new to wine making

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chaz1975

new to wine making

Post by chaz1975 » Wed Feb 01, 2017 6:11 pm

Hi

Ive been Brewing beers and ciders for a good few years now and have decided to try wine , ive read lost of topics on here and have learnt quite a bit of do's and dont's

The kit i have bought is the £30 Cellar 7 Rose kit , no extra sugar needed just add water , thought i'd try something straight forward in my first attempt

Has anybody else tried this kit ? what were your opinions ? and i've tried searching but i cannot find any info anywhere on what alcohol % i should expect once ready ?

thanks in advance

bobsbeer

Re: new to wine making

Post by bobsbeer » Wed Feb 01, 2017 8:07 pm

Not tried that kit, but I would expect around 11%-12%. You may want to check your gravity at 20lt and see where you are. If around 13% then add another liter of water and check again. Stop when you achieve 12%. You will be aiming for an FG of 0.992 so base your calculations on that.

antony

Re: new to wine making

Post by antony » Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:36 am

Lucky me...!!!
I am new to this whole brewing thing... Past two years I was into brewing beers. Yes, the first batch, I wouldn't say was up to my expectation. But the second one definitely was. So, I was thinking to start wine making soon. That's when I stumbled upon this forum and threads.
I would also like to know the do's and dont's. Thanks, @chaz1975 for sharing and starting this thread... Hope to see more replies and suggestions

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soupdragon
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Re: new to wine making

Post by soupdragon » Tue Mar 27, 2018 5:32 pm

Generally speaking the more you spend on a kit, the better the results. I've not long started down the wine route myself and have done a couple of the cheaper kits to get a feel of the process.
They were a bit rough to start with but did mellow a bit in time. The mid range ones do give much better results, Beaverdale and California Connoisseur are two that I've done and were far superior to the others. I've got a Cellar 7 kit to do next after a Harris Cabernet Sauvignon kit.
I may even treat myself to something nearer the £60 mark nearer Christmas as they're supposed to be even better again.
As has been said, following the instructions I've found is the best idea till you're comfortable with how each step progresses then you can tweak things if you wish.

Cheers. Tom

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Crastney
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Re: new to wine making

Post by Crastney » Wed Mar 28, 2018 1:36 pm

as ever, generally speaking, the more you pay the better the ingredients you get, the nicer the finished wine will be.
if the kit contains sugar, then it won't be as good as one which gets all the fermentables from grape juice/grape concentrate.
and if the grape variety of the concentrate is mentioned that'll help too.

but it depends on what you want. With beer, it can be cheaper to make your own, and you can alter the ingredients to your hearts content till you hit the exact style and type that you prefer, which of course might not be available commercially. with wine, that's not as easy.

my preference for making wine is to use free foraged ingredients (usually not grapes), and make drinkable table wine. things like rhubarb and ginger wine, or blackberry, or plum and damson wine, or elderberry wine (though this does need other flavours as it's very tannic, and needs a good few years to mellow). Elderberry port, with lots of other fruits, is very good, especially when compared on a cost basis to nice port you can buy in the shops.

what volume are you making with kits? is it one DJ (1 gallon) or one FV (5 or 6 gallons/23 ish litres)?
1 DJ is about 6 standard wine bottles - for a £60 kit that's £10 a bottle, which is expensive, but if that's for 5 times that volume, it's only £2 a bottle.
(have just searched - they're 30 bottle wine kits, so that's an FV rather than a DJ - so reasonably cheap)

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Re: new to wine making

Post by oldbloke » Wed Mar 28, 2018 5:40 pm

I've never done a kit. I do "country wines" - parsnip, carrot, dandelion, nettle, etc. Some nice plum when a friend's tree went crazy... etc. Does the work make it more rewarding than a kit? Dunno. And they're different to grape wines, if I did a kit I'd always be thinking I could buy something cheap in the supermarket that was as good... The fruit-tea-bag wine is a fun one, I think the string to google is "hippy juice". And then there's my rather successful coffee and legendary banananana wines...

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