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Is there such a thing as doing a 'sur-lie' beer? Autolysis creates such nice nutty flavors that can add complexity to some white wines. I wonder if some ale styles would also benefit from it.

This is very true. At one well-known computer chip company I used to work at, maintenance had somehow installed a SF6 tank in place of an oxygen tank that supplied ozonated water. It shut the fab down for a couple weeks while the stainless lines were replaced and loads of wafers tossed. Losses...

I actually use this same process for my sweet grape wines too. Concord can easily run a TA of 10g/L. A lot of the hybrid grapes can be high as well. It gets me in ballpark so I can do bench trials and dial it in. And like you said, fruit wines are all over the map.

A factor of 5 will be sweet but not yet cloying, to my taste at least. Going down to 3 still brings out plenty of fruit flavors while remaining less obviously sweet. A factor of 7 is getting cloying to me. I find it's just a rough starting point to dial in the final sweetness for your own taste...

Probably depends on how much lemon and deacidifiers you ended up using to get to the final TA. I use a LOT of each to maximize the lemon flavor and my TA typically ends up around 14g/L. So my SP can take upwards of 90g/L of sugar without seeing too sweet. I'd measure your TA and multiply by say...

You *can* make acid corrections at any stage but it is usually best to make them up-front during the primary fermentation. This seems to better integrate the addition into the wine flavors. Plus it will make your yeast happier.

Yes, a pH of 2.9 is low and many yeasts will struggle with it. Given that you have made this before and found the wine to be tart (sour is different), it suggests that your TA is too high for your tastes. So, you are in luck that you can drop the TA and raise the pH with calcium carbonate. Be...

When I have to add sugar to wine must, I'm careful to only add cane sugar since that tastes fairly neutral. I've noticed that beet sugar can add an off flavor though I'm not sure how to describe it other than somewhat metalic.

Here's a back of the envelope calculation: 100 gallons of juice at 21brix that takes 7 days to ferment will produce an average of 8.9 cubic meters of CO2 per day. A worst-case tiny room of 10ft x 10ft x 8ft holds 22.7 cubic meters. So if the room did not have adequate ventilation, I would...

And I would be concerned that the apple cider vinegar will harbor live acetobacteria that will work in turning the rest of your must to vinegar.

With D47? Other yeasts like EC1118 are capable of going upwards of 18% abv but D47 isn't even listed (see here) as tolerating over 14% and I found that to be under the best circumstance.

I use D47 as my go-to white wine yeast unless I have a rose or an overly acidic wine, in which case I steer towards 71B. D47 is a great all-around yeast for fruit aromas and not producing H2S if it gets stressed. The yeast isn't really capable of fully fermenting a higher SG wine to dryness...

Is this a kit, juice bucket or something with skins? What yeast are you using? What size batch are you making? Red wines are often fermented closer to 80F when on skins in order to better extract color and tannin. Most strains of yeast can tolerate these temps without stress as long as...

Has anyone used a carbonation stone in a brite tank to make sparkling wine? The challenge seems to be getting enough volumes of CO2 in the wine. I figure that glycol chilling the wine to 28F or so and maxing out the 15psi rating for a day or two in the brite tank would get close.

As I finished feeding the spent grain from my last homebrew to my sheep, I got wondering what microbreweries do with their used grain. Even a small 5bbl operation has got to produce 400lbs of grain or so per brew. When I had cows, they would have loved that. Just the volume of something like...

Likely is pectin haze since pectic enzymes were not added during the fermentation. Not harmful and does not affect the taste, just not pretty.

Yup, those are the rules set down by the excise police in indiana. Go figure. Yeah, Sheridan is going through a death and will be a bedroom community to westfield in the near future. We had considered a brewpub here but thought better of it for now The town that is looking for the brewpub is...

I'm outside the town a ways. It sounds like the alcohol licensing piece would be easy. The state requires some sort of restaurant on site for food. I was going to advise that a small 3bbl brew pub could work but wanted to gather the thoughts of all of you in the broader community. The brewery...

I was wondering if there is any kind of rule of thumb on the minimum population size of an area surrounding a brew pub that is considered necessary to keep the pub operating. I guess the same calculation would apply in estimating whether or not an area is saturated with breweries. I ask because...

Yeah but it's better than the load of iron that comes with the well water. Maybe an RO system will be in the offings for me sometime.