| I wonder what it was like to have to learn a | | | | yeast, added oxygen, and restarted the |
| trade from someone who had learned it decades | | | | fermentation. This can happen if you slosh your |
| before. Did you realize that most parents already | | | | wine too much while filling the bottles. Your best |
| knew what their children were going to be, long | | | | bet would be to rack the wine after it has |
| before they had the child? In the olden days, a | | | | fermented, but place the airlock on it still. Check |
| godparent was someone whom the child was | | | | back in 24 hours and see if fermentation has |
| turned over to at a certain age - usually to learn | | | | begun again. Do this every 10 - 14 days, since |
| a trade for life. Now, yes, the life expectancy, and | | | | pressure fronts in weather can misguide you, and |
| the possibility of losing your family to illness or | | | | make the wine look as it is done - when, in fact, |
| other occurrences did happen as well, but the role | | | | it is not! |
| of godparent was that of mentor for the most | | | | If you have ended up with a sickly sweet wine, |
| part. | | | | then you have not added enough yeast to make |
| I hate to do the whole | | | | a proper fermentation time. You can either add |
| when-I-was-your-age-stereotype, but are you not | | | | more yeast in your next batch, and thereby, |
| glad that we can learn how to do things, and do | | | | allowing more fermentation time in your wine, or |
| them properly, without the use of having | | | | you can cut the sweetness by mixing wines, and |
| someone stand by to teach you. Yes, for some | | | | adding a very dry wine to yours. On the other |
| things, you may need it, but for others - like | | | | hand, if your wine is too dry (sour), then you can |
| winemaking - you have a good chance of finding | | | | sweeten it by adding sweeten wine, or adding a |
| out how to do such things properly, simply by | | | | simple sugar (a mix of sugar and water). |
| reading about it! (Hooray for technological | | | | It is always good to taste-test all of these - no |
| advancements!) Go geeky I.T. people!) | | | | matter if you are drying down a wine or |
| There will always be problems that need | | | | sweetening it. Add a few teaspoons of the dry or |
| addressing when it comes to trying something | | | | sweet mix to wine you are trying to fix. Bottle |
| new. Several problems that can occur, and the | | | | those overnight (you are making small samples - |
| tips for fixing them, are listed below. If your corks | | | | not all of the wine), and taste-test them in the |
| keep popping off the bottles once they have | | | | morning. Figure out which one you like best, and |
| been poured, then you have not allowed all of the | | | | go with that mixture to re-flavor your wine. |
| yeast in your wine to ferment. Somewhere along | | | | Afterwards, you can move on to bottling all of |
| the winemaking process, you have swished the | | | | the wine. |