Topic: Wine-Wizard

Dear Wine Wizard, Here’s one problem you may have been asked about before. My finished wine has an aroma and taste of rubber and burnt toast, a bit like burnt rubber. Since

Wine Wizard replies: First of all, you need to make sure that the fermentation is finished. You do this by checking your sugars with a hyrdrometer. Fermentation for a “dry” wine is

Dear Wine Wizard, I raised the TA of the must from 0.5 to 0.6 at the beginning of fermentation for my red wine. Should I still add malolatic bacteria to start MLF

You’ve hit the nail on he head — a hydrometer reading does depend on the amount of suspended solids in the juice that you’re measuring. As sugar is more dense than water,

Dear Wine Wizard, I’m bottling some mead, and wanted to add that extra special touch to the finished product. I’ve seen some bottles with a wax coating on the top, the kind

You all seem to have the same problem, so I thought I’d answer you all together. Acid adjustment, or better, achieving the right acid balance, is one of the arts of winemaking.

Hold on there, tiger! If you’ve got a standard 0.44 gram Campden tablet and you’re putting it in one gallon (3.8 L) of wine, you’re blasting it with 66 mg/L sulfur dioxide,

Dear Wine Wizard, I’m new to wine making but I have made beer and mead for three years. What types of grapes and yeast are used to make lambrusco wine? Also the

Dear Wine Wizard, After I stabilized my wine, I added French medium toast oak beans to the Chardonnay 3/4 cup (new beans), Sauvignon Blanc 1/3 cup (new beans), Ruisseau Blanc 3/4 cup

Wine Wizard replies: Your question is complex. In fact, it could lead to pages upon pages of response if I elucidated upon “all those chemicals” (and many of them are not really

Wine Wizard replies: If you’ve seen a lot of home winemaking recipes that recommend pounds upon pounds of refined sugar, it’s because refined sugar is the cheapest agent available to home winemakers

Dear Wine Wizard, I made homebrewed beer for a long time, but during the last couple of years I have gravitated more towards making wine and mead. I know that it’s safe

Brettanomyces is a particularly nasty yeast that is often the bane of the collective existence of many winemakers. Its foul-smelling byproducts have often been called “barnyardy” or “mouse pee-like” on the sensory

 In regards storing your opened can of concentrate, I would freeze it. Dump the remains into a Tupperware or other freezer-safe storage container and stick it in your freezer. The high sugar

Wine Wizard replies: The short answer to your question is: 0.45 micron nominal filter pads are the industry standard for “sterile” filtration. These pads prevent all yeast and bacteria from getting through.

Have no fear of the Champagne yeast failing to take off in your honey. As long as you dilute the honey accordingly, you’ll have a sugar solution that the yeast should happily

You’re right in assuming that it has something to do with acidity, but the answer you’re looking for is not exactly the presence of an acid but rather the absence of one.

Commercial wineries get a lot of their argon from welding supply houses, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t, too. The only thing that I would wonder is just how much argon you’ll

 Home winemakers use bananas, both dried and fresh, as a source of perceptible sweetness and body. Both effects are derived from the complex polysaccharides (that’s a fancy name for big, long-chain sugars)

Dear Wine Wizard, Our Zinfandel wine is now in secondary fermenters, with free-run wine separate from the pressed. Do you have advice on allowing the free and pressed wines to go their

Dear Wine Wizard, I did not rehydrate my yeast before I pitched it. How do I do this and what happens if I don’t? John Eastwood Cleveland Wine Wizard replies: Rehydrating yeast

Dear Wine Wizard, I make wine in five-gallon batches from juice that I buy in Canada. I also buy skins, stems, and small bags of toasted oak chips, then let it all

Dear Wine Wizard, My partners and I, for the first time, bought Merlot grapes last year. We followed our normal procedure, which we have been using for the past five years for

Your yeast packet is almost guaranteed to be past its prime. Yeast cells, even those that have been freeze-dried, certainly do have an expiration date. Using yeast that is more than six

Wine Wizard replies: To sulfite or not to sulfite: That is the question. It’s one that fires hot debates in the cellars of wineries worldwide. Sometimes seen as a personal choice, the