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My name means "Little Dragon" in Latin - always been into "Sword and Sorcery" and RPGs and I've always liked dragons. And I can still remember most of the Latin I was taught :D

5 litres of juice would have given me 154 grams of sugar per litre giving an OG of around 1060 according to my tables. I suppose I could just have added sugar to the grape juice but I'm new to all this - this is my second "dark side" wine after first making a WOW. I'll keep you all informed as...

I've been having a go at making this, weekend before last I assembled the ingredients: 3 litres of the juice, sugar, cop of tea for tannin. I did add pectolase but I suspect it doesn't need it. Using a Youngs general purpose wine yeast from Wilcos (which is convenienty opposite Waitrose!) The...

I do most of my fermentation in an unheated garage. However I built what has become known as "The Bloop Cube" which is a 1m cube framework which I knocked together using some bits of spare timber I had lying about and covered both sides with that foil coated bubblewrap you get for roof...

I asked the same question myself recently: http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=24187 Smooths out the ferment as it gives the yeasties something to hang onto, apparently. In the first day or so of fermentation it was rather amusing to watch the bentonite particles floating up...

@dracunculus2010 Also got a blog at grumpy-dragon.blogspot.com Warning - can get a bit sweary at times ;)

Waitrose are doing a red grape juice that's made from a Merlot grape, so the Mrs tells me. I was wondering could I use this to make a wine from on its own, i.e. like a WOW but without the orange juice? I am guessing at best it'll make a rose like wine rather than a proper red but I was just...

^^^ It took about 24 hours to get going but it's blooping away merrily now.

^^^ Thanks. In the case of the Merlot it seems to have stopped the ferment starting altogether :wha:

I've had a couple of wine kits (Paklabs Chilean Merlot and a Richies White Bordeaux) that have included bentonite which it said to add at the start of fermentation. Given that I thought Bentonite was a clearing agent can anyone tell me why it's being added at the start?

I do like your "fermentation fridge" and I was thinking of something similar as I'm currently fermenting in an unheated garage using either an immersion heater (for the 23l ferments) and a heated seed propagation tray for the demijons. How are you heating them? Any tips on construction?

I have my first WOW that I think is just coming ready for racking and fining. However I made it in a 1 gallon demijon and I'll be transferring it into another one which, given the sediment, is probably going to leave a fair amount of headspace in the receiving jar. From what I gather air = bad...

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll probably go for a mixture of 10 and 3 litre sizes (just for ease of moving about!) Last dumb question; do you need to sterilise the bags before you use them or are they sterile when they arrive?

I'm rather new to home wine making but I'd be interested in using a box. I've just bottled my first merlot and washing, steralising and filling 30 bottles is a real chore! Can I ask do you need any special filling equipment and how do these fare if kept on the fridge for white wines?

Hi I'm pretty new to homebrew but with times being hard I'm resenting most of what I pay for a bottle of wine going to HM Government and I figure I can do just as well myself. I'm starting off on kits just to get my hand in. Bought a WineWorks starter set and just made some Pino Grigo (which...