Comments

andy J.
Posted 1 year ago

Sourcing Mexican grapes for next years LE's?

Sourcing Tequila for this year's liver damage. Mostly successful, if I say so myself.

Jim Burns
Posted 1 year ago

I would never ever take my two kilts to Mexico. only my Irish National plaid thong, and order a Guinness !

To be fair, I only took two of my fourteen kilts to Mexico, and only wore them one at a time.

Drew
Posted 1 year ago

Ya' know, I think I could pull off the kilt look. But something in khaki. I doubt there is a plaid designated for the Abas family line. Perhaps there is one for the McAbas line. ??

Drew,

Let's face it, I'm not even Scottish, I just like the kilt. Technically I'm entitled to wear about a dozen different kilts due to certain affiliations I have (my city tartan, White Rock, the provincial one,etc), but if you want to wear a kilt, I say pick a pretty tartan and run with it. If you're serious, you should go in for the whole get-up, as it does cut a nice figure. 

Tim

Comments

Allen Brown
Posted 1 year ago

Seriously? Tim, I swear, if it was anybody else telling me this, I wouldn't buy it. I have been so woried about topping up, that I don't do it. I didn't want to water the wine down, & I didn't want to add some INFERIOR comercial wine to my wonderful concoction. So, I have invested in THOUSANDS of marbles that I sanitize & Add to my carboys to take up the airspace.

I may have to rethink my methods a bit.

Thanks!

 

Ha, and here I was, thinking nobody would be interested in this but me. Trust me Allen: it's time for you to lose your marbles.

Tim

Laura
Posted 1 year ago

Tim, I have been making kit wine for 4 years and I can tell you, I REALLY hated adding water to my delicious wine. I did it in the beginning and then I started using that co2 gas instead. Now that you have explained it, I will listen to the instructions and do as I'm told!! P.S. I never got into Lego's.

Never into Legos! Well, nobody's perfect, and you make wine now, so it's all good.

Tim

Pat
Posted 1 year ago

After 10 years, I think this is the first time it ever occurred to me that we would be diluting. We've always followed the instructions and added the wine. Blind faith and all that. But I will admit that we've always been a bit leary about letting too much sediment/lees being racked.

Phil K
Posted 1 year ago

Tim, I just bottled a Wine Expert Spec. Ed. kit (a Primativo from last year). As I was glancing through the instructions in preparation to filing them, I noticed a sentence that reminded me of this post. I hope that you will be able to clarify this for me - it is paragraph 2 under "Racking and Clarification" and says: Top up carboy to within 2 inches of the bottom of the bung. Use cool water or, preferably a similar wine..." Clearly, cool water is an option under this instruction, but it does indicate a preference for topping with a similar wine. I actually get a bit of a kick out of perusing my wine rack to figure out what wine is most similar to the one being worked at the moment. What say you?

Phil,

Yep, that's the exception to my discussion of topping: for the extra racking after fining and stabilising, you really want at that point to top with wine. While it's not ideal to add water at that point, we've traditionally left it up to the customer to choose what they top with. I can't really order people to buy a bottle of wine for topping (if it's their first kit) or to use up wine from another batch, although almost everyone does.

Which brings up something else: this particular blog has generated a tonne of interest, comments and feedback, a lot of it offline, and it's prodded me to look at the way we do our instruction sets. Stay tuned, and things may get a bit more clear in the future.

Tim

Don Hodgen
Posted 1 year ago

I played with Lincoln Logs

Ray Grenkow
Posted 1 year ago

This was a great article which answered the one question that I had about topping with water or wine. Thanks, and I really get the LEGO analogy.

Glad to help, Ray. Analogies R Us.

Phil K
Posted 1 year ago

Tim, If you are taking suggestions as to how to make your directions more clear, may I chime in? I would suggest leaving a space for the hobbyist to put in the date and a short description of their last activity with the wine. I find that I put my notes over your instructions so that I will know precisely where I am (which would likely be less of a problem if I didn't always have a short ton of different wines and meads in production).