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I guess I am a little confused by your question and concern, JT101. If you ferment fruit sugars and produce an alcoholic drink such as cider, even at 6% ABV this will naturally keep for months, if not years, as long as the seal on the bottle is good and does not permit the passage of air into the bo...

Resurrecting this very old thread and while I don't have an authentic recipe for blaand I do make something that must resemble this old crofters wine. (Talk of buttermilk and oak casks seems to me to be focused on the wrong end of the telescope). You make your cheese and you boil the whey that is le...

Just bottled my courgette (zucchini) wine and got 7+ bottles from about 4 kilo (8 lbs) from 3 very large squash. Wine is straw colored and bright and clear. I back-sweetened this so that it is just off dry (you need to stabilize the wine before you can add any sugar otherwise any viable yeast still ...

I agree. The cost of knocking and asking is zero, and the possible benefit is great. What's to lose? ... and an offer of a gift of apple sauce or a bottle or two of cider or apple wine... That's perhaps a win all around.

OK, so I was able to bottle this mead last night - filled 9 beer bottles worth. Not particularly "bitter" (I had deliberately boiled the hops for only 10 minutes to avoid extracting acids). The hop flavors are good and quite pronounced. I had used Citra and Centennial and I am getting brig...

Good question. I am going to give it a taste this evening before bottling.. Will report back as soon as I can..

noh... It's only a gallon - Even at one bottle a day that is just a week and a day and not "the next FEW weeks"... so hopefully, the mead -yes, but not the drinker... but yer never know...

Just started a hoppy mead last night. The recipe: 1 oz Centennial hops 1 oz Citra hops 1.5 lbs (about half a kilo) of clover honey Water to make about 1 US gallon (SG of about 1.058). 1 oz of ginger zest and juice of lemon 1/4 t of nutrient 1/4 t of tannin Yeast: EC 1118 Boiled the water and added h...

Lemon wine can be very delicious. There is a great recipe for a version called "Skeeter Pee" (skeeter being US slang for the mosquito and pee being pee). This uses a great deal of lemon juice but the original recipe uses lemon concentrate and this is really an adult version of lemonade - V...

Great point except the reality is that whey wine does not taste of cheese or milk. The whey is essentially lactic acid with a tiny amount of lactose and lactose is often added to beers when making "milk stout" (does not taste like milk but it is a sugar that most bread/beer/wine making yea...

We had a few days of dreich (cloudy and miserable with a bit of rain) but yesterday the sun came out and it's been glorious. We hadn't realised just how dry everything still was, given the previous weather, but we had to do some serious watering yesterday evening. Everything looks much happier this...

Courgette wine - (AKA marrow wine - but not the version people tend to think about when they think about "marrow rum" ). Take at least 2 kilo of marrow, chop 'em up and boil them in 1 gallon of water for 20 minutes to which you add about 1 heavy kilo of table sugar (2.5 lbs) and about 1 in...

During active fermentation - which CAN take place in buckets loosely covered with towels to keep out dirt and pets... and kids.. the amount of CO2 expelled is more than enough to create a blanket of gas above the fruit and liquid. When fermentation slows and the gravity is around 1.005 (so still ple...

That is pretty random, I agree. You might make it even more random by adding some vegetables. Depending on what you are growing, carrots, peppers, courgettes, potatoes, squash, melons all can make good wines. Not sure that raisins would give it "a bit more", though folk often toss in a han...

So here's the secret, unless you are brewing beer the primary fermenter used for wine making does not need to be sealed. There is enough CO2 produced by the yeast to prevent any bacteria or other spoilage microbes from the air getting their way into the wine. All you need to do is cover the mouth wi...