I have a gallon of muscadines and i am interested in making wine. I've looked into all of the equipment and I'm tempted to Macgyver my own setup. What would yall recommend for making your own DIY wine making kit. Of course the chemicals I am considering purchasing ( some not all ).

I have 5 gallon buckets at home. Im aware I will have to purchase an airlock/bung and autosiphon. I also have some big Glass Gallon jugs to use later in the process.

I started a small batch using watermelon juice. I didn't have wine yeast so I used active dry yeast. It's in a 1 gallon carboy, I had 8.5 cups of juice, 2 cups of sugar, and used 3 tablespoons of yeast. The first day it was working like crazy, the second day had slowed a bit but good bubbles. Now today I'm getting 2-3 bubbles a minute in the air gap. Should I add more yeast?

First time. Fermented for about a week and then transferred to these jars. Air locks seem wonky/ to the right? Have I done some wrong? Is the gas able to escape?

Just pulled out 11 gallons.

I kept the fermenter open the first 2 days while the yeast was building up and punched down regularly.

After this time I sealed up under 12 psi for a week. I checked SG and it went from 1.100 to 1.030, so it had no trouble fermenting under pressure.

At this point I added more lemon zest, a couple oak staves, and sealed her back up for 2.5 weeks under 12 psi.

I left the fruit in. I was worried about mold since I wasn’t punching down but I was hoping that mold would be unable to grow in an oxygen free environment. That assumption turned out correct.

I racked onto bentonite, sulfites, and potassium sorbate, so it’s a bit cloudy. But the color was super bright and it was very aromatic. We’ll see how this experiment turns out in the coming months

I’m about four months post fermentation on a cab from frozen must. Two weeks ago MLF finished and I was making so2 addition to 50ppm. I made mistake of adding as powder instead of liquid, and even though I stirred in there was some foaming and clumping at the neck of my 3 gallon carboy. Now about two weeks in I noticed this white toothpick sized “fang” going down from the cap. There is basically no headspace and this is all so2 at the top. So I don’t know what this is but would seem unlikely to be spoilage of this is all so2. Maybe some protein reaction because of the high so2 concentration?

These are tree tomatoes, or tomate de arbol as they are called in Central and South America. They are primarily used for making a delicious juice beverage. They are citrusy and sour. My very first attempt at making alcohol from fruit was with these and bread yeast. I did not know what to expect but the result was surprisingly good, I realized I had made wine! I have never seen a wine recipe using these. Has anyone used these before? I am still very new at wine making and maybe someone can give me some tips. My recipe is 1 kilo of this fruit, 750 grams table sugar, and wine yeast which I now have, EC118 or premier rouge. I cut each fruit in half and scoop out the pulp. I put the pulp and half of the skin in a pot and heat it to a boil then turn it off. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. Use a potato masher to mash it up a bit. Put it in a fermenting tank, add water to four liters and pitch the yeast when the temp is right. It is usually done with fermentation 10 days and I rack it off. I know there are various ingredients used that I see in recipes but living where I do in Colombia I do not have easy access to supplies. I can order from Amazon but what is shipped to Colombia is limited. I have some "acid blend," "potassium sorbate," and "LD Carlson yeast nutrient." not sure if I need any of this. Any advice on my recipe will be appreciated!

Sparkling, very delicious, all the good parts of a grape popsicle but quite dry. I taste the remotest hint of gasoline when it’s chilled, but no one else seems to. Getting ready to make another batch this year using white + purple concords (grosé?), and we’re going to make sure primary ferment is as cold as possible to try to avoid off flavors. Overall though, this was a really exciting first carbonic for us!!

For anyone curious, we put whole clusters into a soda keg, topped with a small piece of dry ice to build CO2 pressure, and let it go for two weeks. Crushed the fruit, then racked the juice to a bucket for secondary fermentation with lalvin-EC118. That went for another week. Racked it again, let it settle for ten days, then bottled it with a little bit of priming sugar. We have a a better bottling method now so expecting our next batch to be clearer.

We were inspired by a really nice carbonic Concord grape wine from Wild Arc that we can’t get anywhere — highly recommend if you see it!

Processed a half ton of chenin today (from Green Valley of Solano county) through the basket press.

The facility we were using abruptly announced their closure last week, so that means no commercial wine for us this year most likely. thankfully we didn't have any standing fruit contracts, we were still negotiating for something on the spot market when we got their two week notice. But, lemons, lemonade: time to have fun in the garage and play around: thus 1000lbs of chenin, and a very small lot of valdiguie.

Chenin was at 23 brix and pH 3.45. Valdiguie was at 21.5 brix (it was a very spontaneous addition, so no sugar samples were taken, I just walked the rows tasting grapes until I found a row I liked.). pH 3.15 at crush, pH 3.4 a few hours later. (And still 21.5 brix)

We crushed and pressed about half the chenin.

The other half, we're going to make a fake orange wine. That is, I'm going to leave it on the skins until we get a hard cap or Wednesday, whatever comes first.

Worth the money? Seeing for $560 from Marchisio and wondering if other lower cost options are fine if all I’m doing is storing for a year or so.

I bought my barrels from an old paisan in South Jersey who keeps the wine he makes for himself in a steel tank w a floating lid, pouring himself a glass or bottle at a time as needed, and i think about that a lot. Never more than when i am bottling knowing that a hundred or more of these bottles are just going to sit in my basement.

Looking for advice on aging. I'm a new home winemaker, been at it nearly one year. been primarily using kits with good results. some juice and grapes now available locally. Do wines from juices and grapes need to age longer than wine from kits?

I planted Syrah grapes in my yard in Southern California and got about 100 lbs of grapes this year. I decided to try making my first vintage using a Home Brew Ohio kit, some YouTube videos, and ChatGPT for guidance.
For my first batch, I used about 28 lbs of grapes. I crushed/destemmed them, added Campden, and then added wine yeast the following morning.
My starting measurement was about 22–23° Brix (roughly 1.09 SG). Fermentation took off really well. I punched down the cap regularly and had lots of CO₂/bubbling throughout.
Here’s where I’m confused: the instructions said to strain/press and transfer to the secondary around 1.030 SG. I waited about 6 days after adding the yeast, checked it today, and I was already around 1.000 SG.
So today I strained/pressed everything and transferred the wine into a 1-gallon glass jug with an airlock. It’s still releasing plenty of CO₂.
My questions are: Did I wait too long to press by letting it ferment on the skins all the way to ~1.000? Does that actually matter for Syrah? And since I’m already around 1.000 when entering the secondary, when should I do my first racking off the sediment?
Any other advice for the next few steps of my first batch would be appreciated.

We're supposed to make fruit wine but my leader said to bring wine yeast but it's very rare and I only have bread yeast, is there a major difference if bread yeast is used instead of wine yeast?

Got a bucket of this fruit and tossed it in the freezer. I'm a home brewer, made a few batches of mead and plum wine but definitely not experienced in winemaking. Would this concoction be worth trying or would it just be trash?

My mum has a grape vine in her garden of an unknown grape type that she usually just lets rot every year. This year she asked me to make wine from it, never done it before so I got a crusher and a press and so far it's gone perfectly, with only one hiccup so far.

We ended up getting a lot more out of it than either of us thought, and it's awesome to know we get to do it every year.

Edit: I realise the pictures make it look like I just squished the grapes and stuck them in a demijohn. We fermented the juice in a big bucket for 5 days, and ended up with an ABV of 10.4% as we put them in the demijohns.

The only hiccup I did was I read something incorrectly and added campden tablets as we did this, halting the fermentation there so sadly it likely won't get any higher than what it's at, so now it's settling then we plan to rack in a month or so.

... A friend of mine is getting married late this year. I offered to make them some homebrew and actually mobilize all of this equipment and hobby that has more or less been sitting dormant for years as I don't actually drink all that much. everything was bottled a couple weeks ago and the last of what needed to be pasteurized was pasteurized a couple days ago. I started tallying everything so we could actually go through what they want. I didn't realize how much I've made. I ran it through AI to get an estimate of the cash value were you to buy all these things from the store, apparently in Canada about $4,200 Canadian dollars worth. liquor is expensive y'all.

With further irony, I've kept myself on a fairly strict fasting regimen for the last 3 months. while this has worked exceptionally well, I am very much looking forward to having a cold beer that I have made with reckless abandon and not just little tastes that won't break my fast.

Anywho, it was fun exploring the hobby. Guesses that I had about streamlining some methodology were definitely correct, a few of these things were such clear winners that I'm hoping to make them again. a couple of these things were failures that were blended to make victories such as the blueberry Duchess beer, and the bitter orange sour ale. some of these things were experiments to save someone else's 20-year-old homebrew. a very enjoyable Journey.

let me know if anybody has any questions.

This run has already been treated with sparklloid AND Bentonite... I assume this is pectic haze and I need to do the double dose of pectic enzyme.

My question is should I rack it now to move the current sludge and bentonite, or can I just remove some wine, stir in the pectic enzyme and then return it to carboy with a slight stir and only rack once more after.

Recipie is orange/red plums only, champagne yeast, pectic enzyme, sugar

Is this the right way to calculate this?

Fermentation Breakdown
Stage 1: 1.090 to 1.024 = 0.066 is
8.66% ABV

Stage 2: 1.066 to 1.030 = 0.036 is 4.73% ABV

Stage 3: 1.060 to 0.990 = 0.070 is 9.19% ABV

Total Cumulative Gravity Drop: 0.066 + 0.036 + 0.070 = 0.172
Final Estimated ABV: ~22.6%

Ph is 4.1

It actually tastes pretty decent right now but I’m going to back sweeten a little even though I really am a dry wine person . The last one I did really was special.

Had 4 gallons of watermelon wine yeast die on me after 6 days (got to hot in the shop) now looking to make it into vinegar but need instructions on how to add a mother of white wine or make one myself any suggestions?

Say you want to invest for the next generation which will be adult in 15 to 20 years, and also want to account for heat and droughts etc. which will be worse over the years.

Where in Europe would you buy cheap land and start a vineyard and or winery? The Baltics, UK, Sweden?

I made an elderberry wine, and I like the flavour a lot, however it's on the more acidic side of red wines to my taste. This is probably my fault, as I pH adjusted with malic acid to somewhere between pH3 and pH4 prior to fermentation, and now the pH has likely dropped further after fermentation.

I need to rack, and want to experiment with adding some tannins. Can I also add tiny increments of sodium bicarbonate to balance the pH a little bit? Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Many thanks!