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Old 13th June 2020, 13:48   #1
HarryM1BYT
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Default Anyone into brewing/ homewine making

I used to make lots 20/30 years ago, but stopped when commercial wine prices fell and it became less worthwhile. With time on my hands, I decided to restart wine making and also made a stout, beginning last November.

My finished results have been very palatable apart from one 5gal batch of red which failed to start and just went mouldy for some reason.

The hobby has changed a lot since I was last involved, when there were many more shops selling kits and equipment, now they are fewer and mostly online dealers. It's also become easier/ more technical involvment with more gadgets.

I have just built myself an iSpindel, which is an opensource electronic gadget. It is designed to free float in the FV and report via wifi the SG, tilt, temperature, battery volts and etc., to one of several websites which can record and display the process of the fermentation.

I have only used it once so far, since building and calibrating it, but I must say it has been superb. No more messing about with refractomers or hydrometers, just charge the iSpindel up (it uses an 18650), drop it in the FV and fire up the laptop to see the progress of my brew
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Old 13th June 2020, 17:27   #2
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My dad did a brew every now and then, once or twice a year maybe (mostly beer but tried a couple of largers too) and most of the results were very good. Couldn't comment on strength because he never bothered measuring it but you could feel the effects of a couple so I suppose that's all that mattered!

Cleanliness is key, everything needs to be properly cleaned prior to making anything otherwise it will go off very quickly, and maybe why your wine did. You can get little tablets you simply drop in the containers with water and they sterilise everything. Something else he did was keep the brews in a warm room, helps the fermentation I think. I think there's also techniques where you can add sugar at different intervals to produce different results. Like either have it in all at the beginning or put a proportion in at the beginning and add more later once it's started to brew.

Either way there's plenty of reading on the internet, I should have borrowed his gear at the start of lockdown think a batch would be nearly ready now!
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Old 13th June 2020, 18:12   #3
HarryM1BYT
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Starsan /Chemsan is what I use. I rinse everything, then wash with Oxyclen, rinse again, then finally dunk in the Chemsan and allow to drain. My red just sat there doing nothing much, so no idea if it might have been a bad kit.

My last one was the same red, the fermentation was completed in six days, and had cleared three days later, ready for bottling. It was amazingly quick. SWMBO was already drinking it the day after it was bottled, I like to wait at least a week, to allow it to mature.

The three months of lockdown would have given you time to do at least three batches of beer or wine

The big problem is bottle storage, both empty and full ones. I have around 60 wine and 40 beer bottles, but it takes up 30 to 40 bottles for each batch I make.

I was lucky when I was thinking of restarting in the hobby, I spotted an ad on Facebook for someone giving up the hobby, who was selling all their kit at a really good price - a car full for £20, a few hundred pounds worth. For just the cost of a 5gallon white wine kit, which was included in the package.

It's working out at around 80p per bottle of wine versus maybe £5 for a bottle of the cheapest supermarket wines.
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Old 13th June 2020, 19:01   #4
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I'm new to this but away to start my first beer, a grapefruit ipa supposedly similar to Brewdogs Elvis Juice. The kit supposedly has everything needed except the bottles but they should be here soon. So in 3 weeks or so I should have 22.5 ltrs of beer. I really hope it's nice.....

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Old 14th June 2020, 05:55   #5
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OP, perhaps your good lady has the correct approach to wine

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopener...etter-age.html
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Old 14th June 2020, 07:28   #6
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I used to brew my own stout, bitter, larger and white wine to some degree of competency, ( i.e. it tasted great and got you nissed as a pute! )
But I've not done a brew for quite a few years now.

I used kits from my local supermarket, ( which stopped stocking them hence the main reason I've not done a brew for a while. )

I never got into the real technicalities of it, just followed the instructions, and mostly had success, the odd one failed and ended up down the sink, but by and large the majority of kits were great!
The only thing I did to help was I modified a brewing barrel to and installed a fish tank heater to keep the temperature more constant. That helped a lot.

You've got me thinking about digging my home brew gear out the loft and having another go!

A word of warning, I made a cider once.
It was explosive! It blew several glass bottles apart during the second stage brewing process. The ones that survived tasted great, but when you popped the caps you lost half of it as it was like popping Mintoes in a bottle of coke!
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Old 14th June 2020, 10:00   #7
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Les4048 View Post
OP, perhaps your good lady has the correct approach to wine

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopener...etter-age.html
My approach to wine is excellent.

I walk 50 metres from my garden gates to the gates of the local vineyard.

There you can buy all varieties of wine in bulk after first trying them for free.--

All you have to do then is bottle the wine which works out at less than £1..00 a bottle.



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Old 14th June 2020, 11:48   #8
HarryM1BYT
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Originally Posted by Les4048 View Post
OP, perhaps your good lady has the correct approach to wine

https://www.scienceabc.com/eyeopener...etter-age.html
Maybe, but I reckon I can taste an improvement over the first few days. She arrived here as a whisky with mixer drinker, never having tried wine. I convinced her to give wine a try and she so took to it, it is now wine with dinner every day. That was the white wine. She had it in mind that red meant always a dry wine, but now she has tried the red, she says she prefers it to the white.
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Old 14th June 2020, 12:14   #9
HarryM1BYT
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Coups View Post
I'm new to this but away to start my first beer, a grapefruit ipa supposedly similar to Brewdogs Elvis Juice. The kit supposedly has everything needed except the bottles but they should be here soon. So in 3 weeks or so I should have 22.5 ltrs of beer. I really hope it's nice.....

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk
I bought 40x 500ml reusable double skinned plastic bottles, complete with caps for my stout kit. They have a series of dimples moulded into the base, which seem to trap the sediment from the secondary fermentation in the bottle perfectly. Some people just re-use 2L pop bottles. With plastic, you can easily check by squeezing the bottle, the state of the secondary fermentation.

I don't drink these so much as the wine, so I still have around half dozen bottles left from the 40 I made last Christmas. Its very gassy, so I share a bottle with SWMBO. Even this seems to have improved over the months I have kept it.

The last beer I brewed, many years ago, was barley wine. That was absolutely delicious - wish I could remember where I sourced that kit.

I spent a bit of time this morning, double checking the calibration of the gadget I built, the iSpindel. Some who have built it complained the got variable values, due to the pcb being able to move slightly inside its watertight PET bottle. It is still absolutely spot on.
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Harry

How To's and items I offer for free, or just to cover the cost of my expenses...

http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/foru...40#post1764540

Fix a poor handbrake; DIY ABS diagnostic unit; Loan of the spanner needed to change the CDT belts; free OBD diagnostics +MAF; Correct Bosch MAF cheap; DVB-T install in an ex-hi-line system; DD install with a HK amp; FBH servicing.

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Old 14th June 2020, 12:15   #10
HarryM1BYT
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Quote:
Originally Posted by COLVERT View Post
My approach to wine is excellent.

I walk 50 metres from my garden gates to the gates of the local vineyard.

There you can buy all varieties of wine in bulk after first trying them for free.--

All you have to do then is bottle the wine which works out at less than £1..00 a bottle.
Its alright for some
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How To's and items I offer for free, or just to cover the cost of my expenses...

http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/foru...40#post1764540

Fix a poor handbrake; DIY ABS diagnostic unit; Loan of the spanner needed to change the CDT belts; free OBD diagnostics +MAF; Correct Bosch MAF cheap; DVB-T install in an ex-hi-line system; DD install with a HK amp; FBH servicing.

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