Please click on an FAQ link below to view information regarding that question.   Question: What is the best temperature for my wine to ferment at?   Answer: Most Wine ingredient kit instructions tell you to ferment your wine within a specific temperature range. Midwest recommends 65°F to 75°F. Yeast thrives at these temperatures, and also likes to be kept at the same temperature until its done doing its work. If the fermentation area is too cool the wine will ferment very slowly. This will lead to an excess of CO2 gas in the wine, and it may not be ready to stabilize and fine in the expected timeframe. Additionally, the fining agents included with Winexpert kits don’t work well at temperatures outside of the 65°F to 75°F range. Below 64°F your wine kit may not clear at all! Since most people keep their house at around 68°F, just leaving your fermenter at room temperature should work out great.   Question: I’m allergic to sulfites. Can I make wine without them?   Answer: Some people believe that they are allergic to sulfites, and want to leave them out of their kits. While this is their option, it’s a bad idea. True sulfite allergies are extremely rare, and if someone has a reaction to drinking wine, it’s almost always due to some other cause. Besides, yeast make sulfites themselves during fermentation, so no wine can ever be sulfite-free, no matter what. Without the added sulfites, the kit will oxidize and spoil very rapidly. It will probably start to go off in less than 4 weeks, and be undrinkable in less than three months. Also, if the sulfite is left out, but the sorbate is added, the wine could be attacked by malolactic bacteria, which will convert the sorbate into the compound hexadienol, which smells like rotting geraniums and dead fish. The bottom line is this: if you do not add the sulfite to the kit, neither Midwest, nor Winexpert can guarantee the wine, so think carefully before you do it.   Question: I stirred the must when I made the wine, why do I need to stir it up again before I add stabilizers and/or fining agents?   Answer: When it comes time to stabilize and fine the wine, it has to be stirred vigorously enough to drive off all of the CO2 that has accumulated during fermentation. This is because the dissolved gas will attach to the fining agents, preventing them from settling out. You need to stir hard enough to make the wine foam, and keep stirring until it will no longer foam. Only then will the gas be driven off so the fining agents can work their magic. The Whip Wine Degasser (#G9100) is the perfect tool for this.   Question: Why does it take so long for my wine to be drinkable? I want it now!   Answer: Wine kits are ready to bottle in 28 or 45 days. This does NOT mean that they are ready to drink. If you really, really can’t wait, the minimum time before a kit tastes good is about one month after bottling. This is long enough for the wine to get over the shock of bottling, and begin opening up to release its aromas and flavors. Three months is much better, and the wine will show most of its character at this point. For most whites, however, and virtually all reds, at least six months is needed to smooth out the wine and allow it to express mature character. Heavy reds will continue to improve for at least a year, rewarding your patience with a delicious bouquet. If you can have some patience, you will be rewarded. Time is definitely the “magic ingredient” in wine. Many home winemakers will add a couple of glass carboys and an additional primary fermenter to their home winery, enabling them to have several batches fermenting at once. Since wine takes a while to be ready to drink, having multiple batches going all the time will help fill your wine cellar in no time. You can accomplish this by making 2 to 3 batches per month. Each batch will take three to six months or more before it is ready to drink. If you start with a wine that does not require extended aging, and you made two batches every month, you would have about 60 bottles of wine ready to drink, every month, starting three to six months after you made your first batch!   Question: I’ve noticed a little bit of mold on top of the corks of some of my wines. Is the wine spoiled? Is the bottle leaking?   Answer: This isn’t necessarily a sign that your wine has leaked through. It could be that a small amount of wine stayed on top of the cork at bottling and has molded there. Carefully wipe the top of the cork and the bottle neck with a clean damp cloth before extracting the cork, and the wine should be fine.   Question: How do I make fruit wine using the Oregon or Vintner’s Harvest fruit purees?   Answer: There are many ways to make wine with the purees. It comes down to personal preference. Oregon Fruit Products one gallon recipe (see chart) calls for one can of puree with enough sugar to bring the original gravity to 1.090 or higher. This produces a wine with an alcohol level of 12% by volume and will remain stable for a long time To make a fruit wine comparable to using a 96 oz. can of wine base, use two cans of Oregon Fruit Products Puree per five gallons and enough sugar to bring the gravity to 1.090 or higher. Add natural fruit flavoring enhancers to bring out flavor and give more aroma. Add sugar gradually both initially and for sweetening. Add 1/2 the initial sugar and take a gravity reading or taste if you are sweetening a finished wine before adding the rest. This will ensure that your wine doesn’t come out too strong. Fermentation will stop automatically, but wine must be stabilized with potassium sorbate if sugar is added after fermentation for sweetening. This will prevent renewed fermentation. The amounts of acid blend, yeast nutrient, white (table) sugar, and grape tannin vary depending on the fruit. Here are some guidelines: Apricot: l-1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 1-1/2 lbs. sugar, 1 tsp. pectic enzyme, 1/4 tsp. grape tannin. Blackberry: 1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 3/4 lbs. sugar, 1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme, no grape tannin. Blueberry: 2-1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 2 lbs. sugar, 1 tsp. pectic enzyme, no grape tannin. Cherry: 1-1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 1-1/2 lbs. sugar, 1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme, 1/4 tsp. grape tannin. Peach: 1-1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 1-1/2 lbs. sugar, 1 tsp. pectic enzyme, 1/4 tsp. grape tannin. Raspberry: 1/2 tsp. acid blend, 1 tsp. yeast nutrient, 1-1/2 lbs. sugar, 1 /2 tsp. pectic enzyme, 1/4 tsp. grape tannin. Use an open plastic bucket for a fermenter. For one gallon batches it is best to use a two gallon bucket and for five gallon batches, use a seven gallon bucket. Sterilize your fermenter and any equipment that will come into contact with the must. Dissolve the sugar and additives in a quart of warm water. Add the fruit puree and enough water to equal one gallon total volume. Add the other ingredients except the yeast. Stir well. For a sweeter wine, dissolve 2 to 4 teaspoons of sugar in 1/4 cup warm water. Add 1/2 teaspoon potassium sorbate to the wine and then add the sugar mixture to wine. Take a gravity reading. The must should be between 1.090 and 1.100. If it is lower, add enough sugar to bring the gravity up. Approximately 4 oz. of sugar will raise the gravity 10 points in one gallon of water. Make up a yeast starter using Red Star Cote Des Blancs or Lalvin 71B-1122 yeast and add to the must. If your bucket does not include a lid, cover the fermenter with cheese cloth or a fine nylon mesh straining bag. This allows the must to breathe. Stir must every day for 5 to 7 days (until the gravity is about 1.030). Rack into a sterilized one gallon jug or three gallon glass carboy (depending on volume made). Attach an airlock and ferment for 2 to 4 weeks or until fermentation is complete. The gravity reading should be 1.000 or lower. Rack wine off the sediment into another sterilized gallon jug or glass carboy. Add a fining agent according to directions and let set for 4 weeks. The wine can be bottled when it is clear and stable.   Question: Can I use apple cider from the supermarket to make hard or sweet cider?   Answer: No. Cider purchased at the super market will almost always contain preservatives and will rot before it will ferment. State and local laws require producers to treat apples with anti bacterial sprays prior to pressing and many require that stabilizers be added prior to sale. Go to your local apple orchard and ask them for wine or hard cider grade juice. Arrange to pick up your cider the day you will start to make it. The fresher the better! An easier method is to check out our new Vinoka Cider Press Cider Kits (#CID001, apple and #CID002, peach). These are designed to make 6 gallon batches, or they offer an alternate recipe for a 5 gallon batch that has a richer flavor, and is higher in alcohol.   Question: I think I have a stuck fermentation. How do I fix it?   Answer: By definition, a stuck fermentation is a fermentation that has stopped before all the available sugar in the wine has been converted to alcohol and CO2. If the bubbles in your airlock slow down before your wine has reached terminal gravity (usually 1.000 or lower), you may have a stuck fermentation.Were you to give up on the wine at this point, it would taste semi-sweet and pretty bad. Not to worry, there are ways to fix this. Before we get into how to fix it, let’s make sure that you have a stuck fermentation. Here’s a couple of ways to check: Is the specific gravity of your wine no longer falling, or tremendously sluggish? If you take hydrometer readings for three consecutive days, and the reading remains the same and is higher than 1.000, it’s probably stuck. Make sure you have a good airtight seal at your airlock. Ensure that the airlock firmly seated in the bung, and the bung securely seated in the mouth of the carboy. If there was not an airtight seal, you would not see bubbles out of your airlock. Is the temperature of your fermentation area between 65 and 75 degrees F? If it is too cold, the yeast can’t do it’s job (or does it very slowly). Fortunately, stuck fermentations are pretty rare. But when they do happen, it’s important to make corrections right away and get the fermentation going again for optimum results. Try the following tips to get that airlock bubbling again: 1. Simply move the fermenter to an area that is room temperature, or 68-70 degrees F. In most cases, too low a temperature is the cause of a stuck fermentation, and bringing the temp up is enough to get it going again. 2. Open up the fermenter, and rouse the yeast by stirring it with a sanitized spoon. Sometimes putting the yeast back in suspension will get it going again. 3. Add some yeast energizer (#8332, 8333) to the wine. Add 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of wine, and stir well. NOTE: While it may seem like a good idea, Midwest does NOT recommend adding yeast nutrient at this point. This may result in leftover vitamins that can stimulate spoilage microbes. 4. Rack the wine off of the old yeast, and pitch some fresh yeast in, preferably a highly active strain such as Lavlin EC-1118 or Red Star Premier Cuvee. If none of these tips get the fermentation going again, as a last resort, you can pitch a yeast starter. Do this by pulling a half gallon of must out of your fermenter. Add 1.5 to 2 teaspoons yeast energizer and a packet of yeast (Lavlin EC-1118 or Red Star Premier Cuvee). Stir this mixture up well, and place in a warm area. Once you see a vigorous fermentation, add it back to the original must.   Question: How can I prevent a stuck fermentation?   Answer: There are a few simple things you can do to ensure that you never have a stuck fermentation. First, just make sure your fermentation arrea is between 65 and 75 degrees F. Make sure that your equipment is properly cleaned and sanitized. Always use fresh yeast, and make sure you are using the yeast called for in the recipe. Don’t use any old packet you have laying around. Hydrating your yeast before pitching also helps, but make sure that you pitch the yeast within 20 minutes of hydration. Adding yeast nutrient (#8334) before pitching the yeast gives the yeast nourishment so that it will stay healthy throughout the fermentation process. Use 1 teaspoon per gallon. Lastly, aerate the must by vigorously stirring it just prior to pitching the yeast. Yeast needs oxygen to begin fermentation.   Question: I have some wine that has been aging for a year or so, and it’s taken on a brownish tint. What causes this?   Answer: The reason your wine browns is because it is oxidizing. All wines oxidize, but well-made, well-protected, and well-balanced wines resist oxidation for many, many years, and exceptional wines can last for 50-100 years without doing so. To last that long the wine has to have three characteristics: 1) It must be well-balanced for aging. This means the wine has more than normal tannin and acid. The wine will taste “rough” and harsh before being aged sufficiently. The average red wine, made well and balanced for taste, will require 1-4 years of aging to mature without oxidizing, all other things being equal. Good wines might go out to 10 years. Exceptional wines reach out for decades. 2) Exceptionally well-made. This means the wine is made from the very best grapes of a very good year, picked at the hour of perfect ripeness, and are crushed, pressed, fermented, bottled, and aged with perfection. The average wine may be well-made, but if it lacks the perfect fruit required for long age it will simply mature faster and then head downhill. 3) The wine must be well protected against oxidation. To resist oxidation, a wine must be sulfited when the grapes are being crushed, its sulfite level maintained according to the demands of its pH during fermentation and bulk aging, its exposure to air minimized or eliminated during fermentation, racking and aging, and it must be bottled using only the finest (not the cheapest) corks. The biggest cause of early oxidation in homemade wines is the failure to use sulfites, or not using them properly. The second biggest cause of early oxidation is improper handling of the wine during fermentation, rackings, aging, bottling, and storage. Sulfites are derived from adding potassium metabisulfite (or one finely crushed and then dissolved Campden tablet per gallon of wine) to the must and wine. Some of the potassium metabisulfite binds with various components of the wine but about half is “free” or unbound sulfur in the form of sulfur dioxide gas. This gas is initially trapped in the liquid but slowly escapes into the atmosphere. It therefore must be renewed from time to time. This sulfur dioxide gas serves many purposes in winemaking, from killing spoilage bacteria that come into the wine on the skins of the grapes to destroying the enzymes that cause fruit pulp to turn brown. Sulfur dioxide gas also drives oxygen out of the wine, and keeps it out by filling all the spaces between the wine’s molecules, the places oxygen usually saturate. By keeping the sulfur dioxide level “just right,” one protects the wine and keeps it from browning. When racking and otherwise handling wine, the less air contact allowed the longer the wine will last without oxidizing. Since sulfur dioxide is a gas, splashing the wine drives it out of the wine and oxygen in the air immediately rushes in and takes its place, dooming the wine to early oxidation. In commercial wineries, the best wines are not racked until the receiving container (tank or carboy) is “sparged” with carbon dioxide -- filled with carbon dioxide from a tank, which “pushes” oxygen-containing air out of the container so no contact is made between oxygen and the incoming wine. At the same time, potassium metabisulfite is added to the receiving container to make up for any deficiency in sulfur dioxide measured in the wine. This procedure eliminates contact with oxygen and raises the sulfur dioxide level to where it should be even while some of the sulfur dioxide it lost due to agitation of the wine.   Question: About a week after bottling some wine, some crystals formed in the bottle on the side it was laying on. It won’t shake off so it must be hard. What did I do wrong?   Answer: The crystals you see is potassium bitartrate. This is excess tartaric acid that is precipitating out as a more complex compound. Potassium in the grape combines with tartaric acid to form a sparingly soluble potassium bitartrate. The solubility is reduced further by increased alcohol and the result is precipitation of crystals. Tartaric acid has two available H+ ions and the potassium ion replaces one of these. Thus, the potassium bitartrate is still acidic and is actually lowering the acid of the wine surrounding it. If you chill the wine for a week or so, even more crystals will form. These will not actually hurt the wine, but are unsightly and a nuisance to get out of the bottles once emptied. You have two choices. One, you can open the bottles and very gently transfer the wine to new bottles, or two, you can leave the wine alone and decant it before drinking. If you do the first, chill the wine first for a week or two to encourage as much of the excess tartaric acid to precipitate out as potassium bitartrate. Transfer the wine with as little disturbance to it as you can manage, as at this point the risk of the wine taking up oxygen and oxidizing is very high. A chilled wine will take up less oxygen than a room temperature wine. To clean up the bottles with the deposits in them, fill them with very hot water and let them soak for a couple of hours. The crystals should dissolve, but a bottle brush may be necessary to aid the process. To prevent this from happening next time, cold stabilize the wine for two weeks or so before bottling it. Wine does not freeze until it reaches about 25 degrees F., so you can actually bring the wine to a 30-degree chill without worrying about it freezing up in the carboy.   Question: My wine is too dry, gravity is below 0.990, and tastes pretty lousy. How can I fix it?   Answer: The first step is making sure the wine is stabilized and will not referment in the bottle. Midwest also suggests adding one crushed Campden tablet per gallon to the wine and let it sit 24 hours before sweetening or bottling--to keep the wine from absorbing oxygen during the process. Next is choosing the method. You can either (1) add sugar or (2) blend with a too-sweet wine. The choice is yours. If you add sugar (by far the easier method), boil a measured amount of water and slowly dissolve a double-measured amount of sugar into it. The 2 to 1 by volume ratio is still the best. Sweetening a too-dry wine does not give immediate feedback. It takes a couple of hours to a day for the wine to fully absorb the sugar and integrate it into its character. Add various amounts of sugar-water to your sterilized wine bottles and mark them with a Post-It note. For example, you might put 1-1/2 tsp in one, 2 tsp in another, 2-1/2 tsp in a third, 3 tsp in a fourth, etc. Fill the bottles and seal them with a tasting cork (t-cork). Allow the bottles to sit about one hour and then measure the specific gravity of a sample from each bottle. Write this on the Post-It notes. Now taste each sample. If they still retain the harshness of the dry wine despite having been sweetened, let them sit overnight and taste them the next day. Decide which one you like best and add that amount of sugar-water to each bottle before filling it. Be sure to replace the t-corks with regular corks. If you sweeten a too-dry wine, especially one with lots of tannin, try putting aside a few bottles of the dry wine to taste in a couple of years. They do mellow out, and once the sharpness mellows they are quite often excellent wines. If not, you can blend them in a decanter with a too-sweet wine when you drink it.   Question: I’m having some success with the concentrated wine kits, but want more tannin flavor. How can I accomplish this?   Answer: Tannin is usually added to the must before fermentation begins, but this is not absolutely necessary and, in your case, not even desired. I add it to most of my non-grape wines before fermenting, but often adjust it upward by taste just before bottling. This can be a delicate process. When the wine has cleared and is no longer forming sediments, sample it. The tannic bite is on the tip of the tongue and easily identified. If not adequate to your taste, add just a bit (1/16 of a tsp per gal) and gently stir with a glass rod or wooden dowel. Refit the airlock and let set about an hour and taste again. If still not adequate, add another 1/16 tsp per gal, stir, and let set another hour before tasting. If you think you’re almost but not quite there, add even less next time. By adding just a bit at a time, you’ll soon be able to taste the threshold you seek without a high risk of overdoing it. With most grape wines, it shouldn’t take too much to boost the tannin to your taste. Another technique we’ve heard of to boost tannin and aid a sluggish finishing fermentation at the same time is to add a few (10-20) young, green oak leaves to the wine as its specific gravity drops below 1.000. Crush the leaves into a ball, put them in a sterilized nylon or muslin bag with 2-3 marbles (NOT steelies), tie the bag closed, and drop the bag in the carboy. Pin the tie-string between the carboy and bung for easy retrieval later. Leave this in the wine for about 10-14 days, removing when the taste is right. The leaves seem to reactivate the yeast and the wine usually ferments to dryness during that time.   Question: I’d like to add strawberries to my wine. What is the proper procedure for this?   Answer: Freezing the strawberries first concentrates the sugar, breaks down the cell walls and aids the pectic enzyme considerably. Thaw completely, then cull through the strawberries, discarding any unsound ones and removing any stems and greenery. Chop them roughly and put in a sterilized nylon straining bag tied closed. Crush them with your hands inside the primary. Ferment 7-10 days, gently squeeze, and discard. Continue fermentation as instructed with your kit. OPTIONAL: If you have a grape or fruit press and additional strawberries, do the following. As the wine is finishing, stabilize it, wait 7-10 days for dead yeast to fall out, then rack. Using the fruit press, press the juice from another 2 lbs of strawberries, add the juice to the wine and bottle immediately. This will dilute the wine a bit, but will add a bouquet to the wine like you can’t imagine. But, you MUST stabilize the wine first or you’ll pop your corks (or worse, your bottles will explode).   Question: Why Blend Wines?   Answer: There are several reasons a home winemaker might want to utilize blends. A good example is to blend a wine that is too dry with one that is too sweet to create a more balanced wine. In this instance, the two wines should be similarly based, both Merlots, for example. You may also want to blend wines to create a new flavor profile, integrating complexities from varying bases. Blending grape and non-grape wines can yield some interesting and delicious results. It is the ultimate way of creating a new flavor profile. In most cases, the grape wine will predominate, both because it brings body to the blend and because fruit flavors seem to blend better with grape than the other way around. Another way of saying this is that grape wines tend to absorb a fruity character from non-grape wines, but non-grape wines tend to lose their fruitiness to grape wines. With a little experimentation and patience, blending is easy to do. See next FAQ, “How do I Blend Wines?”