Making wine from a kit comes with all sorts of advantages that fresh fruit cannot offer. While commercial wineries will choose grapes because of the additional complexities that can be extracted, shipping 80 pounds of fresh grapes to your home as a part of a hobby really isn’t realistic. Luckily, wine kits have been consistently improving their quality over the last few decades and they come in varieties that can match anyone’s wine making needs. Also, these kits come with simple wine making instructions that should always be followed – once you’ve produced a few batches you can start experiment some with the process.
Wine kits come in two distinct types: juice kits and concentrate kits. These are pretty self-explanatory, a concentrate kit will need water added; a juice kit won’t. Wine made from juice will possess more of the original grape than a wine made from concentrate, but concentrates are less expensive. When looking into concentrates, juices, and mixtures of both there is always a direct relationship between the purity of the juice and the price.
The Basic Equipment:
Gallon Jug (glass) – for preparing sanitizing solution
Primary Fermenter – this is the plastic pail used to start your batch
Measuring Cups – a 2 quart capacity one for measuring water, and 1 cup one for measuring ingredients
Long Handled Spoon – used for stirring the batch, don’t use wood as it is harder to sterilize and can pick up more germs
Hydrometer – this is used for measuring the gravity of your wine
Syphon Hose (5 feet) – this is for transferring the wine from the primary fermenter to a carboy
2 Glass Carboys (5 gallon) – one carboy is used for holding the wine, the other is used when transferring it
Airlock and Rubber Bung – this attaches to the rubber stop, it allows carbon dioxide to escape the wine without allowing air in
Food Grade Funnel – for mixing ingredients
Wine Thief – for extracting must samples from a carboy
Bottling Attachment – this is for bottling the wine with the syphon hose
Getting Started
Open the container in the kit, you can take a small taste of the contents to make it sure it seems right: should be sweet and juicy. Pour the contents into your primary fermenter; add the ingredient packets, and the water. Stir it all up with your long handled spoon and add the yeast.
Keep your fermentation batch at a temperature above 68 degrees Fahrenheit, most reds typically like a temperature of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Above 90 degrees will be too hot for the yeast to properly initiate fermentation and the wine won’t taste right. Use the recommended amount of yeast with your kit – one of the nicest things about adding yeast is that while you can add too little you really can’t add too much, if there is any doubt; err on the side of generosity.
Depending on the temperature you decided on it should take between 7 and 10 days for the must to reach the right gravity reading. Use your hydrometer to check its specific gravity reading which should be 1.020. On a side note it’s a great idea to measure the specific gravity when you first pour the contents into the primary fermenter, your kit will tell you what the specific gravity is supposed to be but it doesn’t hurt to double check.
Rack the Wine
Now that the must has reached 1.020 specific gravity you can rack it into a clean carboy. Place the primary fermenter on a table with the carboy below it; place the end of the siphon in the bottom of the primary fermenter with the other end feeding into the carboy. Suck three times then place that end into the carboy, this will begin the syphoning into the carboy. Top the carboy with cool water that has been boiled, allowing it to fill up right below the rubber bung, connect the airlock. Then wait ten days, repeat the process into another carboy, and wait three or four weeks.
For the final racking you will add 3/8 of a teaspoon of sulfite to the mixture in rinsed and sanitized carboy. The best way to do this is to use your wine thief to extract a couple ounces, mix that with the sulfite and put that in the new carboy (this way it’s mixed together rather than just letting the sulfite sit at the bottom).
Now store the wine somewhere away from direct sunlight, the cooler and darker the better, and wait four to six weeks.
Filtering the Wine
Now we add bentonite to the wine, which connects to the yeast particles and settles at the bottom of the batch. This is not a necessary step, and people will argue on both sides as to whether you should leave the yeast or fine it with bentonite. This is up to you.
After adding the bentonite it is then time to filter the wine, which will extract the bentonite/yeast sediment and any other sediment that have developed in the wine. This is also up to you, if you have been careful in your fining and haven’t added an excess of bentonite filtering isn’t necessary. Some people do it consistently, others believe it not important. You can loan or rent a filtration system, it isn’t a good idea to buy one until you’ve become a dead serious winemaker as they are quite expensive.
Bottling
You will need 26 750ml bottles for a 5 gallon batch of wine. Attach the bottle attachment to the syphon, putting the other end into the very bottom of the carboy. Siphon the wine again, and fill the bottles one half inch shy of the cork. You may want to rent a corker for this process, but there are floor corkers which are very easy to use. After corking allow the bottles to sit upright for a week so the corks expand out fully, then lay them on their sides so the wine immerses the cork – this way it won’t dry out.
Conclusion
Ta-da! You’ve bottled your first batch. Different kits will age at different rates, and last for different amounts of times. Generally a kit wine is great for two years but it could last even longer depending on the fruits used.
