Hello
Kraus,
I just started to look into making wine. I read some
articles on your website and others. One thing confusing me is
it seems like air in the wine is good when it is being made but
bad after it is made. How can it be both?
Thanking you in advance,
Greg
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Hello Greg,
Oxygen plays a role in wine making in two different ways at
two different stages. Early on it's what allows the
wine
yeast to grow successfully, insuring a vigorous
fermentation.
Later on, it's what allows the...
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If
you didn't already know what this blog was about, the term
bottle shock might conger up some interesting
visions. I personally think of someone getting hit over the head by
a bottle while in some bar fight or even hitting yourself in the
head like our friend here on the right, but, I digress...
What Is Bottle Shock?
Bottle shock is a term
used to refer to a wine that is suffering
from the symptoms of getting too much
air in too little time. These wines tend to be
flat in their overall...
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Almost
everyone understands that wines need to age, but very few
people realize just how important aging actually is to a
wine. Aging is a process that is most often either
underestimated or completely ignored by the home winemaker.
In reality, I would venture to say that aging a wine is just as
important as the quality of the grapes used to produce the wine. If
you're missing either one, the wine will suffer
noticeably.
Within the first 30 days of aging most people experience enough
improvement...
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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 fatter than what
you are used to seeing coming out of the wine bottle.
These are the type of wine...
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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 Wine: This will
help keep the wine from spoiling and also keep the wine's
color fresh and...
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Good
Morning,
Thank you for the info in the newsletters they
have been helpful.
I need to know how much air should be above the wine in the
bottle. Could you let me know about that so I don’t over/under
fill.
Dr. Thomas
----------
Dear Dr. Thomas,
I'm very glad to hear that you find our wine making
newsletters informative and helpful. It is are sincerest goal to
provide home winemakers with the tools they need to become
successful, including information. Now, on to your
question...
I am assuming...
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Howdy,
I am new at wine making and just learning how to make
white wine with one of your wine ingredient kits. I am in the last
stages and decided to take a small taste test even though I still
have 2 or 3 days left in the last stage. It is terrible! Can the
wine get better in that short period of time or is it to far gone
and will not come out good? I followed the directions word for
word.
I did find 1 difference in the articles and the directions given on
the ingredients kit. Articles say not...
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One
of the primary goals of this blog is to
continuously provide wine making tips and advice that will
make life easier for the home winemaker. With that in mind, here's
another tidbit that you may want to look
over.
One of the greatest advantages of using synthetic
corks is that they are easy to sanitize. Their surface is
not porous like an natural cork, so you can quickly and
confidently sanitize them with a quick,
straight-forward process. All you need to do is give them
about 20 minutes or...
Read More » »
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 different
sizes to choose from, and what are the different lengths
for?
Thanks,
Paul K.
----------
Dear...
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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. Wine
does need some oxygen to fully reach its aging potential. It's just
a matter of finely...
Read More » »
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 that wine is sealed
up properly for bottle aging.
When you buy corks, you should ask yourself if...
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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 foam is exposed on either end of the cork.
With injection molded synthetic corks none of the...
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This
is part I of a two part series. Look for
part II later this month.
With each passing year
synthetic
corks are becoming an increasingly popular way to seal
wine bottles. They have proven themselves to be a worthy
replacement of the natural cork stopper, whose production costs and
shortages have continuously driven their prices up and
their quality down.
Synthetic corks are made of high-grade polymer plastics. The inside
is filled with a thermoplastic that has elastic qualities. This
allow...
Read More » »
Synthetic
corks are becoming increasingly popular as a means
for sealing up wine bottles. Numbers are sketchy, but it appears
that currently around 9 percent of all corked wine bottles in the
world are done so with synthetic corks.
There's lots of reasons for this slow increase in popularity, but
the main one is pure economics. Over the last decade, wine
consumption has increased roughly an average of 4.5% per
year. Natural cork producers are finding it difficult to keep
up with this increase.
It...
Read More » »
Synthetic
corks are a far more effective way to seal a wine bottle than
just your ordinary natural wine cork stopper. There is not much
question to this fact. Pretty much everyone in the wine making
industry agrees with this statement.
In fact, synthetic corks can be thought of as sealing a wine bottle
just as air-tight as a screw cap. If you've ever sealed a wine
bottle with one, then you already know. You can tell just by
looking that no air is getting past a synthetic cork.
But the real issue...
Read More » »
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 another
not-so-evident alternative to the natural wine bottle cork. They're
called
synthetic
corks.
Synthetic corks...
Read More » »
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