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Trying to repair my ignorance: in wine making, I won't use my municipal water - although it tastes fine for drinking, making coffee, baking and cooking - because it does contain chlorine. I use spring water. But when it comes to making a wash for distilling spirits, how critical is it that the...

Does anyone here, who presumably also brew beer and /or make wine use Star San to sanitize cheese making kettles and tools or do you choose to boil everything? Is Star San, for example, only really good for cleaning surfaces (tables and counters) in the food world or can it be used as we do when...

If I have say, a liter of spirit at 70% ABV (140 p) and I add 1 liter of water, the spirit will be reduced to 35%. If that liter includes say, 300 g of sugar (same 1 liter volume) does the added sugar do anything to the ABV? Is the liqueur still 35%? I imagine it is, but I am uncertain. Thanks.

A question. I culture all my milk with whey from kefir I make from grains. I don't drink kefir so I have enough kefir to make a hard cheese about once every three weeks. I noticed a few days ago that one of the batches of hard kefir cheese i had been aging had developed blue mold. I have not...

Looking for a recipe for a good Swiss-type cheese and I have a couple of questions. 1. I see some recipes on Youtube that suggest the use of mesophilic ic cultures but aren't emmentaler cheeses not all thermophilic (the cooking temps are above 125 F)? 2. To maintain the more buttery/sweeter...

I am currently making about a pint of vanilla essence with 10 beans. But the spirit I am using to extract the flavor is about 170 proof. I think I will need /want to dilute this by about half before we use the essence for baking or wine making. (vodka is 80 p or 40% ABV). I assume I should allow...

I am currently making three batches of cider with different yeasts which I started at the beginning of February and I am really surprised that the batch into which I pitching Nottingham has cleared bright the fastest. I mean clear as in being able to read a newspaper through. Too early to offer...

A question out of ignorance. Oaking brandy. If I was making a whisky from beer I would expect to really oak that baby, but what about brandy? I have a small batch o brandy I am making from wild grapes that grow near my home. How much oak is used in brandy making? About the same as when making...

A few weeks ago I produced some spirits from whey wine. The wine was about 12% and the distillate was about 800 ml at about 68% ABV (136 p) . I macerated star anise in this for about a month to six weeks and yesterday, I strained the spices and collected the spirit. To this I added 1 cup of...

I frequently make a hard kefir cheese , which is to say, I am not using the kefir to simply culture the milk for 40 minutes or so but I am using kefir as the base for my cheese. What I have been doing is collecting about a gallon of the kefir and the straining, salting and flavoring with herbs...

Is there a good reason why I should not use a small sample of my last batch as the culture to make a fresh batch? I understand that over time the culture will mutate in ways I have no control and so perhaps produce flavors and aromas that I will not prefer... but how then does that not happen...

I thought I was buying rhubarb concentrate but this is now a blend of junk including HFCS as the first ingredient. But rather than toss it I made 3 gallons from this 1 gallon (rather than the suggested 5) and the wine tastes almost flavorless, certainly not rhubarb-y.. and I have made rhubarb...

I frequently make a block of hard kefir cheese from the kefir I make from grains. But I just realized that when I strain the kefir through a sieve to recapture the grains but allow the curds to fall through I am in fact damaging those curds. And that may not be a problem for those who eat /drink...

Just came across this Youtube video and while I still maintain Mozzarella is NOT an easy cheese to make, this video suggests that it might be a great deal easier than it seems. He uses 1 L of milk (OK he uses raw milk but fresh milk with Ca Cl should be OK) 20 ml of white vinegar 10 g salt...

For those interested in making a coffee wine or mead I just learned something this morning on a radio show called Milk Street Radio (June 4th). Bitter compounds from coffee are water soluble (in fact all the conventional tastes -sweet, salty, umami, bitter and sour are water soluble) but fruity...

Making my first batch of SP and I am trying to get a handle on how sweet most people like this. My thinking is about 4 oz per gallon, (about 1.5 lbs for 6 gallons) but is that what most of you add or do you find that folk prefer this even more sweet?

Started my first blue cheese the other day- a Fourme d'Ambert and I wonder if the leftover whey might have enough roqueforti to use to inoculate another batch of cheese to make , say a Stilton for example. I used some of the whey as the liquid for the brine but I still have about a quart under...

Just started my first batch of wine using whole grapes and so experiencing lots of experiences I have never been exposed to before, including an enormous volume of grapes to liquid and a large volume of fruit pushed up to form a cap that requires to be punched down several times a day. My...

Recently brine pickled some store bought mini cucumbers and the pickles are delicious. Used the same brine concentration and the same herbs and horseradish leaves (for tannins) for some cucumbers I grew in my garden but the cucumbers taste bitter in a way that is unpleasant. I wonder if the...

Posted this question on another forum but have not received any response. Am making a gallon batch of staghorn sumac wine and was asking about the best yeast to use for these berries. Typically, I would use 71B for most berries but I hear that QA 23 works well with sumac. In the end I pitched...