How much is too much?

[Chevette Girl]

Before Xmas I, needed to reorganize all my stored wine in the basement as part of getting the basement ready for moving the winery down there. I figured, what the heck, I'll do an inventory of everything and fill out my log book index sheet while I'm at it... so now I have an Excel spreadsheet with a listing for every batch I've made since I started, including type (mead/wine/mel/meth/JAO/hydromel/kit wine/failure), main ingredients, start and bottle dates, alcohol%, number of 750 ml bottles, number of dessert wine or beer bottles, number of bigger bottles (usually 1.5 L or 1/2 gal).

Finally got all the data entered today. Total completed wine in storage:
160 x 750 ml,
83 x ~350 ml and
21 x 1/5 litre or 1/2 gal or other large bottle

Plus the 64 gallons scattered about in 5, 3 and 1 gallon carboys...

Guess I better start drinking!

 

[Tannin Boy]

Sounds like you could open a small liqueur store...

TB

 

[icedmetal]

Too much is when you can no longer use your space because it's so stuffed with bottles / carboys / equipment / etc. But of course, as you have done, that's when you do a little reorganization to make more space!

We've got 100 gallons in secondary, 10 gallons in primary, and I don't even know how many cases of bottles lying about. Thankfully it's almost time to bottle some cider to free up some carboys, we'd really like to do more traditionals in winter and spring so we can add fruit when it comes into season.

 

[Tannin Boy]

Too much is when you can no longer use your space because it's so stuffed with bottles / carboys / equipment / etc. But of course, as you have done, that's when you do a little reorganization to make more space!

We've got 100 gallons in secondary, 10 gallons in primary, and I don't even know how many cases of bottles lying about. Thankfully it's almost time to bottle some cider to free up some carboys, we'd really like to do more traditionals in winter and spring so we can add fruit when it comes into season.

Ice,

You ready to bottle the cider this soon?
When did you first put it up?
Mine has been sitting for for just about a month since primary finished..
I expect I will start to bottle around April or so.

TB

 

[Chevette Girl]

Too much is when you can no longer use your space because it's so stuffed with bottles / carboys / equipment / etc. But of course, as you have done, that's when you do a little reorganization to make more space!

... I am the queen of repacking... this summer I had a chevette-shaped hole in the clutter in my garage and even that was starting to tower over the poor little car, so in one day, I unpacked, sorted and repacked it and without actually removing a single thing (why do I always do this the day AFTER garbage day?), in fact adding one piece of furnitire from the basement to make room for the laundry tub, I was able to walk all the way around the car without having to squeeze through...

I'm actually considering taking all the recycle-bin empties I haven't de-labelled yet to the Beer Store for $.15 deposit just to get them out of my way, and then just buying more new clean ones when I next bottle... just so I've got room to move down there while I'm getting things established, I still need to hang a cabinet so I've got somewhere to hang all my hoses etc, and finish getting the countertop stabilized before it's officially a basement winery.

 

[Medsen Fey]

How much is too much?

If it is good mead, I'm not sure there is such a thing as too much...
Still, when you can no longer afford space to store it, you may be getting close. Of course I find quite a number of folks are more than willing to participate in the Fusel Shack's "adopt a case" program as long as I don't fret over a bit of spillage.

 

[Chevette Girl]

If it is good mead, I'm not sure there is such a thing as too much...

Some of it is wine of varying quality that I'm hoping will age out to something good, and so far, some of it has, some of it hasn't. I'm patient.

Most of the meads have been drunk as they mostly turned out pretty palatable early on.

Most of the really good wines have been mostly given away but I always hoard the last few bottles to see if age improves them further...

A lot of my inventory is small batches of second-run mels of lower-alcohol (~10%) where I didn't think much of them when I bottled it and I'm waiting to see what happens with them too. Main problem is it just doesn't occur to me to open a bottle! That and I'm usually pretty busy most evenings (out of the house kind of busy) and by the time I get home I need food, not alcohol...

 

[icedmetal]

Ice,

You ready to bottle the cider this soon?
When did you first put it up?
Mine has been sitting for for just about a month since primary finished..
I expect I will start to bottle around April or so.

TB

Yep, the ciders are all clear at this point, I may or may not rack them again to remove the last vestiges of sediment. I've actually managed to bottle before the new year on more than one occasion after pressing the cider in early October. So I'm actually a little behind schedule if anything this year.

The cysers however, are still clearing. I'm not sure if the difference in clearing times has more to do with honey vs sugar, or different yeast strains, but I suspect it's a combination of those two factors. I'm really antsy at this point for the cysers to finish, as they went dry and I'm planning to blend them with last year's cyser that got stuck too sweet. That'll free up 4 carboys right there! And oh boy, I cannot wait to see how much more folks like the cyser over the cider!