Justibone
Well-Known Member
So when my fiancee (at the time, now Mrs. Justibone) and I decided we wanted to brew a wine for our wedding, we eventually selected an Island Mist kit, blackberry merlot to be specific. The cost was about $80, so it's not the cheapest kit out there... it's a medium price kit IMO.
We bought the kit in March or so, but based on advice of the forum by some random person, we got the impression that the wine "didn't keep". We therefore intentionally delayed brewing it until just two months before the ceremony. I've come to decide the following things:
1) wine "not keeping" means -- it's not good to store it for years, months is fine (and in fact good)
2) Whatever timeline the instructions give, multiply it by four and that's probably better
Storing a kit in your house is the same as it sitting on the shelf at the store, the yeast are not any more vital by the time you get around to making the kit, and in fact, they are likely a good deal less vital. If in doubt, use fresh yeast -- that goes for all kits; beer, wine, mead, whatever. We should have gotten fresh yeast.
Using the instructions you start out brewing a merlot, the blackberry juice comes later. The instructions told us to do the first racking at gravity 1.040 or so, but I missed that because it fermented so fast. I did the first racking at 1.010 instead.
I did another racking after it hit 0.990 or so (I don't have my records with me as I write this). I believe at this point they have you add meta and sorbate to kill the yeast, and that's when you add the sweetened blackberry juice to give it a good flavor. You put it back in the carboy to bulk age it (for, like, a week?) and then bottle it after that. All told they estimate that you can make wine in 3-4 weeks or so.
How was it?
Smelly. Sulfury. Nasty. We used the proper amounts of K-meta for sanitization and also to stop re-fermentation when we added the blackberry juice, but the wine still smelled like Satan's breakfast. If we had bottled then, it would have been $80 down the crapper. We came on here and searched for solutions. We saw the copper technique, and tested that on a few ounces... not much result. We tried aerating it, and that worked great on the glass we drank, but were we about to purposely oxidize six gallons of wine? No thanks. What I read instead was that sometimes bubbling CO2 up through sulfury wine can get rid of the stench. I got some dry ice, drilled a hole in a 2L bottle cap, ran a new, clean aquarium aeration stone and hose from the 2L into the stone in the wine. Three days later, the wine was better, but whether that was from the CO2 or just time, who can say?
What caused the funk? Well, either I made a boo-boo concentrating my meta solution, or stressed yeast, or "other". I don't think it was my meta, b/c I've used the same meta on another batch of wine and there was no problem then. It very well could have been stressed montrachet yeast that came with the kit -- they have been known to make their objections known in sulfury tones when they are mistreated. As for other, who can tell?
In the end, the product was good, but the timeline is unrealistic for producing really good wine. Some extra time bulk aging in a carboy and some extra time in the bottle (4 months total now) has made the wine pretty good. It wouldn't win any awards, but what can you expect from combining an amateur and a mid-price kit?
I would recommend Island Mist kits to friends, but only if they have several batches under their belts already, or a friend with more experience nearby.
That's my $.02 on Island Mist kits.
Wine Taste 4/5
Instructions 2/5
Ease of Use 5/5
We bought the kit in March or so, but based on advice of the forum by some random person, we got the impression that the wine "didn't keep". We therefore intentionally delayed brewing it until just two months before the ceremony. I've come to decide the following things:
1) wine "not keeping" means -- it's not good to store it for years, months is fine (and in fact good)
2) Whatever timeline the instructions give, multiply it by four and that's probably better
Storing a kit in your house is the same as it sitting on the shelf at the store, the yeast are not any more vital by the time you get around to making the kit, and in fact, they are likely a good deal less vital. If in doubt, use fresh yeast -- that goes for all kits; beer, wine, mead, whatever. We should have gotten fresh yeast.
Using the instructions you start out brewing a merlot, the blackberry juice comes later. The instructions told us to do the first racking at gravity 1.040 or so, but I missed that because it fermented so fast. I did the first racking at 1.010 instead.
I did another racking after it hit 0.990 or so (I don't have my records with me as I write this). I believe at this point they have you add meta and sorbate to kill the yeast, and that's when you add the sweetened blackberry juice to give it a good flavor. You put it back in the carboy to bulk age it (for, like, a week?) and then bottle it after that. All told they estimate that you can make wine in 3-4 weeks or so.
How was it?
Smelly. Sulfury. Nasty. We used the proper amounts of K-meta for sanitization and also to stop re-fermentation when we added the blackberry juice, but the wine still smelled like Satan's breakfast. If we had bottled then, it would have been $80 down the crapper. We came on here and searched for solutions. We saw the copper technique, and tested that on a few ounces... not much result. We tried aerating it, and that worked great on the glass we drank, but were we about to purposely oxidize six gallons of wine? No thanks. What I read instead was that sometimes bubbling CO2 up through sulfury wine can get rid of the stench. I got some dry ice, drilled a hole in a 2L bottle cap, ran a new, clean aquarium aeration stone and hose from the 2L into the stone in the wine. Three days later, the wine was better, but whether that was from the CO2 or just time, who can say?
What caused the funk? Well, either I made a boo-boo concentrating my meta solution, or stressed yeast, or "other". I don't think it was my meta, b/c I've used the same meta on another batch of wine and there was no problem then. It very well could have been stressed montrachet yeast that came with the kit -- they have been known to make their objections known in sulfury tones when they are mistreated. As for other, who can tell?
In the end, the product was good, but the timeline is unrealistic for producing really good wine. Some extra time bulk aging in a carboy and some extra time in the bottle (4 months total now) has made the wine pretty good. It wouldn't win any awards, but what can you expect from combining an amateur and a mid-price kit?
I would recommend Island Mist kits to friends, but only if they have several batches under their belts already, or a friend with more experience nearby.
That's my $.02 on Island Mist kits.
Wine Taste 4/5
Instructions 2/5
Ease of Use 5/5