E.C. Kraus Home Wine and Beer Making Supplies

So, your homemade wine is just about ready and you’re preparing to bottle!  All the hard work creating your masterpiece is nearly complete and transitions into a more passive process of waiting for the wine to be ready to be shared and enjoyed! You must be careful at this point to not get too lax about things, as the bottling process is just as important as every step up until now.  That being...

I have decided to get in to the mysterious world of wine making and beer brewing. I have gotten my hands on carboys, yeast, corks, airlocks, etc. My only problem is that I can't find any preservative free, unpasteurized apple juice, or any juice, to use in my first batch. Is preservative free pasteurized juice an acceptable substitute? I've been told that the pasteurization process takes away from...

We are in the midst of the holiday season, and the days to purchase gifts for your friends and loved ones are going by quickly.  But there's still time!  Place your order with us by noon, December 19th, and you'll have it in time to place under the Christmas tree.Perhaps you know someone who is an avid home winemaker, or maybe you know someone who keeps talking about making their own wine at home...

Before diving head first into the fun of home winemaking using one of our homemade wine kits, it is important to understand what exactly is in the kit, and what role each item in the kit plays.Of course, all of the homemade wine kits that you can buy are going to be slightly different, depending upon the brand and upon what type of homemade wine you wish to make.  Here is a breakdown on some of...

There’s a lot of debate regarding what type of closure you should be using to bottle your homemade wine.  Understanding the qualities of each type of closure and how they fit in with the style of wine you intend to create will allow you to make an informed decision and give you confidence that you are selecting the perfect wine bottle closure for your homemade wine. Two of the most common types of...

Dear Mr. Kraus, I am a winemaker and I use used wine bottles.  Used cork type wine bottles are becoming harder to find.  I was told by a winery around here that it is ok to use corks in screw type wine bottles as they both have the same inside neck diameter.  I tried corking one filled water and it seemed to work fine. I would like to get your thoughts on this. Thanks William  P.---------- Hello...

  Hello Can I bottle my wine in beer bottles and use bottle caps or do I have to use cork bottle stoppers because it is wine? I have the stuff to bottle beer but I do not have wine making materials for bottling. If I have to buy corks for beer bottles what ones should i get?  I am planning to make mostly fruit wines. Right now I have a blackberry wine working that I made from frozen blackberries....

Many beginning winemakers will be happy to know that you do not have to buy a corker to bottle your wine. We have solutions for sealing wine bottles that can be done without a corker as well as with a corker. When you go to buy corks for your wine bottles you will find that most wine cork stoppers require a corker to press the cork into the wine bottle. This is because a new cork starts out much...

Dear Friends, What do I have to do to age my wine longer than the time the instruction say. For example I drink some at the time it is ready by instruction and save some for tasting later and see if is getting any better by aging. Thank You Ricardo ---------- Dear Ricardo, There are two basic things that you will need to do to get a wine ready for extended aging. 1) Add Sodium Metabisulfite To The...

Hi, I ordered a starter kit and some other cool stuff from you, and will be ready to bottle my first batch of wine soon. I would rather use regular corks instead of the plastic top corks in the kit. I have a hodge podge of scavenged wine bottles to use in the 750ml range (or what ever the regular wine bottle is). What size corks would you recommend for this? I didn't know there were so many...

You can't read too far on the subject of wine making without running across the warnings of excessive air exposure and how oxygen can turn a great wine into a brown, caramelized mess through oxidation. Books, websites and even this blog have expressed these cautions.The reality is without some oxygen being available, the progression of a wine's aging process can be brought to a near standstill....

When selecting corks for your homemade wine remember that appearance is not everything.  In today's market there are a lot of pretty corks, but pretty does not make the cork good.  If there is one wine making tip I can give it is to look closely at what you are purchasing.  You have to consider that your cork is the final piece of your wine preservation system and great care should be taken to see...

In part I of this two part series, we talked about the two major ways that synthetic corks are produced. In today's post I would like to continue those thoughts and go over the significance these two production methods have on the resulting synthetic corks and in what way these corks affect the wine they are sealing.As stated before, with the extrusion method the synthetic corks' inner elastic...

Please remember when you are ordering our gallon glass jugs, that you will need to order closures such as any screw caps or rubber stoppers that may be needed separately. These items are not included with these gallon jugs simply because we do not know what you intend to do with the jugs. Whether your bottling, fermenting or storing wine with them will determine what else you will...

Buying a personalized wine gift for an avid wine-lover can be a very difficult task. Especially when you know absolutely nothing about wine. The obvious thing would be to pick out a bottle at your local wine shop, but what are the odds that they'd be thrilled with your selection? You could shop for a fancy cork puller, but how cliche... How about putting a new angle on an old spin and get them a...

If you're getting ready to buy corks to bottle your wine you may be wondering which size you should get. We offer four different sizes of wine cork stopper. They are sizes: #7, #8, #9 and #10. These numbers refer to the diameter of the cork. The higher the number, the larger the diameter. The opening of a standard, 750 ml wine bottle is 3/4 of an inch. If you have a wine bottle corker you will...

Even though the use of corks for sealing vessels can be detected back to the days of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, its use did not become the primary way of sealing wine until the 1700's. This is when glass wine bottles came into popularity making the use of wine bottle corks almost essential.The majority of cork comes from Portugal with some also being produced in Spain, Italy and and a few...

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...

When it comes to bottling homemade wine it can be as simple as getting some gallon glass carboys or glass jugs and filling them up with your homemade wine, tighten on a screw cap and store them in the basement. That's it.  Or, bottling homemade wine can become as complex as: selecting the perfect wine bottle, choosing a shape and color that suites your fancy; selecting a particular wine bottle...