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Unconventional Additives

There are lots of possibilities for adding extracts, flavorings, herbs, and spice when you are making wine at home. We explore a variety of

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Montepulciano

To understand Montepulciano the grape, you also have to understand the difference with Montepulciano the place. Chik Brenneman takes you on

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Build a Temperature-Controlled Wine Storage Box

A home winemaker from California’s Sierra Foothills shares his design for an air-conditioned wine storage room he built for his garage.

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Controlling Fermentation Temperature

Many hobby winemakers believe that fermentation temperature control is beyond their reach — but this isn’t so! Discover how to keep temp

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The Essential Ins and Outs of Oak Barrels

Aging your wine in an oak barrel can do wonders for your wine. It can also ruin it. Before you dive in head first, learn all there is to kno

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Build Your Own Basket Press

Build this basket press using HDPE plastic.

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One Wall Winery: One World. One Winery. One Wall.

If you have a free wall in your garage, you can have your entire winery organized there. See the plans by Steve Hughes.

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Wine Kit Questions: Water and Bubbles

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Wine Cellar Build

A reader’s basement renovation takes shape.

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Lab Equipment: Storage Cabinet

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Fermentation Temperature Control

This cooling setup keeps wine must within just a few degrees of target temperatures.

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Evaporation Clarification, “Big” Reds, and Mold Malady

Remember, every time you open your barrel, you introduce air and potentially some undesirable spoilage organisms.

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Broken Barrels, pH Adjustments, and “Chocolate” Wine

Oak barrels (and barrels made of other woods, sometimes acacia wood or even cherry wood) are really structurally amazing.

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Avoiding Sulfites, Adding Copper

Pasteurization operates on a sliding scale and its effectiveness depends on a coefficient between time and temperature.

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Lysozyme, Adding Sugar, and Oak Alternatives

Excluding bacteria that can eat malic acid and turn it into lactic acid is the only way to make sure you don’t get refermentation in the b

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Late Malolactic, Wine Kit Ingredients, and Color Questions

Your Zinfandel probably had a good reason (in the wine’s opinion, anyway) why it didn’t go through ML fermentation.

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Overspiced Situation, Fining Reds, Brown Whites

Spices and other added flavorings in home winemaking are one of the trickiest things to get right.

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Fining Fruit Wines, Sourcing Grapes, and Cleaning Agents

Wine clarifiers, or ‘fining agents’ as they (and a whole host of other wine-finishing additives) are called, are creatures of degrees.

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Soapy Taste, Wine Pumps, and Testing Sulfite

I suspect you’ve got a fatty acid issue caused by your stuck/sluggish fermentation. S. cerevisiae can emit fatty acids when under

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Perfecting Pyment, Vinifera Vines, and Over-Yeasting

. . . you could also buy some powdered grape tannin, use oak chips, or even use a cup of strong black tea to add some tannin backbone to the

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Making Muscat, Battling VA, Finding Ideal SO₂ Levels

No matter which strain you use, be sure that you read up on all the specifications from the manufacturer around ideal performance conditions

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Fun With Filtration, When To Harvest, and Transporting Wine

. . . a lot of sediment we find in wines actually forms after the wine is bottled, and is nothing that filtration can control.

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Brett in the Winery, Hangover Myths, and Grapes In Albuquerque

Brettanomyces is often an ambient microbe in the air we breathe, but that’s no reason to go inviting concentrated and healthy sto

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Stuck Fermentations, Using Tartaric Acid, and Cooking With Wine

I find that when sugar is that low, the process of re-starting actually lowers the overall quality and you’re better off bottling slightly

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“Fruit Floaties”, Sweetening Wine, Free SO₂ levels

Because sulfur dioxide is so easily-oxidizable, hydrogen peroxide naturally ‘finds’ the easily-oxidized SO₂ and the two hopef