Scott's Wine Making Blog

Blending Homemade Wine – The Keys To Creating A Truly Unique Wine You Can Call Your Own

Scott Young — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:06:33 +0000

The home wine makers may want to blend wines in order to improve the taste of a particular wine. This is different than commercial wineries that blend wines in order to create consistency in the wines that they sell.

To be able to calculate how to properly blend wines, it is recommended that the home winemaker use the Pearson Square because it is a visual math tool that can help determine values when blending wines and it is a tool that anyone can use.

Pearson’s Square:

	Acidity Level	Desired Level	Parts
Wine A	A (1.2)		D (0.4)
Desired Wine (Wine C)		C (0.8)
Wine B	B (0.5)		E (0.3)

Let us look at an example of using this simple application. Let us say that you have two wines, and one has an acid level of 1.2 and the other is 0.5. Let us say further that you want the end acid result to be .8. The top left corner (A) and the bottom left corner (B) represent the acid level of the two wines you are trying to blend. The center number in the square (C) is the desired acid level. The two numbers on the right are numbers that you calculate. Square D (0.4) is the difference between square A (1.2) and square C (0.8); in addition, the square E (0.3) is the difference between square B (0.5) and square C (0.8).

You now have the numbers 0.4 and 0.3. This creates a 4 to 3 ratio of the wines. When you blend these two wines, you will use four parts of the first wine for every three parts of the second wine in order to get an acid level of 0.8. This simple calculation is already taking you down the road of creating the blended wine that you desire.

There are certain rules that should be followed when attempting to blend two wines:

Blend two wines at a time in small quantities. Make sure you write down the results.
Filter the wine after you blend.
Spit don’t swallow when testing.
Blend two similar wines of the same year.
Wait a day before blending large quantities and retest your final formula.
Test with the end product in mind. What is it you want to improve?
Need some inspiration? Go to your local wine store and see what commercial wineries have blended.

If you follow these simple ways you should be able to make your own wine blend with fantastic results.

Interested In Learning More?

Here are some great resources I have found online that you should consider having a look at:

Using Pearson’s Square (PDF) (from the North Texas Wine Makers Guild)
Person’s Square Calculator (Excel Spreadsheet) (from the North Texas Wine Makers Guild)
Tim Patterson’s Blending Spreadsheet (from WineMaker Magazine)

Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

The Cherry Wine Project: Putting The “Squish” On Your Fruit

Scott Young — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:33:41 +0000

Alright … so the cherries are clean and have been stoned/pitted therefore it is now time to press the fruit so that we can separate the juice from the pulp.

Now, I can tell you that for my first few batches of fruit wine I wanted to go a bit on the “cheap” so I used a potato masher to press the fruit. While this certainly works I can tell you that it really sucks doing it as you have to put a lot of muscle into it and you are left thinking that there must be a better way of doing this … and there is!

For our batch of cherry wine I decided to rent a ratchet grape/fruit press from one of our local wine making shops and it cost us $10 a day.

You might be able to find something similar on eBay or at a garage sale for under $100 but if you’re planning on buying a new press expect to spend over $250. Here’s a website I found that carries this model and several others www.homebrewit.com/aisle/1150.

Note that the press is a heavy bugger so we decided to press our grapes outside. This also made it easy for us to hose it down before and after we used it.

Here are the steps we followed to press our cherries:

Step 1 - Put the cherries in the press & place a clean bowl by the spout

Step 2 - Add the pressing blocks

Step 3 - Add the ratchet arm and press away until no more juice comes out

Step 4 - Transfer your juice to a clean stainless steel pot

Step 5 - Transfer cherry pulp to a straining bag (tie a knot at the top)

Step 6 - Bring your cherry juice to a boil but remove immediately from heat. This will help kill any bacteria or bugs that might be in the press.

Et voila! You now have the main ingredient for your cherry wine!

You will of course want to rinse your fruit press at this point and return it to your local wine supply store (if you rented it).

Fruit Pressing Tips:

Rent The Right Tools: Using a fruit press made this part of the process so much easier. If you are going to be a casual wine maker and have access to a grape/fruit press at your local wine supply store then rent it - don’t buy it (unless you have a hole burning in your pocket). The store we rented it from also wasn’t in a hurry to get it back so gave us a few extra days before we had to return it.
Have Help: I was happy to have my wife Michelle help me with this as there was a lot going on here, whether it be taking turns ratcheting the press, having someone ready to dump the juice if the bowl got too full to helping move the equipment around (note that the press was very heavy). She also seemed to be happy to get her hands in there and fill the straining bag with the cherry pulp.
Keeping Your Juice Clean: Your fruit press will undoubtedly be something that sits in the corner gathering dust between uses. This part of the process won’t exactly be clean so all you have to do is hose the press down before you use it knowing that your juice will most likely have some bugs in it. This is why we heated the juice to a boil then immediately took it off the heat. We didn’t want to burn the juice or reduce the amount of liquid in it - just enough heat to kill as much of bugs in it that should be in there. Adding a Camden tablet in our next step will also help kill any bacteria or bugs as well.

Up Next:

Stay tuned as next week we look at the recipe itself. Time to get fermenting and turning the juice into wine!

Enjoy and if you haven’t already please join in the discussion by becoming a member of our Cherry Wine Project community by going to http://thecherrywineproject.ning.com/

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

P.S. I recently met a fellow Canadian by the name of Dominic Rivard who has been in the wine industry for over 15 years. His main passion is fruit wine and is in fact a founding director of the Fruit Wines of Canada Association.

He has written an excellent fruit wine book called “The Ultimate Fruit Wine Guide” that you might consider having a look at.

He has also recently joined The Cherry Wine Project Community and I’m sure would love to hear from you!

The Cherry Wine Project: Getting Your Cherries Ready

Scott Young — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 05:14:38 +0000

To get things rolling here let’s use this post to talk about what we did to get the cleaned and ready for the fruit press!

If you’ve read “The Birth Of The Cherry Wine Project” then you already know that we purchased 20 lbs of beautiful and juicy red cherries in British Columbia - at Carl’s Fruit Stand to be exact (located on the highway between Kamloops and Valemont).

As you can imagine getting 20 lbs of cherries ready for wine making was going to take a bit of “elbow grease” because you have to remove the pit (aka the “stone”) from inside the cherry before you make your wine because:

They prevent you from being able to press all of the juice out of the cherries
If broken/cut they add a bitter taste to your wine

My wife Michelle and I therefore decided to invest $28 CAD in a “Cherry Stoner” from Carl’s Fruit Stand (last one they had - so I’m told - probably a trick to get us to buy it) so that we can quickly and easily remove the pit from the cherry.

I have to say, this was a great investment as we were able to get through the batch of cherries pretty quickly!

I should point out though that before we “stoned the cherries” Michelle cleaned them first.

She disinfected our kitchen sink, filled it with the cherries, ozonated water (we happen to have a little ozone generator I installed under our sink that we purchased from Cashidoo) and added Nature Clean All Natural Fruit and Veggie Wash (helps remove pesticides, bacteria and dirt).

You can never be sure what the fruit farmers used to grow their fruit or what is living on them despite how tasty they look!

She then made fast work of the cherries using our new Cherry Stoner. If you’ve never seen one here’s how it works:

Load your cherries into the little “cherry bin”
Press down on the plunger
“Stoned” cherry pops out
Repeat until you are left with these:

To be perfectly honest, it was a lot easier then I thought. It certainly helped that my wife Michelle chipped in and actually surprised me by doing most of the work on her day off while I was at work.

Fruit Cleaning Tips:

Garbage In/Garbage Out: Be sure to sort through your fruit and discard stems, bugs, dirt and spoiled fruit. If you wouldn’t put it in your mouth it probably shouldn’t be in your wine. Your wine will only be as good as what you put into it.
Tools of the trade: No matter what fruit you choose to make your wine with consider what tools you can use to make the job a whole lot easier to remove pits, seeds and anything else that shouldn’t be there.
Many hands make light work: Part of the lure of wine making is the social aspect so it doesn’t hurt to get someone to help you out. It also makes some of the more daunting and less fun tasks get done much more quickly plus you have someone to chat with!

Up Next:

Stay tuned as next week we look at how we pressed the cherries to “coax” the juice out of them …

Enjoy and if you haven’t already please join in the discussion by becoming a member of our Cherry Wine Project community by going to http://thecherrywineproject.ning.com/

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

From The Globe and Mail: “Wine by the glass? I’ll pass”

Scott Young — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 04:01:29 +0000

As a fellow wine maker you obviously appreciate a good glass of wine. I’m also assuming that when you go out for dinner you sometimes order a glass or bottle of commercial wine.

If this is you then read on as below is a very interesting article that my wife Michelle showed me in today’s Globe and Mail regarding why buying just a glass of wine at a restaurant is a VERY bad idea plus a novel new gizmo that helps prevent wine from spoiling.

Enjoy!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

+-+-+-+

The original article can be found at:

www.TheGlobeandMail.com

Wine by the glass? I’ll pass

BEPPI CROSARIOL

From Wednesday’s Globe and Mail

July 30, 2008 at 9:18 AM EDT

There are people who wisely eschew certain menu items when forced to dine in questionable restaurants. Sushi and steak tartare, for example.

Me, I avoid wines by the glass.

Once uncorked, a bottle of wine boards the bullet train to vinegarville. Basically, it is as perishable as a piece of raw fish or meat, freshness-wise, if not as dangerous. But you wouldn’t know it by how some restaurants and bars treat their wine, especially in summer, when elevated room temperatures can accelerate the chemical reactions that precipitate its decline.

Curiously, even a restaurant or bar that would not dream of serving day-old buns or rancid bar nuts will generally be happy to sell you stale wine - at a premium to the cost of fresher juice sold by the bottle.

The risk to unsuspecting drinkers is especially acute early in the evening, when half-empty bottles from the previous day’s service are circulated for a second go-round, just like Saturday’s unsold salmon repurposed as Monday’s fish cakes (and shrewdly accompanied by a strong tartar sauce to mask any odours).

Who, after all, is going to complain?

It is fair to say your average chardonnay sipper isn’t completely equipped, or temperamentally predisposed, to assess whether a bland wine was in fact bottled that way or owes its mediocrity to negligent handling. Most restaurant critics would be clueless, too.

By now many wine aficionados know red wine is generally served too warm. Standard summer room temperature of about 24 degrees amplifies astringent tannins and exacerbates volatile alcohol, causing some wines to taste overly bitter and medicinal. At least when you order a full bottle, as opposed to a glass, you can ask for an ice bucket.

But heat per se is not the only problem. Higher temperatures promote chemical reactions, including wine’s dreaded foe, oxidation.

When exposed to oxygen, wine’s fragile flavours distort in all sorts of ways. Lively whites will inevitably become flat. After a few days, they may develop “maderized” flavours, the salty-tang quality curiously considered a virtue when intentionally induced in fortified wines such as Madeira and sherry.

More insidious, wines will lose aromatic intensity. A grassy New Zealand sauvignon blanc may simply become less grassy. Unless you’re familiar with the brand, you may conclude the wine was never particularly flavourful. (Hey, if you’d wanted a white wine with no flavour, you’d have ordered a pinot grigio.)

Many tannic reds such as expensive Bordeaux can actually benefit from oxygen in the short term (say, a couple of hours). This can coax out certain aromatic qualities and fruit flavours. But most easy-drinking reds sold by the glass get nasty quickly once opened, developing a flat, prune-like character.

So much for the caveats. Even as the heat of July underscores the by-the-glass booby trap, things this summer appear to be looking up. A growing number of exacting restaurants are turning to fancy new technology to combat the oxidation problem.

One such establishment is Reds Bistro & Wine Bar in Toronto’s financial district. Already known for one of the largest by-the-glass selections in the country (typically between 70 and 80), Reds several weeks ago added eight more superpremium selections, all dispensed by a machine called an Enomatic wine serving system. Or, as its Canadian distributor in Montreal, Stéphane Fournier, calls it, an “electronic wine bar.”

Invented in Italy in 2002 by two Tuscan entrepreneurs, it is designed to guard against the slightest degree of spoilage. The system works by automatically filling the airspace above the fluid in the bottle with a blanket of inert gas (argon or nitrogen, depending on local availability). Enomatic boasts it will keep wines like new for more than three weeks.

Installed in about 5,000 locations around the world, including almost 100 in Canada, the system works with a prepaid electronic debit card that the customer typically buys at the cashier, inserting it into the machine and selecting one-, two- or five-ounce pours. Because of killjoy Ontario restrictions against self-service, at Reds the card is duly guarded by the bartender, who does the swiping for you.

“It’s really exciting and it’s a great conversation piece,” Taylor Thompson, the sommelier at Reds, told me over a fresh pour of Etude pinot noir from California. The system was not entirely new to me; I had put an Enomatic through its paces last year at the wine superstore Lavinia in Paris. Fun isn’t the word; it was like a slot machine for hedonists, with a constant payout of little sips of wine that you might never risk buying by the bottle.

The Reds system is on loan from Foster’s Wine Estates Canada, which saw an opportunity to promote its luxury wines to people afraid to take a chance on a full bottle. The Enomatic wines on offer at Reds include the rare Penfolds Grange Shiraz 2000 ($100 for a five-ounce glass), Beringer Howell Mountain Merlot 2000 ($65 a glass) and Château St. Jean Cinq Cépages 2001 ($75 a glass).

Mr. Thompson says more than a few patrons have opted for one-ounce pours (at $23 in the case of Grange) as a way to test drive wines they had been considering by the bottle. “People also can try wines that they may be aging in their own cellar,” he said.

Ontario restrictions notwithstanding, Enomatic systems, ranging from $4,000 for a bare-bones four-bottle unit to $18,000 for a dual-temperature eight-bottle model, have been set up in select stores in most provinces from Newfoundland to British Columbia, including eight in Quebec. There is no danger of customers getting blotto, Mr. Fournier says. “It’s all software driven. We can lock a card by the amount of millilitres it serves a person per hour. It’s even a better lock than a barman.”

The system, encased in handsome stainless steel and glass, is also finding its way into private homes. Mr. Fournier says several collectors in Canada have bought Enomatics as a new way to enjoy expensive wines gathering dust in their cellars. One customer in Montreal installed an eight-bottle system in his living room.

“It’s always a question of, ‘When am I going to open that special bottle?’ ” he said. “With this machine, now you have a month to discover it.”

***

Tips for ordering by the glass

Beware of tiny restaurants with a huge by-the-glass list. “If the dining room does 60 covers a night, then 40 wines by the glass probably doesn’t work,” says Ingo Grady, director of wine education at Mission Hill Family Estate winery in British Columbia.

If you are among the first to arrive at a restaurant in the evening, ask the server if he or she minds opening a fresh bottle rather than pouring the previous night’s dregs. Be nice when you do this.

Don’t be afraid to ask the barkeep or waiter for a tiny sip. Some restaurateurs resent this, but wines by the glass usually cost a premium, so you’ve already paid for the extra sip.

Much as you love to show off your knowledge of underappreciated grapes, try to stick with popular varieties, such as chardonnay or merlot. Odds are that bottle of Austrian zweigelt on the counter was uncorked during the Reagan era and has been oxidizing ever since.

White wine is often a better bet than red. Cold fridge temperatures slow down the oxidation process.

When it comes to red wines, stick with full-bodied tannic styles such as cabernet sauvignon and syrah. Lighter-bodied varieties such as pinot noir are superfragile and decline more rapidly with exposure to air.

Beware of by-the-glass bubbly. A half-empty bottle will become unpalatably flat within a day. Beppi Crosariol

How to Make Homemade Wine from Store Bought Grape Juice

Scott Young — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:27:50 +0000

I found this video on YouTube and it had me wondering how many people make wine from store bought grape juice.

Have a look at the video and let me know if this is something you’d try yourself. I’m certainly not knocking the video or this wine - just not something that I had thought of …

Would love to hear what you think so be sure to leave a comment!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

The Birth Of The Cherry Wine Project

Scott Young — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 04:14:43 +0000

If you haven’t heard already I recently announced the birth of what I have dubbed “The Cherry Wine Project“.

I thought I’d begin by explaining what it is and answering a few questions you might have about it.

What Is It?

The purpose behind The Cherry Wine Project is to help teach people how to make fruit wine - plain and simple!

I figured why not arm myself with a digital camera and take pictures while I make a batch of cherry wine explaining what I was doing as I did it.

Why Cherry Wine?

Good question but the answer is simple … my wife and I were in British Columbia (where some of the best fruit in Canada come from) a few weekends ago, drove by a fruit stand and saw that they were selling 20 lb boxes of fresh, juicy cherries. So how could we resist!

I’ve also tasted my ski patrol buddy Brian’s cherry wine and it was excellent so I thought why not give it a try.

The other reason I wanted to make it was for my wife Michelle as she makes probably THE BEST French Onion Soup known to man (I’ll see if I can get the recipe from her for you), which is typically made with port or sherry (i.e. Harvey’s Bristol Cream). She likes to make it though with this cherry wine I brought back from Holland … some might say in fact it was the “secret sauce” in her soup. Unfortunately she ran out so I guess you can say I was given some incentive if I ever wanted to have some French Onion Soup again …

What If I Don’t Want To Make Cherry Wine - Can I Make A Different Kind Of Fruit Wine?

Absolutely! If cherry wine isn’t your bag baby then no worries! Wine making is simply a process that is pretty much the same regardless of the type of fruit you use so you can definitely use what you learn here to make your own wine. In fact, consider combining fruits! It’s really up to you.

Is There A Cost To Participate?

This is the best part actually. There is no cost to be part of The Cherry Wine Project. That’s right - zilch, nothing, nada!

So Why Are You Doing This?

Why not! I’m doing it anyways and I love to share my love and passion for wine making. I’m really just like that guy you know who lives next door or down the street who enjoys making wine and having people over to sit and talk wine making.

I’m a student of wine making myself and gain to benefit from your wine making experience as well. Have I messed up wine batches before? Hell ya! But the thing is you learn from your mistakes and improve your techniques from there.

How Do I Particiapate And Stay In Touch With The Project?

Two things you should do:

Sign Up To My Free 5-Part Wine Making Course: If you haven’t done so already of course! You’ll not only get 5 lessons emailed to you, you will also receive updates when new posts for The Cherry Wine Project and put up on this blog. There is a sign up form on the right side of this page.
Become A Member Of The Cherry Wine Project Community: Additional posts, comments and forum discussions where you can actively participate can be found at: http://thecherrywineproject.ning.com. It’s FREE TO JOIN!

I think that pretty much explains it but if you have any questions certainly don’t hesitate to give me a shout by going to www.AllWineMaking.com/WordPress/contact/.

My goal is to release one post per week but check back often as you never know when I’ll add several posts in a row if things get really exciting.

Thanks for reading and I really look forward to connecting with you!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

P.S. If you haven’t checked it out already you can start by reading the recipe I’m following for the cherry wine by going to www.allwinemaking.com/WordPress/2008/07/19/cherry-wine-recipe/

Cherry Wine Recipe Used As Part Of The Cherry Wine Project

Scott Young — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 20:51:03 +0000

Here’s the cherry wine recipe that I am following for my batch wine that will be featured as part of The Cherry Wine Project (as found on page 8 of the “Winemaker’s Recipe Handbook” by Raymond Massaccesi):

CHERRY, Sweet:

>> Please note that this recipe produces 1 gallon of wine so multiply as appropriate to the size of batch you would like.

6lb Mixed Cherries

1/2 pt Grape Concentrate (we used both red and white)

7 pts Water

2 3/4 lb Sugar (granulated)

3/4 tsp Pectic Enzyme

1 tsp Yeast Nutrient

1 Campden, crushed

1 pkg Sherry or Port Yeast

Starting S.G. 1.100 - 1.110

Method:

1. Wash, remove stems and leaves, and remove pits (use a pitter — either mechanical or a couple of extra hands from around the house). Be careful not to break the bitter pits.

2. Using a nylon straining bag mash and squeeze out juice into straining bag, tie top and place in primary.

Note: We used an actual fruit press to press the cherries and to remove the juice. We then added the cherry skins to a cheese cloth “sock”, which we then put into the primary.

3. Stir in all other ingredients EXCEPT the yeast. Cover primary.

4. After 24 hours add the yeast.

5. Stir daily, check S.G. and press pulp lightly to aid extraction.

6. When ferment reaches S.G. 1.030 (about 5 days) strain juice from bag. Syphon wine off sediment into carboy (secondary). Attach airlock.

7. When ferment is complete (S.G. has dropped to 1.000 — about 3 weeks) syphon off sediment into a clean secondary. Reattach airlock.

8. To aid clearing syphon again in 2 months and again if necessary before bottling.

Cherry Varieties:

Most cherry trees do not adapt well to a mild winter climate. The handsome trees, the crown of flowers in spring, and the fruit, whether sour, sweet or crosses, make them highly desirable.

Sour varieties include: Montmorency, North Star, Early Richmond and Meteor.

Sweet varieities include: Bing, Royal Ann, Van and Lambert.

If you’re interested in reading more blog articles on cherry wine (and other related recipes) consider reading the following articles in the blog-o-sphere:

Commercial Cherry Wine

- I’m still trying to get the hang of cherry wine, but while I tinker and tweak I might be able to buy some from the Ten Spoon Vineyard. This Montana winery uses Lambert cherries from Flathead Lake to make a dry red wine. …

Cherry Wine (Turnovers)

- While just cranking open a can of pie filling and dumping it into a pre-made crust may come out of the oven looking like you made cherry pie, well, sorry kids, that’s not good cherry pie. Besides the surreal color kind of frightens me. …

By the river with my cherry cherry wine…

- Wouldn’t it be nice if, like Spider-Man, you could have a nasty black alien substance on which to blame your faults, lapses of judgment, and bouts of rage… you know, like when you backhand your girlfriend to the ground. …

Cherry Wine

- North Star cherries make the BEST wine!! While it WASN’T raining, yesterday, we picked and processed 90 pounds, (picture) and then went out again and picked another 30 pounds! That means enough cherries to make 120 bottles of wine. …

Chocolate Cherry Wine, and Everything’s Fine

- I saw a recipe the other day for chocolate cupcakes with cabernet sauvignon wine and thought I should try substituting that with a local cherry wine because it goes beautifully with chocolate. I did… I deem that experiment a success. …

Cherry Wine?

- Before I get back to the wine, I’d like to note the enjoyment I received from shopping at Aligra Wine and Spirits. The individual that was working at Aligra was very helpful in helping me select a Scotch to purchase for my Dad for …

Tabor Hill Cherry Wine…

- We found this wine from Tabor Hill at the local grocery. Checking their website they have many varieties of wine and I hope to find more and try them. Label: 8.5 - Cute yet artistic, simple and eye catching. Aroma: 8 - it’s cherry all …

Strawberry Wine, Gold Wine, Rhuberb Wine and Cherry Wine!

- Back in Michigan, they actually have wineries that produce a cherry wine. Don’t ask me about logistics, because honestly, I would probably just make something up. I of course bought some Traverse City Cherry Wine, Spiced Cherry Wine, …

My First Impressions Of The Tap-A-Draft Kegging System

Scott Young — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 20:32:34 +0000

I mentioned in my email last week that I purchased one of those Tap-A-Draft kegging systems for carbonating beer and wine coolers and here are some initial thoughts:

1) I like how it fits nicely in my fridge - not quite like a beer tap at the pub but close enough!

2) I’m a little disappointed in the level of carbonation that you get with the system to be perfectly honest. I like a little more “bubbly” in my beer and to me it tastes a little flat.

3) Each bottle contains the equivalent of 15 bottles of beer so I only have a pint once in a while. You need to add a new CO2 cartridge to dispense the beer and one thing I’ve noticed is that if you let the beer sit in the fridge for a few days between pours you lose the pressure and need to add another CO2 cartridge (this makes sense as the CO2 will dissolve into the beer). At $13 per package of 8 or so cartridges it gets pretty expensive as you are constantly putting in new cartridges.

To increase the level of carbonation in your beer you can “prime” the container by adding some sugar (i.e. as you would if carbonating your beer in the bottle), which is what I plan on trying next. Note that you need a special cap for the plastic bottle, which has a one-way valve so that the bottle doesn’t “blow up” if the pressure gets to be too large.

4) I actually did a taste test this evening where I tried the bottled version of the beer against the Tap-A-Draft version and I noticed that the bottled version had much nicer, creamy taste then the Tap-A-Draft, tasted a little more complex and definitely had more “fizz” to it.

(Note that I did enjoy both so perhaps I’m just being overly picky …

Anyhoo, just some quick thoughts for you on how things are going with my new “toy”as I know some of you were asking me what I thought about it. I’ll be blogging more about it in the coming weeks and would be interested in hearing what your comments are especially if you have one.

According to the place I bought it from they can’t seem to keep them in stock as they’re so popular so I’m definitely not the only one who owns one !

So stay tuned for more …

- Scott

Here are some other discussions on the Web about the Tap-A-Draft that I have found:

Should i get the Tap A Draft system?

- Im not ready for a full keg system yet but getting tired of bottling. -Yes, spend the $65 or so to forget bottling, its awesome. -No, its not worth it. -I would get it but wouldent use it strictly for everything(all batches, all amount)

Tap-A-Draft question

- Don’t you have to use priming sugar to carbonate with the tap a draft systems? I read and old post that said something like “unless you can force carbonate, like in a tap-a-draft system…” The CO2 just forces the beer out of the bottle …

Should i get a Tap A Draft sytem?

- Posted: by bkov33 (9 hours ago)

How To Make Wine: Does The Type Of Yeast You Use Make A Difference?

Scott Young — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 19:25:48 +0000

What kind of yeast do you use to make your wine? Ever thought of using liquid yeast instead of dry yeast?

In my latest video I discuss the pro’s and con’s of using dry yeast and liquid yeast to make your wine.

Would love to hear what your thoughts are on this so please do leave me a comment!

- Scott “The Wine Making Guy”

Here’s some further reading on yeast I found for you:

Dry Yeast v. Liquid Yeast

- Anyway, wine and mead makers tend to use dry yeast as opposed to beer makers who tend towards liquid yeast. Older style beer kits that come in a can still include a packet of dry yeast (or so I’ve been told, I’ve never actually made …

Yeast - liquid vs. dry - how big a difference?

- My last order I got 2 kits plus liquid yeast and I was at $80. So I’m looking at ways to shave cost and obviously using the dry yeast is one way to do it. I understand better ingredients will give you better results (costs are higher). …

Yeast

- The two main yeast manufacturers are Wyeast and Whitelabs. Both of these are liquid yeasts, but they are a little different from each other. The last type is dry yeast. There are also numerous manufactorers of dry yeast. …

How To Make Wine: Easiest Way To Sink A Grape Skin Bag

Scott Young — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:37:24 +0000

When you