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Fruit Wine Making Guide, (Final) Part 6: Bottling, Storage, and Shelf Life

Fruit Wine Making Guide, (Final) Part 6: Bottling, Storage, and Shelf Life

Last Steps of Winemaking! Your wine has hopefully been cleared and tweaked to your liking. It’s time to get it out of the carboy and into bottles! Sorry, this is a long one, but I did not want to break it up into another part. Bottles, Corks, and Corkers For a long-lasting product, I highly recommend bottling wine in regular wine bottles and corking them. I know some people like to keep their wine in gallon jugs, but if you aren’t going to be drinking all that wine in one sitting, like at a party, it won’t last in [...]

By Means Cork & Cap|2021-06-23T15:14:40-04:00December 8th, 2020|Latest Articles|

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Five: Fining, Back-Sweetening, Smoothing, and Flavoring

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Five: Fining, Back-Sweetening, Smoothing, and Flavoring

Finishing Your Wine! Hopefully, if you’re reading this part, your wine has been sitting in a carboy for at least three to six months and has been racked off the sediment a few times. It is time to talk about finishing your wine before bottling! Fining Agents In the previous part, I talked about using clearing agents to help your wine clear a little more quickly. Those are bentonite, sparkolloid, gelatin finings, or FermFast DualFine. Of course, the wine will clear on its own the longer it sits, and you continue to rack it off the sediment every [...]

By Means Cork & Cap|2021-06-23T15:14:41-04:00November 5th, 2020|Latest Articles|

Limited Edition 2020 Wine Kits

Limited Edition 2020 Wine Kits

Limited Edition 2020 Pre-Order We are currently taking pre-orders for this year's limited edition wine kits until 12:00pm Friday, November 13. Please email us to pre-order these kits, meanscorkandcap@comcast.net We do not order any for the store, so if you'd like one of these kits, please pre-order one so we get one just for you! We prefer in store pick-up of these kits. Our Pre-Order Policy: Pre-ordered kits are to be picked up and paid for within 30 days of their arrival at our store. What are Limited Edition Kits? If you don't know what limited [...]

By Means Cork & Cap|2021-06-23T15:17:18-04:00October 13th, 2020|Wine Kits|

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Four: Yeast and Fermentation

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Four: Yeast and Fermentation

Time to Begin Fermenting! You have prepared your fruit, additives added, and specific gravity taken, you are ready to start fermenting! We're going to be talking about choosing the right yeast for your wine and the fermentation process. Picking the Right Yeast To have fermentation, you need yeast. You can use bread yeast if you'd like, but think about what bread yeast does…. It eats the sugars in the dough, makes CO2 causing the dough to rise, giving you soft, squishy mouth-watering bread, and imparts that signature bread yeast smell and flavor. When fermenting, you want the yeast to [...]

By Means Cork & Cap|2021-06-23T15:14:41-04:00September 24th, 2020|Latest Articles|

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Three: Additives and Testing

Fruit Wine Making Guide, Part Three: Additives and Testing

A Few More Steps Before Fermentation You’ve cleaned your fruit, prepared it the way you want to ferment it, and are technically ready to start fermenting. However, there are a few more things you may want to add and do before you pitch that yeast. Additives I know many recipes online are more “natural,” in that they use lemons to add acid, and raisins to add tannin into, and that’s fine if you want to use them to add acid and tannin into your wine. But, if you’re like me and don’t want to go to the trouble, or [...]

By Means Cork & Cap|2021-06-23T15:14:42-04:00August 25th, 2020|Latest Articles|