A question we get all the time is, “Can I use a 5 gallon wine recipe to make just 1 gallon of wine?” And the answer is, “yes.” It’s a simple issue of taking the 5 gallon wine recipe and dividing all its ingredients by 5. This is true for any of the wine recipes you might run across.

The only exception to this rule is when it comes to any of the wine yeasts that are called for in these recipes. Regardless, if you are making 1 gallon or 5 gallons of wine you still want to use the entire packet of yeast. Once you open the packet of yeast you are breaking the sterile seal anyway.
We have quite a few 5 gallon wine recipes listed on our website that can bee treated this way. You can take any of them and divide them by 5. Just make sure to add the whole packet of yeast.
If you don’ t see the wine recipe you are look for just let us know, and we’ll see if we can find it for you. We have quite a few resources here for looking up recipes–old wine making books, etc.
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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.

There are 750 mls of wine in a standard wine bottle. That’s 25.36 ounces. Which comes out to over 6 – four ounce glasses of wine. Sometimes, drinking a whole bottle of wine is just not do-able.
So, what do you do with the remaining wine? You certainly don’t want to pour it down the drain. That would be waste. But leaving it in the bottle and sealing it back up with the wine bottle cork isn’t all that good either.
Unlike the time before you pulled the cork out, the bottle is now filled with mostly air and some wine. All this air promotes all kinds of negative effects on the wine from oxidation or browning to bacterial growth.
Fortunately, there’s a solution. It’s call the Vacu Vin Wine Saver. It’s a very functional and simple wine preservation system that works by taking the harmful, excess oxygen out of the bottle.
The VacuVin Wine Saver consists of a small, hand air pump and specially designed rubber stoppers to fit the hand pump to a wine bottle. The pump removes the oxygen keeping the partial bottle of wine perfectly fresh for at least 2 weeks.
For more information about the Vacu Vin Wine Saver and its use as a wine preservation system just visit our website.
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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.

We have just started to carry a new brand of wine yeast that we are very excited about.
For years we have offered the standard Red Star and Lalvin brands of yeast in little, active dried packets. We later started to carry liquid wine yeast because many of our customers wanted the better selection of yeast strains that the liquid brands offered.
But the biggest issue with liquid yeast is the price. Many of our customers do not want to pay the price required to bring liquid wine brewing yeast to market even though they very much like the specific yeast strains offered.
Now, there are no more issue. We have a brand of wine yeast that can make everybody happy. It’s called Vintner’s Harvest. This brand offers nine premium strains of yeast, similar to liquid yeast, but in active dried pouches so the price can be kept down to a reasonable level.
Each of the 9 yeast strains come in 8 gram packets good for fermenting up to 8 gallons of homemade grape wine or fruit wine. We have just put up a yeast strain chart on our website to shows what each type of yeast is best suited for fermenting.
Next time you decide to make a batch of homemade wine, try one out and see what you think. Once you know what kind of wine you’re making, just go to the yeast strain chart and pick out the best strain of wine yeast for the job.
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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.

Looking for something to get that lil’ ol’ wine maker in your life?  We understand that you don’t know a thing about making wine, and that’s why we’re here to help. Give us a call or send us an email, and with a few simple questions we’ll help you pick out the perfect personalized wine gift.
Some ideas for wine making gifts might be one of our wine making ingredient kits. We offer over 200 different wine making juices collected from all around the world. They come packaged with the yeast and all the other little packets of ingredients they might need.
Another idea might be items that help make bottling homemade wine easier. A Bottle Tree might be just the ticket. This item makes sanitizing and draining wine bottles a much easier task.
If all else fails, we still have gift certificates for any denomination you like. They can be purchased by phone and mailed to you the same day. Just let us know, and we’ll do everything we can to make sure your lil’ ol’ wine maker gets the wine making gifts he needs.
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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 making wine from grapes there’s one piece of homemade wine equipment that you may want to consider, the grape destemmer. A grape destemmer can greatly speed things up by processing the grapes automatically instead you doing them by hand.
The grape destemmer crushes the grapes and removes the stems. All you have to do is throw the grape clusters into the hopper. The grape destemmer does all the rest.
Removing most of the stems is important when making wine. Too many stems, and your wine will be bitter from excessive tannins. Destemming is a step that should never be overlooked.
The grape destemmer is actually a very ingenious invention that makes life easy for anyone making wine from grapes. The grape destemmer first crushes the grapes. Then the grapes and stems are dropped into a perforated cradle. Fast turning paddles slap the pulp and juice through the holes, out the bottom. The paddles are at an angle that allows them to agar the stems out the side of the grape destemmer.
The grape destemmer we offer can do over 2,000 pounds an hour with just normal speed hand-cranking. It’s professional quality, made in Italy by the Marchisio Brothers and is available all throughout the year.
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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.

One of the tools you may find in a winemaker’s arsenal is the steam juicer. A steam juicer allows the home winemaker to easily extract juice from various fruits with little effort. The steam juicer also eliminates the need for a grape crusher or dealing with grape presses. This makes it very economical as well.
Some may be wondering, “what exactly is a steam juicer?” It can be best described as a double boiler. The steam juicer has three basic parts: a water pan on the bottom, a the juice collector in the middle (shaped like an angle food cake mold), and a perforated produce basket on top.
Water is heated in the pan of the steam juicer. Steam rises through the collector to the produce basket. The steam bursts the skins and extracts the juice. The juice then falls into the collector of the steam juicer and then out the hose.
Using a steam juicer is an effective way to extract juice from fruits like elderberries or plums which have a lot of pulp. The steam juicer breaks down the pulp and extracts the flavor from within the fruit’s fiber making the juice very flavorful.
While the steam juicer has proven to be invaluable to the home winemaker, it is also used for canning, making jellies or just healthier living.
The steam juicer we offer is made of heavy-gauge stainless steel. You can learn more about it by visiting our website.
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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.

We offer several different wine making books that go through the process of how to make your own wine. But there’s one that stands out from the rest, First Steps In Winemaking.
First Steps In Winemaking is one of those wine making books that has the ability to painlessly explain how to make your own wine. It covers all the basics, including the wine making materials you’ll need and gives specific homemade wine instructions.
Wine recipes is another strong point for First Steps In Winemaking. As far as wine making books go this book has a lot of them. In fact, over 120 wine recipes, each with a list of the required wine making materials needed.
In short, First Steps In Winemaking is one of the wine making books that should be on any beginner’s list. It’s clear, concise and does a beautiful job of explaining how to make your own wine.
For more information about First Steps In Winemaking, you can visit the wine making books section of our website.
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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.

Next time you’re ready to buy corks for bottling your wine you might want to take a closer look before you buy. If you do, you’ll discover that a wine bottle cork is not just a wine bottle cork anymore. 
If fact, the natural cork bottle stopper is slowly going to the wayside to make room for other methods of sealing a wine bottle–screw caps being the most evident. But there’s also another not-so-evident alternative to the natural wine bottle cork. They’re called synthetic corks.
Synthetic corks look like a natural wine bottle cork, only they are created from man-made materials. When compared to traditional cork bottle stoppers one easily notices that synthetic corks are heavier and firmer.
This is because synthetic corks are not porous like a traditional wine bottle cork. No air can get through them over time. This makes synthetic corks just as effective for protecting your wine as screw caps, but without the unattractive looks.
The next time you need to buy corks, take a look at synthetic corks. Synthetic corks are an effective alternative to traditional cork bottle stoppers and ideal for protecting your homemade wines.
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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.

Here at E. C. Kraus we offer a huge selection of wine making products–from tiny packets of wine yeast to large grape presses. We carry it all. But the cornerstone of our offerings is our packaged grape juices.
Currently, we have a collection of over 200 different varieties of grape juice for wine making spread over 12 different brands. Juices prepared specifically for making homemade grape wine. And they’re not just available when wine grapes are in season, but all throughout the year.
When you use our grape juices for making wine you are eliminating the need for a grape crusher and a grape press. All that work has already been taken care of for you. The grapes are ran through a grape crusher to create a “must”, and then after the correct amount of time, the pulp is then pressed and packaged for sale.
You also don’t have to bother with hunting down wine recipes either, because one’s included along with the juice. In most cases, all the other wine making products needed like wine yeast are included as well.
So, when it comes to making homemade grape wine from packaged grape juice all this adds up to convenience. Anytime of the year–spring, summer, winter and fall–you can make wonderful homemade grape wine that rivals any winery.
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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.