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Having got my beaverdale shiraz kit to the first racking stage i decided that a cheapskate wine using the slurry from the kit could be worth a go, as it has what should be good yeast and also oak chips (ermmm dust). ingredients for 2 gallons Tesco uber cheap purple grape juice: 8 litres @...

I finally got around to buying some Beaverdale Shiraz kits ... so thanks to all you folks who have encouraged me to try a kit and pointed me in the Beaverdale direction. As much as i would have liked to spend £40 on a 30 bottle kit i just couldn't afford it and so went for false economy of...

we're having a bit of a gardening session soon, gonna put in a raised bed and also some fruit trees and add a smelly rose to our collection. The local garden centre has a pretty good selection and the final list is blackcurrents, bluebrries, cherries, plums and apricot. I doubt the cherries or...

Requested by Barrington This is more or less straight from Berry's book ; first steps in winemaking. He describes it as being medium, so you may find it sweet. Per gallon 1 kg fresh rosehips 1 teaspoon citric acid 1.5 kg sugar yeast, nutrient and pectic enzyme washed and zapped the rosehips...

It's started already .... while i'm out and about my attention is automatically fixing on hedgerows etc looking for good brambles. Although the brambles in our garden made uber fruit last year i'm on the lookout for other brambles so i can brew more than 1 gallon this year. I want to make...

SWMBO is a fan of ginger so i thought i'd have a crack at this. When i went surfing around the place i found a number of recipes including this one, as she also likes green tea it seemed a natural choice. I have cobbled together 3 different recipes, left some things out, added others. for 3...

I've recently embarked on a voyage of discovery .... yeasts i've always thought of yeasts as the real experts and us brewers their guardians. Content that they know what they are doing i have pretty much just bought and used general purpose yeasts. However on a recent trip to a homebrew shop i...

with 2008 drawing to a close this is a good time to reflect on your brewing successes and share them with everyone, go on, show-off or swell with pride .... what has been your single most successful or pleasing brew. Mine is the blackberry wine that came from the huge sweet juicy berries from...

Hi wine making enthusiasts, it seems to me that our numbers are growing so i thought a thread where we all say hi and something about our wine making could be useful. Wine making probably always will be a niche interest on this forum, but there's no reason why it can't also be a very...

After picking the blackberry bramble of all reachable berries i had enough to do a gallon of wine and also some left overs. some of these went into meringues and cheesecakes (very nice they were too) but there was still some left. Rummaging about in cupboards i found a carton of organic OJ. SO i...

hey there brewing nuts i just bottled my blackberry wine and as is the privilege of the brewer i drank a bottle from the demijohn. My goodness, what a wonderful surprise. its a medium dry red wine that tastes wonderful. if it was £4-5 per bottle i would keep buying it. The dryness is...

Following on from private messages between myself and crE we have decided to do a brew-a-long of parsnip wine, known in at least one region of the UK as tanglefoot. No fancy sherry making type methods, just a simple recipe from berry's book. The provisional date for starting this is Monday...

Well plans are afoot for the next brew. Its either gonna be parsnip wine or sherry, tho i may split it and turn part into sherry and part into wine after the initial vigourous ferment quietens down. The recipe calls for young parsnips and i'm wondering why. can anyone shed any light on why this...

i thought that our little patch at the end of the garden would stand no chance of surviving winter. and i found various recipes for mint wine online. It seems its a pretty common one. I reckon i have enough to make 1/2 a gallon, which isn't my usual quantity, but hey i got nothing fermenting at...

with wintery nights and mulled wine approaching i am wondering if any of you have any experience of using spices in brews. i'm a fan of spices and have almost all of them in common use. nutmeg, cinnamon, cassia bark, green and brown cardamons, mace, cloves, star anise and fennel seem to me to be...

i enjoy making cheap wines, especially from ingredients that i can pick from hedgerows etc. the latest expedition was rosehips. but after the frost and into november i'm a bit stuck for ideas in this vein. has anyone got any suggestions for picking this time of the year? my fermenting bin is...

hi all i been brewing on and off for years with generally superb results. but the odd disaster ofc! after a break away the current fashion for screw top wine bottles means i have heaps of these. so the question is, are they useable for bottling home brewed wine. The excellent CJJ Berry adivses...