E.C. Kraus Home Wine and Beer Making Supplies

Hello Ed, I've been making homemade wine for over 20 years. Good friend of mine got me started and he introduced me to E. C. Kraus. I purchased a starter kit from you guys in 1992. Best move that I ever made. That brings me to my story. I make cranberry wine every year and it usually comes out great. Last years batch went cloudy on me. The taste is great, it's just cloudy (what's left of it). I'm...

We bottled Lambrusco wine in January. We tasted 2 months later and decided it was just not going to be sweet enough. Is it ok to remove the corks-put back into clean container and sweeten more with the wine conditioner and then re-bottle?Name: BarbaraState: Kentucky Hello Barbara, Unfortunately, we get asked this question quite often. I'll start off by giving you the short answer, "yes". What you...

I bottled some blackberry 5/2012. When I opened a bottle this morning it fizzed over and kept bubbling for a while. What did I do wrong, I followed a recipe?Name: Ed W.State: FL Hello Ed, Sorry to hear that your wine has gotten a little out of control. Let's see if we can figure out what's going on. There are basically two ways a wine can end up with gas in it. I'll go over them...

1. Are the mushroom caps easy to install, or do you need special equipment. Do they seal as well as regular corks, (over time). 2. Wine bottles that have a screw top, can you reuse them with a cork.Name: Tom H.State: Davison, Mi Hello Tom, The Mushroom corks are very easy to install. This is the biggest advantage to using them over traditional wine bottle corks. You do not need a wine bottle...

I would like to mark my wine bottles without using labels which can be difficult to remove for my next batch of wine. Is there an easy way to mark my bottles that can be removed the next time I use them?Name: Curtis B.State: CO Hello Curtis, There are several ways you could go about marking wine bottles without using wine bottle labels. Most home winemakers will use a color code. Each batch...

I made an apple cider and a apple/blueberry cider. Both are in the aging process  (4 months before bottling). I have the apple cider in a 5 gal. oak keg and the blueberry on in a 5 gal. carboy. When I want to bottle, should I be adding a sodium metabisulfite prior to bottling?Name: Mike in NYState: NY Hello Mike, If you are aging your wine in bulk, such as a carboy or oak wine barrel, we recommend...

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...

When making white wines it tastes fine right after fermentation, but after a while the wine gets bitter and strong. What do I do to solve this problem?Name: Richard LandryState: Massachusetts Hello Richard, Most likely you are dealing with is what's known as "bottle shock".  This can be noticed as a flabby diminish of the wine's fruitiness and bouquet. The acids can seem out of whack, and in some...

There are many steps to home winemaking, and each individual step is critical in maintaining the quality and acceptability of your homemade wine.  First, you have to prepare the must either from juice or the fruit itself.  Next, the must undergoes fermentation to convert the sugar in the must to alcohol.  Further racking, clarifying, stabilizing, and aging steps help develop the wine to an even...

As a home winemaker, you don’t have to worry about conforming to all the strict rules regarding wine bottle labels that are in place for commercial winemaking.  However, creating labels that will allow you to easily identify your wine in your cellar is highly recommended.  Simply writing a “Cab” for Cabernet Sauvignon or “P” for peach on the top of the cork or side of the bottle isn’t going to cut...

I racked my wine after sweetening it back let it set for a week to make sure the fermenting had stopped, took my reading which was ok. bottled it, and in about a week it started to explode. I've been making wine for 8 years and this is the first time this has happen. What caused this to occur?Name: Barbara EasterlingState: MS Hello Barbara,What has happened is somewhat straight-forward. The...

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...

Hi: I made my first wine and it came out great. I made a Cabernet Sauvignon from one of your homemade wine kits. I started it in January and aged it with oak chips for 6 month. Then bottled. It still tastes a little young. Something I do not understand is that it taste better after I let it sit out for a few hours. Why does it improve when left out? Jason ----- Hello Jason,Thanks for the...

We've just added a new corker to our website, and it's one that we are very excited about. It's called the Winery-Grade Floor-Corker. Not only is it a quality corker, it's a corker that we're able to offer at a deceptively-low price of $69.95! It's a floor-model style corker that stands 30 inches tall. What this means is that you are able to stand over it to gain greater leverage. Because it is so...

Hello Kraus, I like sweet tasting wine. I always add a pint of your wine conditioner before bottling. Is that all I need to add before bottling or do I need to still add the potassium sorbate? Fred (Occidental, CA) ----- Hello Fred, Glad to hear that the Wine Conditioner is doing the job for you. It's one of the more popular wine making products we offer. It provides a very simple way to sweeten...

Hello Winemakers:I am getting ready to start my first batch of wine from concentrate. I am a little confused about the sanitizing process for large pieces of equipment. The directions say to dissolve so much sanitizing stuff to one gallon of water. Does this mean a gallon will do the job? With a 6 gallon tuft tank or a 6 gallon glass carboy, for example, do you pour the gallon in the container and...

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 part 2 of a 4 part series. In the previous post (part 1), we went over how the cork supply and demand became out of balance over the previous decades. In this post we cover how this lack of balance spawned the emergence of synthetic corks. As natural cork became shorter and shorter in supply, and the prices began to rise to unprecedented levels, the situation the wineries found themselves...