know, I keep saying I’m not going to purchase a glass carboy until after I move into a new home, but I really didn’t have much choice.  I suppose I could have waited a few days to order a replacement spigot from ECKraus, but time was not on my side and I needed to make a decision immediately.
I’m actually really glad I ended up getting the glass carboy, as now having seen/felt it in person; I really see no reason to wait until I move to have one.  They take up the same amount of space as a plastic carboy, it’s just a little heavier.  I mean, we’re going to be moving an entire apartment into a new house, so what’s a few extra pounds to tote along?
So, long story short, I now have a new glass 6-gallon carboy that my Pinot/Chardonnay is now chilling out in.  The wine kit instructions said to wait until it was clear to bottle, so I went ahead and added some kiesol/chitosan that I had laying around to help it clear a little faster.  It’s been a couple of days now and it’s clearing up a lot—I imagine bottling time will be very soon!  Fingers crossed!

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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.

Just when I thought I was having all the good luck in the world….
….my first “disaster” in winemaking!
Well, I suppose I can’t call it a disaster yet, as I still think the wine might end up being OK in the end, but alas, only time will tell.
What went wrong, you ask? Well, in two words:  structural failure.
OK OK, so I was checking on my Carmenere wine as I was getting ready for my day job, as I knew that evening I wanted to move forward with the next step and rack it into a new carboy (and by new carboy I mean same carboy, just cleaned and sterilized).   Everything was looking great, until I noticed a teeny tiny little drip drip drip behind the spigot.  Recall:  earlier I purchased a plastic carboy with a hole drilled out for a spigot, which I subsequently placed in the hole myself.
The drip was very curious, particularly since it JUST started and the wine had been sitting in there for 10 days or so by that point.  Odd.  I figured I could just place a towel under the spigot, go to work, and then immediately rack the wine into the primary fermenter to give me a chance to attempt a fix at the leak and get the wine racked back into the carboy.
So, I fiddled with the spigot a little bit thinking that it was not tight enough and it started leaking a bit faster.  Very concerned that I would be gone too long to allow a leak that fast, I decided to quickly rack the wine into the primary fermenter right then and there.  I hooked up the hose and started racking away.  All was going well until I decided to fiddle with the spigot a little more.  That was a BIG mistake.  Turns out, it was plenty tight enough.  Actually, it was TOO tight and my fiddling with it BROKE the spigot.  Wine spilled all over!  A few expletives were shouted but “fight or flight” kicked in and I stopped the massive leak and managed to get the rest of the wine racked into the primary fermenter.
In the end, I estimate I only lost about a bottle or so worth of wine,  so it actually was not as big of a loss as I originally thought it would be based on the “carnage” I saw.  My main concern has to do with potential contamination.  In the heat of the moment, I wasn’t able to do as thorough a sterilization of the equipment as I would have done normally.  Thankfully, after the last time I used the stuff, I thoroughly cleaned and rinsed the equipment with scalding hot water, so hopefully I had that working in my favor.  I did manage to “toss in” a little bit of the sanitization solution (sulfites) into the primary fermenter before the fast transfer, so hopefully I did enough to prevent any contamination.
So, since I didn’t have another carboy, the Carmenere is now chilling out in the primary fermenter with the oak cubes, and other ingredients that were listed on the next steps after racking.  As a result of this, there is a ton more head space than there would have been if it were in a carboy, so I’m trying real hard to keep the lid closed and not open it again until bottling day.
Lessons learned:  DON’T install plastic spigots onto plastic carboys too tightly.  Also, always be prepared for an emergency and pre-clean/sterilize all equipment even if you don’t think you’ll be using it any time soon.
Next steps:  secure either a new spigot or a new carboy.  Or both.
Hopefully no more drama for a while!

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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 everyone!
Just checking in with you regarding the progress of my CellarCraft Carmenere wine kit!  On day 10 after starting primary fermentation, I checked the specific gravity and it was 0.998.  The instructions said that the specific gravity should be less than 1.000 in order to move onto the next step (secondary fermentation), and since the specific gravity of my wine was 0.998, then I decided I was all set to move forward!
I have to say the longest part of the whole process of setting up secondary fermentation was definitely removing the grape skins and oak chips that had been stewing in the must over the past 10 days.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I decided to not use the mesh bag to hold all the skins, since some home winemakers feel as though having the skins loose in the must will result in greater flavor/phenolic extraction.  Though I have no basis to compare, I agreed with these folks and decided to let my “skins run free” so to speak.
The down side to letting the grape skins be loose in the must is that it takes forever to fish it all out!  I basically just sterilized a very large spoon and scooped away!  Per the instructions, I tried to be gentle so that I wouldn’t stir up any of the “stuff” on the bottom of the carboy, so it took longer than if I just went to town on those grapes haphazardly. Even though I was careful, I definitely splashed a little bit—really only enough to get little purple dots on my clothes.  Good thing I have a lab coat to get messes on!
After siphoning the de-skinned wine into a sterilized carboy, I was pleased to see that the level of the wine was in exactly the same place as the level of the wine in my second batch of wine (which is still chillin’ out in its carboy, by the way).  It made me feel as though I did a good job of sealing the first carboy, as it doesn’t look like I have lost any wine to evaporation (at least not enough for me to tell the difference).
Speaking of that second batch of wine, in case you haven’t read any of my previous posts, it is the Pinot Chardonnay that I made using individual ingredients.  It’s been hanging out in its carboy for nearly two months now (per the instructions) and has cleared up a bit.  It’s still not as clear as my first batch of wine was after I added clarifying agents, when it comes time to rack again, I might go ahead and add some clarifying agents to this batch to get it to clear up even more.  I still don’t have a wine filter, so I’ll want to at least add some clarifying agents to avoid having a cloudy wine.
Next on my schedule is to clear the Carmenere wine, add wood chips, and let hang out for a couple more weeks.  Then a few days later, I’m scheduled to rack the Pinot Chardonnay wine, and will likely add some clearing/clarifying agents to that as well for a couple days prior to bottling.
Hope all your homemade wines are carrying on nicely!

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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.