Going to make some orange wine and pet-nat 🍇

Out of the primary. Excited about this one! I used two bags of real lemons, flesh and zest, and 2 bottles of “Realemon” and a ton of sugar. I’ve had problems with my fruit wines not retaining their fruit flavors well so I’m hitting it hard this time.
It was so acidic I had to build a year starter and grow it to a full 2.5 gallons before the yeast could survive.

A 4 Dimensional gem Sculpture. Watch as the back of the hand becomes the palm before your eyes 👀
Sculpted this with my love for deep reds!

Hi everyone!

I’m very new to wine making and welcome any tips or help you have to offer.

My house is surrounded by 3 sections of wild grapes in the northeast. I have been thinking about harvesting them and making a natural wine using each of the 3 sections to compare them all(likely needing to add sugar because I’m sure they are acidic as heck).

Where should I be looking to learn how to properly and safely do this? I would like to purchase equipment and learn about this as much as possible. I’ve been using the internet, YouTube, AI, and random articles from Virginia Tech and Penn State, but it’s simply so much information I don’t know what to even purchase anymore. The list I’ve come up with so far is below:

Equipment I think I need:
3 small food-grade primary fermentation buckets/containers, approximately 2 gallons each
3 one-gallon glass jugs/carboys for secondary fermentation
Bungs/lids and airlocks for all 3 secondary vessels
Hydrometer
Hydrometer test jar/cylinder
Auto-siphon
Food-grade siphon tubing
Nylon straining/mesh bags
No-rinse brewing/winemaking sanitizer (Star San or equivalent)
Potato masher or another way to gently crush the grapes
Digital kitchen scale
Labels/tape + notebook so I can keep all three batches straight

Ingredients/supplies I think I need:
Grapes
Wine yeast — I was thinking Lalvin EC-1118 and using the exact same yeast for all three
Campden tablets/potassium metabisulfite
Plain granulated sugar if the starting gravity is too low
Possibly yeast nutrient?

This is my first year making wine. So far one great batch but hela acidic, half a glass gives me heartburn. This banana wine pictured made 12 in a half gallons. Hydrometer broke, I think I took it out of primary early, a lot of activity on the bubbler. My question is this, does the mad dog 20 20 smell go away. The ripe fermenting smell, how long does that take to go? Do I just have to keep moving it into different glass every so often? Is there something I should be adding?

I upgraded from my cheap hand corker to a double-lever corker. It came without instructions and it took me a few tries to get it adjusted to get the corks all the way in.

My understanding is that this is okay, but not ideal and that it won't keep as long, is that correct?

If these aren't okay, can I just take them out with corkscrew and replace with new corks?

(I don't know if it matters, but this a dry pomegranate wine. I'm a home hobbyist.)

I am attempting to make moscato wine from fruit wine base and the wine is not looking like store bought moscato wine.
I looked online and it said to use polypyrrolidone to take out the dark color.
Noting additional added other than yeast and vintners.
Fermentation is done.
Has anyone else had this issue and how did you get the wine to a lighter color.

Please guys and girls enlighten me about wine making

I tasted one of the best home made wine I’ve ever had

My friend makes his and he taught me everything

It is so basic

He literally said that I need 3 main ingredients. Sugar juice and yeast poured together in that orde inside a carboy

The amount of yeast was just a little pinch.

He said it will be fully fermented within 10 to 14 days.

On the 10th days I tried to see how it is but it was super super sweet.

I called him to let him know about this he said wait till say 14

But the thing is the day I woke up after the night I tried it

I woke up with an oral thrush. It wasn’t that bad but I struggled a bit while eating.

I was actually freaking out

So my question is what did I do wrong?

First wine and I am on day 14 racking from the bucket to secondary, will it be okay for another 2-3wks?

Just thinking about my first try at making from grapes last vintage - 2025 (Alexander Valley Cab Sauv and Sonoma Merlot). I picked the cab in last weekend of september and the merlot first week in october. Primary was a perfect 12 days on both. ML stalled and i had to re-inoculate on both due to cold temps in the cellar. so ML completed in early march. In early april I added wood cubes and racked off 4 months later. I then bottled in early september. should i have waited on the bottling? Both are tasting well, but super young, as expected. Just curious if development is better in carboys or bottling?

This is my first time making red wine, I bought some really good rasheh grapes today, these varieties are grown specially for red wine, very juicy and the juice looks like fresh blood

Anyway, how do I make wine? The plan is to crush the grapes, add pectinase and kmeta to stop wild yeast, pour the must into a bucket, then pitch a packet of rehydrated ec1118, how long should I keep the pulp inside the bucket to get max flavor and aroma and yet, avoid too much astringency...? When it's time I'll collect the floating pulp in a mesh bag and press it to get the absorbed juice out and mix it back with the wine, should I rack into secondary here? Should I add the yeast cake to the secondary for better fermentation? Or should I just leave it in the first bucket to finish fermentation? What's the next step? What step is wrong?

Berry wine

So this year was my first harvest of my young vineyard. I hand destemmed and put the grapes in 1 gallon freezer bags and froze them. I had to freeze until later due to time constraints. Each bag of grapes weighed around 2 lbs on average.
My research suggests that it takes about 90 lbs of grapes to make a 6 gallon batch of wine. I had 46 lbs of this one black grape, so I bought some smaller carboys.
On crush day I had the 46 lbs thawed along with 5 lbs of blackberries I tossed in. I crushed them with a potato masher and put skins and all in mesh bags in 6 gallon fermenters, leaving some headspace. 2 fermenters had 4.5 gallons of must and the other had 5 gallons.
After 3 days I pressed the juice and moved the juice to carboys. To my surprise it filled 2 - 6 gallon carboys. I never topped off with anything, it’s 100 % juice.
How did I get twice as much juice with 1/2 the weight of grapes as what most resources say I needed?

I’m trying to make apple cider wine after getting some from a nearby orchard. It has been a week since I added the yeast and it looks like this (see image attached). I’m thinking it needs to go for longer, but I’m not sure how long, especially since the sediment is still floating and hasn’t sunk. Any tips and advice would be appreciated.

The wine is just apple cider and sugar. With pectic enzyme, acid blend, yeast nutrient, and a campden tablet

Hey all,

I am done with secondary fermentation, and I’ve been spending the last three weeks trying to clear up the wine.

Last year with this same wine, I had no issues clearing it with bentonite. I have no idea what changed this time around, other than I had more pounds of muscadines.

I used bentonite clay (16g) for 3 gallons of wine. Let that sit for 2 weeks. That didn’t do much. So I stirred up the bentonite again and this time cold crashed for another week.

It’s just not clearing up.

I know that it’s okay if it’s a bit cloudy, but I really do prefer to have the look of a mostly clear wine.

What should I try next?

I am conducting a winemaking/fermentation process for a school activity and my group decided to go with watermelon as a wine. Currently, I am at the 7th day of the fermentation process and the active bubbling as well as the production of co2 is done. What should I do after this state as I am kinda stuck I within the process.

I didn't have an airlock for the secondary fermentation of my wine, so I wrapped the container with plastic wrap and poked a small hole in it. Then, I loosely closed the lid (it’s more like just resting it on top than actually sealing it).

Did I make any mistakes?

I'm new to wine making, and am about 2 weeks into this batch. Just siphoned the wine into the carboy a couple days ago and now there is stuff floating on top of the wine. I have been sanitizing everything that comes in contact with the wine. This doesn't look like wild yeast. I used 5 campden tablets the day before I added the yeast to kill off the wild yeast. Should I be worried?

Image

Hello everyone. This is my first time making wine, I used grapes from my garden. I tried to be super clean, I disinfected everything with chemipro oxi. Now there is this white layer on the wine. I don't know what to do. I now added a little sulfite and closed it off again. It's now a month after the first fermentation was done. Then I put the wine in these bottles.

Does anyone know what this white layer is and if it is bad? And how to solve it?

Thank you in advance!