E.C. Kraus Home Wine and Beer Making Supplies

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...

This is the last of a two post series on giving your wine a long-lasting shelf-life. In the first post we went over how to keep a wine from actually spoiling. In this post we will go over what you should do to keep your wine's flavor fresh and alive for longer periods of time. MAINTAINING FLAVOR: Now that we know how to keep a wine from spoiling, we need to know how to make it age better...

Hello, You say grapes must be crushed before pressing, what do you use to crush them with? Thank you, Tony ----- Hello Tony, Crushing the wine grapes is a very straight forward process. All you are looking to do is burst the skin on each grape. This is necessary to efficiently release the juice from the pulp before pressing or fermenting the grape pulp. If crushing is not done first, you...

A friend had given me a wine-making recipe that I have used for several years. It doesn't call for special yeast's, but one regular pack of bread yeast. One quart of Cranberry Juice; two cans of Concentrated Grape Juice; One pound of white cane sugar. Plus one gallon glass jug, rubber cork & economy-lock.I dissolved the yeast first, place in the jug first. Then I semi-dissolve the sugar in the...

Dear Kraus,I have a batch of peach wine and a batch of pear wine in 5 gallon glass jugs ready to bottle.  Both need to be sweetened at bottling time to bring out more of the fruit flavor.  Please explain to this rookie exactly how you sweeten the wine as you bottle it.  Do you add the sugar/water solutions to each bottle or do you add to the 5 gallon glass jugs, stir, and then bottle??  Same...

Hello Kraus: Last fall I acquired some good wine grapes.. red and white not enough of either for 5 gals.. thought I could make a blush, so I added them together.. it turned a reddish color but cloudy. So I added your Speedy Bentonite three weeks later i have clear whiskey color,  what happened? Thanks Art ----- Hello Art,It sounds like your homemade wine has oxidized from excessive air exposure....

Hi: I made 5 gallons of Sauvignon Blanc this past year. I will be ready to bottle in the near future. I read on most commercial wine bottles that they contain sulfites. My understanding this is a stabilizer and to protect the wine yeast from refermentation. I am in the process of sending an order in and would like to know what to use and what amt. per gallon? Thanks TOM ----- Hello Tom,Sulfites...

Hi, I crushed my grapes in late September & squeezed them. Then racked it 2 times since then. It's been almost 2 months since the last racking and 1 of the 5 gallon wine carboys is starting to bubble again just slightly. What is happening should I do anything. The other 3 carboys are not doing this???   Thanks Rick ----- Hello Rick, It's hard to know exactly what is going on with your forth...

I grew up in a small steel town northwest of Pittsburgh. Most of the Italian families I knew made homemade wine and mine was no different. My Grandfather even grew his own grapes. No matter what the occasion was or which family's house we were in, there was always wine on the table.My own making wine story began about 15 years ago. Having moved across the country to California, and although wine...

Hello, My friend and I make wine from grapes. A year ago we bought your fruit crusher FP130 and now we are wondering do we instead need the crusher/destemmer? We want to keep grape hulls and juice together for fermentation, does the crusher/destemmer allow the hulls to pass through and not the stems or is it the catch stand that collects everything but the juice? Thank-you, Clayton----- Hello...

We fell in love with wine making when we spent time visiting the vineyards in Napa and Sonoma Valley when we lived in Oregon. This lead to home wine-making for family and friends for several years. After we moved to Texas we then decided to grow grapes on a few acres at our home. After about 5 years of hard work, we are now a bonded winery about ready to open to the public. We have about 5 acres...

I've been making wine for almost 10 years now, I was taught by my friends father Chuck who has been making wine forever. Each year we compare wines and argue which is the best and which year gave us the best wines and blends, Most years weather permitting I crush the grapes and do the first fermentation in my garage then its to the basement for about 12 weeks before bottling. Our claim to fame is...

We have been making wine in Macedonia, Ohio since 1980. The grapes come from our yard. We have 21 vines which are over 30 years old, concord, niagra, and cayuga grapes. Quality of juice varies from year to year depending on the weather. Northeast Ohio isn't the best area for producing quality grapes but we have had some excellent years, late 1990's and 2008 were good years. It has been a family...

My process is purely simple and all done by hand, I pick my grapes from my backyard vines, wash in a colander and de-stem at the same time then transfer grapes to a stainless steel bowl, mash the grapes with a potato masher then strain through cheese cloth(which cause hand cramps from wringing the juice through) from there to the poly fermenter, then I add the rest of the ingredients to make a...

I started making wine from age 10 years unfortunately faced many problems such as oxidation also in my country they leave the pulp up to 50 days in the containers (cause strengthen taste).... but now because of your valuable information of your website I enhanced the ways.......First I collect ripen fruits of both red and white grapes clean them and destemming the mix the ratio that I want of...

I have 7 riesling vines that are 6 years old and another 32 that are 4 years old. From this I was only able to produce 3 gallons of juice and wine. I have placed 3rd place each of the last 3 years in the Puyallup, WA fair competition in dry whites. I know I am bias, but I do have reasonable taste buds and I know what a good riesling is supposed to taste like. Thus, I think my wine is very good...

I began wine making at the age of 16. A quart of grape juice in the fridge was found to have started fermenting, and I became quite obsessed with the process. My grandfather subsequently got me hooked when he shared an age old elderblossom recipe and older lady he knew shared with him. We would gather blossoms and make the wine together. Another favorite was mulberry, which we gathered in Newark,...

Enjoy making seasonal fruit wines, along with many of the foreign red concentrates. I focus on the availability of friends' home-grown freebies, namely pears, apples, plums, and grapes. Specialize in various combinations of blendings of these fruits, as well as wines from the individual fruits. Have experimented with onion, potato, carrots, corn, coffee, and chocolate raspberry. Surprisingly, with...

My father started making wine back in the 1960’s. He had a very basic set up - I remember a dozen or more gallon jugs each with it’s own air lock - a Styrofoam cup taped to the side of each jug with a tube coming out the top of each jug. Some of his wines weren’t so great but some were very good. I helped him from time to time but mostly it was just him, however I always helped drink the wines!He...

Well, We have 5 Vines, 2 Muscadine and 3 Scuppernong, 5 Pear Trees. This was my first year of wine making. Check out my page on Facebook ... It keeps Family and Friends up to date on my wine making... its new. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Raleigh-Vineyards/296244417079615 What makes you/your setup unique? When my Son Joined the USMC, I turned his Bedroom into the Wine making room. When he comes...