Hello all :)

[JohnBoy27]

Hello everyone (waves enthusiastically)

I’m John, I’m 27 and recently started up home brewing. I live near Glasgow and would be good to maybe find some other home brewers near by to swap advice and maybe ideas with and maybe even some home brew - who knows. I’ll share a bit about myself below and what got me into hone brewing.

My background is in horticulture, basically a glorified gardener by trade. About 6 or 7 years ago I thought “I’m going to grow a grape vine and turn the grapes into wine”… sounds simple enough?!

I started home brewing wine from kits with a simple 6 bottle setup that I had bought online at the start of year. So far I have made about 12 bottles from the Beaversdale (whites) range - which after a few months have aged quite well and I seem to be building up some wine to age and hopefully try at Christmas!

I have just started my first ever wine from my own grape vine! Which is an achievement in its self since the scottish climate is hardly the French Rivera! thanks to this forum that I have managed to find recipes and ideas and advice to help making my first ever “from scratch” wine.

I have no idea what stopped me from joining before now, perhaps the home brew has kicked in! Hahaha.

I look forward to meeting everyone and hopefully be able to share my experiences and learn from some of those seasoned pros on here.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Tavi-brewer]

Welcome Praise indeed for gathering enough grapes together for a brew!

 

[Deadhead]

I have just started my first ever wine from my own grape vine! Which is an achievement in its self since the scottish climate is hardly the French Rivera! thanks to this forum that I have managed to find recipes and ideas and advice to help making my first ever “from scratch” wine.

Wow! That's brilliant!

 

[An Ankoù]

Nice one and welcome. I live about 600 miles due south of you and my grapes are not ready for picking yet. Even the birds are not nicking them yet. What variety are you growing?

 

[Stevieboy]

Welcome aboard - picture of vine required!! I grow Gamay....

 

[DocAnna]

A warm welcome on a surprisingly sunny and hot day for September in Scotland. I'm just a wee but further out of Glasgow and there are quite a few of us here from the central belt. As for grapes and vines- I'm well impressed. We inherited a vine and greenhouse when we moved here 10 years ago and rarely have enough grapes to make much wine, so I'll look forward to tips on increasing our yield .

 

[Stevieboy]

A warm welcome on a surprisingly sunny and hot day for September in Scotland. I'm just a wee but further out of Glasgow and there are quite a few of us here from the central belt. As for grapes and vines- I'm well impressed. We inherited a vine and greenhouse when we moved here 10 years ago and rarely have enough grapes to make much wine, so I'll look forward to tips on increasing our yield .

It's all in the pruning and the training. Cut back ALL of this year's growth in mid January, to 2 buds, and see what happens next year...

Below is my Gamay after 7 years of training and pruning. Apologies to those who've seen it before.

 

[Gerryjo]

Hi and welcome to the forum....

 

[Michael Burnley]

Welcome to the forum, and I'm sure to be asking about grape vine pruning this winter

 

[AXW123]

Me too - I have still to get any grapes on my four year old vine

 

[Stevieboy]

Me too - I have still to get any grapes on my four year old vine

Feel free to post pics etc and I'll give of my best to advise.

 

[Begbie]

Welcome @JohnBoy27 - where near Glasgow are you? Are you home brewing just wine or breaking into beers too?

 

[Tavi-brewer]

Is there a vine growers thread or area on the forum? Good be a useful addition .
Lots of questions and lots of people with good knowledge to share.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Feel free to open a thread in the wine forums.

 

[JohnBoy27]

Nice one and welcome. I live about 600 miles due south of you and my grapes are not ready for picking yet. Even the birds are not nicking them yet. What variety are you growing?

Sorry for the delayed reply! It has been quite a busy week.

I’m growing Sauvignon Blanc - which is nearly finished fermenting. The grapes were almost ready - about another week would have done them. I had the issue with sunburn after defoliating the vine after a few days of really hot weather. I did have to add some sugar to the must though which I was expecting anyway.

I’m growing my vine under glass which does help a lot with keeping a consistent temperature along with irrigation and fertilisers. Really just the basic plant husbandry.

 

[JohnBoy27]

Hello. I’m just in Renfrew.

I have thought about trying a beer kit or cider kit - Although from what I’ve read on some of the posts about beer making it seems much more complicated than a bottle of wine!

Welcome @JohnBoy27 - where near Glasgow are you? Are you home brewing just wine or breaking into beers too?

 

[JohnBoy27]

Me too - I have still to get any grapes on my four year old vine

There will be more experienced vine growers than myself on this forum I would imagine. I did do a lot of pruning in its first few years to get it to grow on wires under glass where I wanted it to grow along. I’ve been pruning using the spur method which I found out on the RHS’s website. Don’t give up on the vine as I almost did since it wasn’t doing much!

 

[JohnBoy27]

It's all in the pruning and the training. Cut back ALL of this year's growth in mid January, to 2 buds, and see what happens next year...

Below is my Gamay after 7 years of training and pruning. Apologies to those who've seen it before.

View attachment 53665
View attachment 53666

Such a beautiful vine! I’ve found this year with the exceptionally hot summer irrigation was a must. For maybe about 6 weeks the fruit wasn’t swelling at all and was stunted. So I had to irrigate and ended up using fertilisers once a week or so to get things moving on. I did read somewhere online about removing excess leaf/stem growth reduces the amount of stress on the vine allowing it to put its energy into the fruit. Which seemed to have done the trick as the grapes were quite sweet albeit they did start to get some sunburn :-(

 

[Begbie]

Hello. I’m just in Renfrew.

I have thought about trying a beer kit or cider kit - Although from what I’ve read on some of the posts about beer making it seems much more complicated than a bottle of wine!

Hello neighbour - I'm in Paisley!

I thought the same about beer brewing and started out making mead and wine, but it's not complicated. Some of the discussions on here make it sound complicated e.g. water additions and temperature control, but it can be as simple as you want it to be, particularly if you are brewing from extract kits. If you do want to give it a go, I'd recommend starting with the kits from The Range (seeing as you have one near you in Paisley) - cheap, and they yield decent beers.

What you're doing is probably more complicated than making an extract kit beer!