We’ve got some great news that we can’t wait to pass along! The new wine making juices are here! We are very excited to announce that we have added a new brand of a wine making juice to our already extensive selection of wine making juices.
The new brand is Cellar Craft. They have 55 different wine making ingredient kits spread across 4 different lines: Sterling, Premium, Showcase, and Specialty. Some examples of the wine making juices they offer are: White Merlot Washington Reserve, Pinot Grigio Italian Riserva, and Cabernet Red Mountain.
Each of Cellar Craft’s 4 different brands offers a different range of wine in terms of price and quality. Long story short, Cellar Craft has something for everyone.
Without question, the new choices Cellar Craft brings to the table, combined with the solid listing we already carry, creates the most diverse and broad selection of wine making kits you will find anywhere. We now offer a staggering 230 wine making ingredient kits from which to choose. So dig in and find out which ones wets your palate!
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DON’T KNOW WHICH WINE TO MAKE?
We realize that having so many wine making juices to pick from can be overwhelming. That’s why we created the Wine Selector Tool. This makes picking out a wine making ingredient kit you will like, simple.
Just go to the Wine Selector Tool, make some basic selections, and the Wine Selector Tool will narrow down the field of wine juices for you. Give it a whirl and see what you come up with!
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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.
Accidental Blueberry Port
I’ve been your customer since I was 16 (over 30 years), and have been making wines off and on all those years. Since a number of farms in our region are growing wine grapes, I’m making wine more seriously than ever before. I grow my own blueberries, and since I grew up making fruit wines, I always have at least one fruit or mead wine processing. 4 years ago the first blueberry wine I ever tried turned out fabulous, so the next year I tried to repeat my success . . . but it was not to be the same. The specific gravity would not reduce enough to my liking, and I had started the wine 13 months earlier. I cultured a champagne yeast and slowing added wine to it, until I had a gallon fermenting nicely, then added it to the remaining 4 gallons of sweet blueberry wine. The specific gravity lowered further, but, at that point (it was now 20 months since I started the wine!), I considered taking it further to a port. It was about 14% alcohol, so I added very good, neutral grain vodka (not potato vodka because I have an allergy to potatoes) to raise the alcohol content to about 18% at bottling. I bottled in tall cobalt bottles and dipped the corked tops in blue wax. Because I had oaked the port in the carboy after the champagne yeast ferment had quieted, I also put a toasted oak chips in each bottle to continue the deepening of the flavor. Though it took about 20 months from start to bottle, the port because a delicious “accident!”
Name: Jenny (Hoag) Young
State: Illinois
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How To Pair Beer With Food
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For a beverage consisting of so few ingredients, beer makes a huge statement. Its rich diversity of flavors, aromas and textures make it the ideal partner for almost any meal. As a homebrewing citizen, one of the greatest challenges you might face is finding the right grub to compliment your brew. With so many possibilities, it can be a challenge to know where to begin.
The best place to start is with the profile of your beer since this will govern its interactivity with food. This is determined by three main ingredients: malt, hops, and yeast. Malt is sweet and often adds hints of chocolate or coffee to malt-heavy beers such as stouts and porters. Hops are considerably more dynamic and will add bitter, spicy, floral and/or fruity flavors to beers, most pronouncedly in India Pale Ales. Then there are the more yeasty beers, such as American wheat beers and German hefeweizens, which are generally lighter with heavy yeasty flavors. Together, these ingredients bring out the sweet, bitter, spicy and rich features in the product of your beer brewing experience.
The next step is determining how you want your food to relate to your beer. Oftentimes, the best partnerships arise from shared flavors and aromas. The key is finding the correct balance in the harmonies you wish to create through complementary or contrasting flavors. As a general rule of thumb you should keep the strength of your food and beer consistent, but there are otherwise no wrong answers. With homebrewing kits, the flavor creation possibilities are endless. In the end, the way in which you consume your brew is the final step in getting the most out of your beer brewing kits.
THE SYNTHETIC CORK SERIES Part II: Synthetic Corks To The Rescue!
This is part 2 of a 4 part series. In the previous post (part 1), we went over how the cork supply and demand became out of balance over the previous decades. In this post we cover how this lack of balance spawned the emergence of synthetic corks.
As natural cork became shorter and shorter in supply, and the prices began to rise to unprecedented levels, the situation the wineries found themselves in became more and more urgent. Finding quality cork bottle stoppers that were good enough to seal a wine bottle at an affordable price was becoming a real issue.
Fortunately, ‘necessity is the mother of invention’ and the wine industry was about to get it’s little share of proverbial ingenuity. With such a large market in play, many innovative companies began coming up with their own version of a ‘reasonable alternative’ to the cork bottle stopper. It was within this rally of new ideas that the synthetic cork was born.
In the beginning synthetic corks were met with great resistance. The wineries handily slapped them down, not because synthetic corks were a bad idea or that they were bad for the wine, but because the wineries were concerned about how their customers would react to such an untraditional method of corking a wine bottle.
A lot of romance goes into the presentation of a bottle of wine; all the way from the sexy label; to the color and shape of the neck decoration, and don’t forget the seductive word-smithing crafted on the back label. To take something so artificial as a synthetic cork and put it in place of a natural cork stopper almost seemed blasphemous.
But eventually the wineries had to wake up to the reality that changes had to be made. They slowly began to accept the synthetic cork.
While the more expensive wines could afford to splurge on the high prices of the dwindling supply of natural cork stoppers, the everyday wines had to start moving toward synthetic corks. And with every year that went by we as consumers began to see more and more wines being closed with synthetic corks.
In part 3 of this 4 part series we will take a look at the advantages synthetic corks bring to the table.
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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.
New Shipment of Grape Crushers and Presses
We recently announced a new stock of seasonal presses and crushers. Presses and crushers are integral to the winemaking process, and ensure that grapes and fruit crush properly before fermentation. For the current season, Adventures in Homebrewing has fully stocked this highly in demand product.
Crushers and presses are used to break the skin of grapes or fruit in order to properly extract juices for fermentation. The crushing process is integral to the success of the wine batch, and requires careful attention to properly de-stem and crush skins. Modern crushers and presses provide both manual and motorized options, ensuring that the crushing process is completed thoroughly and accurately.
While traditionally grapes have been stomped or crushed by hand, contemporary presses allow winemakers to crush large proportions of fruit with minimal time and effort. Late spring is a common time for grape picking and crushing, which promises to deliver fully crafted by wine by the peak summer months.
We place a strong focus on innovation and maintaining status as a complete home wine and beer supplier. We recently added new kegging systems, and the introduction of new wine juice kits continues to be a step towards future expansion. Currently, we offer a wide selection of crushers and presses from leading manufacturers in addition to our reliable supply of wine making kits and beer brewing supplies. Check ’em out today!
I added sulfites to my primary fermentation, do I need to add more before bottling
I am making 5 plus gallons of pear wine and in my recipe it called for 2 sulfite tablets per gallon so I added 10 crushed tablet. Should I add more sulfite after my secondary fermentation before bottling? I have never done that before. Thanks, Mary from St. Louis.
Name: Mary Chapman
State: Missouri
Beer Brewing Safety
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Beer brewing is a time-honored tradition that has been under development for thousands of years. Today, over 750,000 Americans engage in the practice from the comfort of their own homes. Thanks to the conception of beer brewing kits, it is now safer than ever for you to unleash your inner brewmaster.
The notion of a safe home brew is not an oxymoron; reality portrays an exercise that is no more dangerous than cooking pasta. It is a complex albeit easy process that requires around four to five hours of work spread out over a minimum of a four week period. It consists of five steps: brewing, cooling and fermenting, priming and bottling, aging, and everyone’s favorite, drinking. Unlike distillation, the process used to make hard liquors, homebrewing does not involve high pressures or flammable liquids. Instead, it incorporates yeast and boiling liquids in a fashion similar to making a loaf of bread or a pot of spaghetti.
The fact of the matter is that the most unsafe element of beer brewing is already installed in your home. While purpose-built propane burners are available for purchase, most aficionados choose to brew beer on the same stoves on which they prepare their meals. This is not to say homebrewing is without its risks; however, a good brewer will identify them ahead of time and prepare accordingly. In addition to acquiring a quality beer making equipment, you can follow this list of general guidelines to ensure a positive brewing experience:
– Be aware. The fermentation process produces carbon dioxide and inhaling large quantities can cause you to black out. While this poses a much greater risk at commercial breweries, it is still something to be mindful of.
– Glass breaks. This seemingly obvious fact can become painfully apparent at inopportune times. In order to avoid accidents, you might want to consider using plastic carboys as opposed to glass ones during the fermentation process. The former is less likely to break and has no adverse effect on taste. You also need to make sure your beer is fully fermented before bottling to prevent your bottles from exploding. Once preserved, be sure to store it in cool, dark conditions.
– Be mindful when boiling water or wort. Do not leave your pots unattended, ever, and make sure they are large enough to contain the heated liquids. Keep in mind that what you are boiling is hot and is occasionally liable to boil over.
– Respect your equipment and ingredients. Everything should be fresh, stored properly, and sterilized. Older or improperly stored ingredients can ruin a batch, and good sanitation is necessary to avoid contamination. You are incubating a living entity and you want to take the best care possible to ensure a healthy and full development.
Wine That Bubbles Like Champaign
I made some wine with wild honey and fresh cherries. I let it ferment for 6 months, racking every month until May of this year. All wine was a very clear cherry color and no sign of fermentation. At bottling time I added wine conditioner and 5 campden tablets. Today I opened a bottle and it blew like Champaign. My question is what in the world happened and can I take the wine out of the bottles and put it back in a fermenter or what should I do? I am afraid that the bottles are going to blow up. The wine is in flip top bottles.
Name: Red Gordon
State: Texas
Natural vs. Synthetic Corks
When you think of breaking out a bottle of wine, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Many think of the traditional cork ‘pop’ as a signal of a freshly cracked bottle of wine. But would your wine be just as enjoyable without this symbolic introduction? Today, synthetic wine corks are becoming a popular option over the traditional form of natural corks. There is a great debate over the pros and cons of synthetic and natural corks. For the home wine maker, this can be an important decision. While the home wine making process develops integral flavor profiles, bottling and aging are also primary considerations for developing and maintaining flavor. Before pulling out the wine making kits, read five things you need to know when deciding between a synthetic or natural cork for your homemade wine.
1. Cork Taint. Cork taint occurs in natural corks due to a chemical compound called trichloroanisole (TCA). Cork taint can be very disappointing, as it can spoil wine that has been aging for years. Cork taint occurs in approximately 3-15 percent of all bottled wine.
2. Sealing. One of the primary concerns with bottled wine is consistency in keeping the cork snug. Glass bottles naturally expand and contract based on temperature and environment, and natural corks will expand and contract along with the bottle. Synthetic corks don’t offer this benefit, and can easily become too loose, letting in too much air, or too tight, rendering bottles unable to be opened.
3. Air. While corks need to remain snug, a little bit of natural oxygen is necessary for the wine to age properly. Oxygen allows the natural chemical reactions in wine to occur, producing the aging flavors that are developed over time. Synthetic corks prevent oxygen from reaching the wine, meaning synthetically corked wine technically doesn’t experience the aging process. However, the benefit of synthetic corks is that it does prevent wine from over-oxidation, another primary concern during the aging process.
4. Environmentally friendly bottling. Natural cork is derived from the bark of cork trees, which is actually a very environmentally friendly process. The bark is a renewable resource that grows back over time. Cork bark is striped every ten years, and each individual tree can produce bark for up to 200 years. Cork trees also provide lots of environmental benefits, such as trapping harmful carbon dioxide and lessening pollution.
5. Cost. The cost of synthetic corks is substantially lower, one of the reasons that many commercial bottles are now adopting this trend. Today, approximately 9% of all bottles of commercially packed wine use a synthetic cork, and these numbers continue to quickly rise.
As you may see, there are pros and cons for using each type of cork. There are many debates over which cork type is best suited for a specific wine type, and as we divulge here, it is hard to come to a conclusive answer. Being aware of the pros and cons will allow you to make an informative decision on how you want to approach your next bottling process. Making careful choices, from the type of wine making equipment used to the appropriate type of cork, will allow you to successfully create the wine of your dreams.
Five Stages of Homebrewing
Homebrewing – a rapidly growing hobby, yet still a time-honored tradition. Brewing your own ales, lagers and stouts allows you total control in your beer’s taste, strength, crispness, etc. By having creative control over your bottle of brew – beer lovers can enjoy beers to their exact taste. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment, knowing that your efforts produced something of value to you.
Beer brewing kits help make this happen – but what goes into the brewing process? Beer brewing comes in five stages, which means you’re just five stages away from enjoying a delicious cold one.
What’s in wort? – Pale malt extract and hops are boiled together with water for about an hour to sterilize the extract and release the bittering qualities of the hops. Frequently grains are steeped in the mixture prior to the boil to add additional color and flavor complexity. This hot mixture is called a wort.
Chill Out and Ferment for a While – The hot wort is cooled to room temperature and siphoned to a fermenter where it is combined with more water to achieve the desired batch size. Once the mixture drops to room temperature, brewing yeast is added to start the fermentation process. Cleanliness and sanitation are very important since bacteria in this state can easily infect the wort. An airlock is used to keep the fermenter sealed during fermentation. Your beer will ferment for 1-2 weeks.
All Bottled Up – Once the beer is fully fermented, it is siphoned once again, this time to a container for bottling. This begins the priming process, when priming sugars such as corn sugar are mixed with the beer. The beer is siphoned into bottles and each bottle is capped with beer bottling equipment.
Age is more than a number – Once the beer has been bottled it needs to age for 2-6 weeks. During aging the yeast will ferment the remaining sugar you added and create carbon dioxide. This carbon dioxide will naturally carbonate your beer so it is nice and bubbly. In addition, undesirable sediments such as excess yeast and proteins will drop out of the beer during aging and this will enhance the flavor of your beer. In may take several months to reach peak flavor, though homemade beer usually drinkable after a month.
Enjoy – Once the brew is properly aged, pop them in the fridge to cool once last time. Then, lay back, crack one open and enjoy!