Thread: Homemade Country Wine Production

That does look like a nice heavy duty juicer. Glad the Meyer lemons produced good for you this year.

Originally Posted by SuperDave336

That does look like a nice heavy duty juicer. Glad the Meyer lemons produced good for you this year.

The tree is loaded now from the next bloom period. I double juiced it with Tree Life liquid fertilizer. That treatment is bringing back the color to the Lemon tree leaves. If you catch a Citrus tree fast enough when the leaves start changing color it can be fixed if fed the correct supplement. I am waiting on some new product to arrive, fertilizer for injecting into the drip irrigation system, foliar micro nutrient concentrate, and a 6 month time release pelletized fertilizer. All designed for container citrus trees.

Originally Posted by Rojo

The tree is loaded now from the next bloom period. I double juiced it with Tree Life liquid fertilizer. That treatment is bringing back the color to the Lemon tree leaves. If you catch a Citrus tree fast enough when the leaves start changing color it can be fixed if fed the correct supplement. I am waiting on some new product to arrive, fertilizer for injecting into the drip irrigation system, foliar micro nutrient concentrate, and a 6 month time release pelletized fertilizer. All designed for container citrus trees.

I added the Tree Life fertilizer to my Amazon cart from your first post. You sold me on it now and I will buy next order.

You need to keep it inside when its cold outside and shake it once a week. Certainly the best instant uptake tree fertilizer for potted trees I have found.

With all the other projects going at the same time the bottling of all the finished wines has been delayed. My shop is kinda junked up so the table was washed and sanitized before starting. I'm using a Buon Vino Mini-Jet wine filter with the #2 Polishing Filters installed. It's a simple operation after sanitizing everything the intake hose is lowered into a carboy, the pump is turned on, and wine is filtered and transferred to the 6 gallon wide mouth glass fermenter resting on the floor.



All the bottles must be sanitized before filling so here a bottle tree with a sanitizing pump installed on top is used to speed up the process. I allow the bottles to drip dry overnight before filling.



Once bottled I brought the 2025 batch of Blueberry wine inside to clean the outsides of all the bottles of sanitizer before sealing. The seals are done in the second picture and all that is left is to put the gold labels over the seals. I don't use paper labels as it's a pain to remove them later.

Dang you do good work. Thirsty thirsty, thirsty.

Getting these wines bottled is a must (pun intended) as it's finally cooled off enough I can get a 6 gallon batch of Mead going. Bon Temps is getting 1/2 for him to back sweeten to his liking before I bottle.



The Buon Vino Mini Jet wine filter Press really makes lighter color wines sparkle. My wine was plenty clear to bottle to our eyes but once you see the difference of clarity it's hard not to filter all your wines. If you look at the wine on the table then at the wine in the fermenter after filtering you can see the difference filtering makes. Racking the wine alone will not get to this kind of brilliance.



This Lemon Mandarin wine is ready to bottle now. Because I used the #2 Polishing Filters no sediment will buildup as the wine ages (2 years) in the bottle before drinking.



Here is a picture of the Lemon Mandarin wine bottled. Once sealed & labeled all will be tucked out of the way to age.

This was my first batch of Raspberry wine. The Raz-a-rita wine is a Raspberry / Lime blend. Costs to make this wine was the highest I have experienced coming in at $8.50 a bottle. The Raspberries is the big expense at $90. Sugar, Yeast, Corks, etc is relatively cheap considering I grow my own fruit except Raspberries. I have planted & killed Raspberry vines over and over, they just won't grow in the combination of heat & humidity here.



Concentrating on quality over quantity 13 bottles was all the fruit could produce but it is Fantastic without any bottle aging yet. Smooth, tastes like eating fresh, very ripe, sweet Raspberries.



This was the leftover wine after bottling was finished. I had to save it for the evening drink yesterday. The ABV came in between 17-18% so 34-36 proof. I have not invested in the equipment to get a final ABV. I sip and you feel warmth all the way down.



If I have not posted before the bottle seals shrink with boiling water. The little plastic seal holder holds the seal in place so you can invert the bottle and dip it in the boiling water. Like shrink tubing the seal shrinks around the top of the bottle. I like to use seals for two reasons, one it is easy to cut off unlike removing a full label and the second reason is if I make a mistake and have fermentation continue in the bottle for some reason the seal will help retain the cork. Too much fermentation the bottles will burst making a Royal Mess. So far I have not had a issue. No shortcuts, no problems.