making wine – Winemaker's Academy

How to Remove Wine Labels

admin — Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:42:10 +0000

Reusing wine bottles is the perfect way to save some money when making your own wine. The problem is how do you remove the labels? I’ve found there are mainly three types of labels, paper, plastic, and plastic coated paper. Paper labels are easy as they’ll come off after only a few minutes in water. …

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The Anatomy of a Grape

admin — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 11:06:22 +0000

Knowing and understanding grapes is absolutely essential to making good wine. After all these little berries are what it all starts with right? By their very nature grapes are the perfect winemaking fruit. No other fruit contains the perfect amounts of sugar, acidity, and phenolic compounds to create such an amazing beverage. Any other fruit …

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First Impressions of My Shiraz and the Mistakes I Made

admin — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 10:24:41 +0000

You’re really supposed to wait six months after bottling a red wine before you taste it…but I couldn’t resist! When I bottled my Shiraz I wound up with 29 full bottles and about a half bottle left over. Needless to say I couldn’t store the half bottle for any length of time without oxidizing it. So, the only thing …

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Bottling Your Kit Wine

admin — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 10:51:02 +0000

The final step in the wine making process is to bottle your wine and insert a cork. You’re ready for this step once you wine has been stabilized and is clear. If your wine has not been properly clarified or degassed you shouldn’t move on to bottling. Sediment and trapped carbon dioxide cannot leave the …

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Degassing and Clarifying Your Wine

admin — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 10:37:59 +0000

After a seemingly eternal fourteen days since racking it’s time to degas and add a clarifying agent to the kit wine. Degassing is a brut force method of removing suspended carbon dioxide. I purchased a Fermtech Wine Whip to help with this process and it saved me big time. More on that later. Check out …

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Pitch the Yeast and Make Some Wine!

admin — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 01:33:49 +0000

Check out this video on re-hydrating the grape juice concentrate and pitching the yeast to kick off fermentation.

Equipment Required for Making Wine from a Kit

admin — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:32:05 +0000

Once you’ve decided on what wine kit you’d like to make we now move onto what equipment you’ll need to get started. In this video I outline the minimum amount of equipment required to get going. You can always add more gadgets but this is an affordable place to start. In summary, you’ll need: a …

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Crushing and Destemming Grapes

admin — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 16:47:36 +0000

As you well know, grape juice comes from grapes. Extracting that juice is therefore the very first step in making wine from fresh grapes. Not to be confused with pressing grapes the crushing of grapes merely breaks open with skin allowing the “free run” juice to pour fourth. Pressing on the other hand is where you …

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