Simplified wine making

[LAC]

Thanks you SS. I will post a few recipes for those of us who don't yet grow our own. That being said, I still find it miles better than the £5 to £6 bottles of plonk from the off licence and it only costs me about £1.30 a litre to produce. And the standard off licence bottles are only 750ml in size. Good thing I'm quite strong willed though as I normally only drink it at the weekends, apart from a glass or two occasionally during the week.

Can I pick your brains for some info? When you bottle up or rack the brew, do you use any additives/preservatives to keep it? I've just been leaving a small gap at the top of the bottle which seems to keep it quite well without the use of any additives. I crack it every few days for the first few weeks just in case the secondary fermentation hasn't completely stopped yet. A few weeks ago I bottled up some mead but noticed it was a bit too dry for my taste, so I backsweetened it with some more honey. Unbeknown to me at the time it started fermenting again in the bottle and one of the bottles spectacularly exploded when sitting on the drinks shelf! Sounded like a gunshot, and poor LAC nearly had a heart attack! You live and learn, you learn and live!