little fruit flies are in my kitchen while I am doing my wine. I have not seen any in my must or secondaries, but I feel like I am playing with gasoline inside a torchlit room. does anyone have some suggestions? I am using flypaper right now which is catching them, but more still apear.
not quite clouds of them, but enough to have me ask here.
we always get fruitflies too, though we keep our hobby in the basement. Nonetheless, the little bastards are an annoyance, but just part of the process. Make sure you keep some kind of a cover over primaries- a sheet, towel, old tablecloth, whatever, to keep those buggers out. If you're using whole fruit to ferment, this is very important. Whenever I punch down the cap, a few flies invariably turn up. I usually just stock up on the sticky rolled up tubes of flypaper from Home Despot & hang 4 - 6 of them around the primary fermenter. The good news: as soon as the food source (sweet must) disappears (ferments to dry) so too do the little varmints. Be scrupulous in your cleaning - wipe everything down & mop thoroughly. We do our best & just ride it out... HTH regards, bob
Last year I hung up fly papers like you said , but attached a couple pieced of orange peel too the paper....seemed to chum em' in . I found these strips at Lowes...they look like the old Shell no pest strips....kills them just fine , but should be used in a pretty open area ( Toxic in food prep areas). If you can get pyrethrin spray , it's certified organic , very effective , and one would assume less toxic to people and wine. Another trick is a small jar with a little hole in lid with a sip of beer or wine it ...buggers fly in but not out. We've pretty much gotten used to drinking our wine with a coaster sitting on to between swigs. Good Luck.
I learned this from a wine making store in Dover, Ohio. I put a small glass - with angles sides - like 45-60 degrees, with 1/4 inch of red wine in the bottle. These fruit flies end up in the wine and drowning. This also works around fruit. It takes a couple days, but works. I use like high-ball glasses with angled sides. It works, not sure if the angle matters, but I don't experiment with success. :*)
And cockroaches - learned this from a Navy retired dude from WW II who used it on ships and subs, mix a paste of Boric Acid powder with water - so it's almost toothpaste consistency. put into a shallow small container (even a plastic milk carton lid) and put on the floor several places. Cockroaches are gone in a few days to a week. Even if infested.
That last one has nothing to do with wine making pests, but thought I'd share - it sure worked for me in many places.
Anyone know how to get rid of squirrels from bird feeders? Just kidding, let's stick to winemaking. haha.
DAve
Tater wrote:
Just one off-topic post ... mix your seed with ground red hot pepper. You can buy this pre-mixed a lot of places. Birds don't taste it and the squirrels are funny to watch the first time or two, then don't come back.
Derric
DrinksForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.