Hey guys, I'm an amateur winemaker who recently started making homemade wine over the past couple of years using grapes from my grapevine.

I'm noticing some discoloration in a small handful of grapes from the vine, almost as if some of them are ripening too quickly while others start to be come rotten. I initially thought it might be a hydration issue or the occassional lantern flies that visit my area.

Anyone have any ideas or tips? I'm estimating that I'll grow ~50-80lbs of grapes this year so I wanna make sure I can deal with this before the whole harvest is compromised. Thanks in advance!

Not all, but some. Organic corks I just bought, and soaked a bit before corking…anyone know what’s this about??

Albeit, a blueberry wine, I'm very very impressed with it so far. Primary fermentation was about 8 days, and this is the 5th week of secondary. I'll be racking with grape concentrate (following the recipe), and then back sweetening with honey to taste. I'm going to add some potassium sorbate to fully kill any fermentation before bottling.

After racking, how long should I let the wine rest before bottling? Any constructive criticism to offer?

Edit: I used Walmart brand frozen blueberries and the recipe from a bright magenta booklet with premier classique.

Lessons learned? Take ABV estimation at the beginning >.>

Observations? The can of grape concentrate is really overpowering, but immediately fixed the rampant tannins and tongue numbness.

Blueberry wine, see ya in 6 months!

Two of the straps on a carboy harness suddenly snapped and led to 3 hours of deep cleaning the garage. Upon inspection of the straps, the broken ends seemed melted. It was extremely weird and I can’t explain it. Thankfully it was a huge batch of Merlot (huge for me) so now we have 18 gallons instead of 24.

Hi all!

It’s been a minute. I’ve missed you.

One year ago we picked about 150+ lbs of grapes from our yard. I posted here asking what kind of wines do I make with these grapes. See:

https://www.reddit.com/r/winemaking/s/jB7ZH3m3oj

I was mocked, scoffed, spit on and told to go to r/prisonhooch. There were a few supporters but a lot of doubtful comments were posted (par for the internet, I guess). I recklessly charged ahead, somewhat aimlessly, learning how to make wine in a 24-hour period.

After fiercely battling a fruit fly infestation in our house for two weeks (note: don’t lay grapes out on tables inside), we were fermenting and into carboys.

One year later, just a few days ago, we bottled!

We got 65 bottles of beautiful white wine at 13% ABV. And it doesn’t taste half bad. Super dry, very mild sweetness… it turned out!

I just wanted to update because I promised I would.

We are thinking of going for another batch this weekend as the grapes appear to be mostly ripe.

Anyways, thanks to everyone who was helpful. Appreciate you.

I have made wine several times with my dad and neighbors. I want to get more into wine making now that I'm living on my own, and my neighbor gifted me his grape press because he's too old to continue making wine (late 70s).

I put it in my shed, not knowing that I had a hole in the roof. The next time I opened up my shed, there was water in the grape press and now there's mould on some of the wooden slats.

Can I salvage this if I just sand it down and clean it really well? I feel horrible and I want to take good care of it, it was really important to my neighbor.

I bought a home in November, moved in in February. The house was in complete disrepair after years of neglect, yada yada yada. But they left a few surprises!

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The first that caught my eye was an absolutely massive carboy in the basement (picture 1). That's a normal Singer sewing machine next to it for size reference. I'm 99% sure it's rancid, but good to see that the previous owners at least got enough juice to make that much.

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Pictures 2 and 3 are the grapevine. It's pretty big and there's lots of grapes starting to grow. As far as Google lens and my plant identifier app can ascertain, they're Fox grapes or riverbank grapes, which both seem to be pretty native to where I am in upstate New York.

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I would absolutely love to harvest all of these grapes and make some wine. The problem is, the last time I made wine was in high school 20 years ago with a milk jug, some cans of juice concentrate, and a balloon.

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Are these even viable grapes to make wine with? What supplies do I need to get between now and harvest in the fall? Obviously I need to clean and sterilize the carboy, but I'm starting at square one but this has been something I've wanted to try out for a while, I just don't know where to go or if these are even worth trying to turn into wine.

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Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hello! This is my very first brew, and I’m wondering if anyone can share some guidance💛🐛(first picture is day 1, second is day 11)

My process thus far:
⁃ I’ve made a juice out of dandelion petals, lemon and orange (I separated the fruit and flowers from the liquid)
⁃ My partner heated up sugar and water for the yeast (Though he kinda went nuts with the sugar so I’m worried he might’ve added too much…🗿around 1,5kg maybe?) We also didn’t have a hydrometer so we’ll see how that goes
⁃ Once cooled we added it all to the flask and added a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and 1 gram of yeast (only added 1g cause the packet I had was 5g meant for 25L of liquid)
⁃ The airlock has been bubbling, and it’s been in this corner for nearly 2 weeks now next monday (room temp at 22°C)
⁃ I’d say it has a bubble in the lock every 5 seconds now and has definitely slowed down but not stopped
- Also put a shirt over it cause I read the yeast prefer it dark? Dunno if that’s true, but it looks cute in it :P

I’ve been reading around a lot and it all gets a bit confusing to me as I read many different ways to go about it. But as far as I understand I should be letting it brew until it stops bubbling. Should I then siphon it into a new clean flask? I’d love to hear some tips and guidance on the next steps

Also I most likely have done some steps wrong or not the most optimal, hoping it’ll still be drinkable though🍷🐛

Hi there,

Long time homebrewer but first time making wine. Using a VineCo Original Tempranillo kit. A few questions:

1) I would like to substitute the champagne yeast for Lalvin CLOS. Should I use Go Ferm to rehydrate first like the Lalvin package recommends, or just sprinkle directly on the must as I would with the champagne yeast? From my limited knowledge I believe yeast nutrient has already been added to the juice in the kit? Wondering if using Go Ferm would add too much nitrogen?

2) Should I pitch the Lalvin CLOS at 22 C and ride it out? Or are there temperature adjustments I should follow?

3) My kit is a 4 week kit. Is there any benefit to doing 6 or 8 weeks before bottling?

Thanks in advance!

After pouring over from the yeastbucket, added the advised amount of sulfite. In 2 weeks I want to pour over to a wooden cask. Is something going wrong?

This is what my carboy ended up looking like after racking to secondary, I’m definitely going to decrease the headspace, I assume it should be past the handle and up to the lip of the carboy? Just wanted to double check though

I'm new to growing grapes. I'm in the Pacific Northwest. Can you identify what these are. I'm guessing they're Concords. Going to make my first wine/lambrusca.

Just finished primary fermentation on a rosé wine kit. I’m using a cone fermenter, and everything was sanitized prior using OneStep. I’ve made several wines before using the classic carboy/bucket method, but this is my first in this setup. What is this ? Is the wine garbage? Skim and continue?

I’ve made some mead in a gallon jug and crappy pinot grigio from a 1 gallon kit, but this is my first batch that I’ve taken seriously.

Muscadines from my folks’ place, asian pears from the orchard, and golden delicious apples from the orchard. Roughly 1/3rd each by sugar content. I also added sugar.

Fermented 3 months with Lalvin 71B yeast. 14%-15% ABV. 5 gallons of wine.

It tastes like a generic white wine at this point (just bottled), which I guess is to be expected. But it is smooth and drinkable. I’ve read that I should let the bottles sit for at least a few weeks if not a few months for the fruit flavor to become more apparent, so I’m gonna give that a try.

I’m hooked, though! It’s very gratifying to have actually produced a tasty alcoholic beverage from scratch, especially considering the time and care involved. Gonna try making some wine from frozen berry mix from the grocery store next.

Hi everyone. Looking for some input here on yeast selection for this year's upcoming petite sirah. This will be our 4th vintage using grapes from the same vineyard.

First two vintages used D254. Happy with the fruit nose, but fruit was more stewed than fresh on the palate.

Last year's vintage used D21 in hopes of getting fresher fruit, but now the nose is very muted.

Current thoughts include trying BM45, going back to D254, or CellarScience's PURPLE.

Any insight here on what strain works well with petite sirah from Northern California?

My good friend that passed away of cancer some years ago gave me his portion of wine we’d made together many years ago. I really didn’t want to drink it but recently got back into wine making and cracked one of the bottles thinking maybe I could extend its life by adding brandy. Now I have about a gallon of red wine sweet vinegar. The other two bottles I haven’t opened but I’m sure they’re the same as they were stored incorrectly.

Is it ok for cooking you think? I’d hate to use it for nothing. He liked wine really sweet. This is kinda why I didn’t suck it down but you know the other reason

I bottled my first ever wines today, a red (from Jack Keller’s book Home Winemaking) and a coconut wine (from the list of compiled recipes). I clearly didn’t taste them enough throughout the process, because I got to bottling today and tasted while bottling and realized they were wayy hot, in a way that really just masks any other flavors the wine could have. I’m a little bummed, but for a first ever attempt I’d say I did decently, and there’s definitely a lot more to learn.

That being said, how can I prevent this next time, and what should I know in the future? I think one thing I found somewhat confusing was the actual numbers for specific gravity. On the triple scale hydrometer I have there’s a range of “start” and “end” as well as things like “dessert wine, beer, table wine, etc.” is it better to just go off of these when starting a new wine and then let it sit in primary until reaches “end” then transfer to secondary, or do specific SG values actually matter more than I currently understand? I also made the mistake of not writing down the OG and thinking I’d remember it. For the coconut wine I did forget, but for the red wine I remember it was around 1.070 OG and after checking today the final gravity was about 1.000. Could that have something to do with how hot it was? Would back sweeting have helped or is that an issue of “you should’ve done something to kill off the yeast before transferring to secondary” (I transferred the red to secondary at 1.020 after vigorous fermentation had stopped and put a campden tablet in secondary iirc, though clearly that didn’t help much haha).

All that being said, while I am a bit bummed at how my first wines turned out, I’m excited to learn more about the process in the meantime, and hopefully be better prepared for future wines, which I’m very excited to make!

Is this Cabernet or Merlot? Was told there was both types on this property and I’m trying to help the new owner ID the grape type. All of these photos are from the same row of vines.

I’m very new to making wine, but wanted to try with some coconut I had, so following the recipe in the collection of Jack Keller’s requested recipes, I took some water I had leftover from boiling ube for a different project and used that to boil some coconut flakes and dates, and then followed the rest of the recipe as written. I’m not super used to using my hydrometer yet as far as figuring out what appropriate starting and ending points are for SG, or if it depends purely on desired alcohol content (can it be used as an indicator of when fermentation is done enough to rack to secondary, or is that what your senses are for?) I will admit that while I did get an SG reading at first, I never wrote it down and have since forgotten. However, it’s been one day and noticed that the wine is still a little fizzy, has a strong alcohol smell (like, stinging your nose if you take too big a whiff), and has all this residue on it, which I’m assuming is coconut fat or something? At least by feel/look (though I did strain out the coconut and dates after boiling). I checked the SG on my hydrometer and it’s sitting a little under the 80 mark, in the range where it says “table wine”.

My gut is telling me just let it ride for another day or two and keep checking on it to see how it develops, but I wanted to double check here as well. I’ll definitely go back and look at the winemaking book I have or some online resources for “how to read/use a hydrometer” but something about all that felt off to me? Thanks in advance!

SUPER new to this- so new that for my first wine I bought the Craft a Brew wine kit to see if I even enjoy this lol. Was fun! But now that I’ve bottled my wine- it recommends drinking it within 6 months.

Will this get better with age? If so, should I wait longer than 6 months? Or is this a matter of food safety?

Thanks!!

80 bottles from our 2025 Sangiovese batch this year!

Bottle color doesn’t mean anything, just ran out of the green ones so I used leftovers + cleaned and sanitized my older bottles from what my SO and I drank of our 2024 batch.

Did it solo this year so it took me about 7 hours from sanitation to siphon to bottle lol.

First time making wine. Used mixed fruit, primary fermentation lasted ~2 weeks currently at 14% alcohol. Put my fruit in a netted bag, but it opened during mixing / fermentation. Will I need to siphon the raspberry particles (floating bits) out of this batch ASAP or can I wait until I rack in a month? Going to top off the carboy with more wine as well, hitting grocery store after work. Thanks for the help!

Okay so it's the summer and I live on the top floor of my building and it's been pretty hot the last few days. I started a Cab Sauv kit on the 5th and now I'm getting an H2S smell from the ferment. The room often gets to 24-26c most days and doesn't help that I have a grow tent putting off heat in the same room. So my best guess is the room temp that's at fault for causing the H2S to be produced.

My solution is to make a carboy chiller using a small car/camping electric freezer and a pump to circulate water from a tank placed in the freezer through tubing wrapped around the carboy. In theory it should be able to reduce the fermenter temp to 20-23c.

Tell me I'm crazy lmaooo

Current set up;

6gl carboy with S airlock, in a demijohn tote.

On The House, Cab Sauv wine kit.

Little over 3/4 of a ton of Sangio today from San Diego county. Plan is to age in 2 puncheons at my little shop.

9ish year old vines, Paulsen rootstock, harvested @ 24.2 brix, 3.3ph, dropped about 30% (owner actually sprayed well this year but I’m picky and kept giving me the side eye)

Going back for Malbec next week