1st wine kit

So, I got my wife a wine kit for Christmas. It was a total Homer Simpson gift 'cause I wanted it plus it came with a super cheap glass carboy that I imediaty filled with beer.

Anyway the instructions say if we plan to age the wine longer than 6 months we'll need to add aditional metabisulphate.

Does that mean bulk aging or does that mean in the bottle?

I'd imagine at least some of this wine will sit in the bottle longer than 6 months.

What is the kit?

Even if bulk aging you should have sulfite in it to get you going in the going process.

Bulk aging is when you age the entire amount together, bottle aging is letting it age after bottling, I prefer bulk aging, if there are any faults, you can treat the wine as one unit, after you bottle, thats pretty much it, either way, you'll need to stabilize with meta.

It is a Winexpert Cab kit. The kit includes 4 grams of metabisulphite.

The simple instructions say to add the metabisulphite when finning and de-gassing.

Is that 4 grams enough to just bottle when it is done and then hold bottles longer than 6 months?

This is what I would do. Leave in secondary for 2 weeks. Do not bother adding fining agents or degas. Rack into clean carboy and add sulfite. In 3 months repeat, in 3 more months repeat. I would suggest once more. Bulk age for 9 months.

Rack into a clean bucket or carboy adding sulfite again, and bottle. Then bottle age for at least 3 months.

Dry reds like these need a good year for flavors to come together. Will only get better at 2-3 years.

With that said which kit is it? The lower end kits are drinkable earlier then the higher end ones.

Random question here, sorry to hijack the thread. The last 2 batches of my cherry/apple and straight up cherry had a chemical plastic smell. I threw the first batch out because I thought it picked up some chemical byproduct from the primary container. Second batch was same but I used food grade container. Is this just typical of cherry wines? Maybe it's just my nose not use to the smell of cherry wine.

jc5066 said:

This is what I would do. Leave in secondary for 2 weeks. Do not bother adding fining agents or degas. Rack into clean carboy and add sulfite. In 3 months repeat, in 3 more months repeat. I would suggest once more. Bulk age for 9 months.

Rack into a clean bucket or carboy adding sulfite again, and bottle. Then bottle age for at least 3 months.

Dry reds like these need a good year for flavors to come together. Will only get better at 2-3 years.

With that said which kit is it? The lower end kits are drinkable earlier then the higher end ones.

Click to expand...

So, you are adding sulfites at each rack? For three rackings? How much for a six gallon batch?

jc5066 said:

This is what I would do. Leave in secondary for 2 weeks. Do not bother adding fining agents or degas. Rack into clean carboy and add sulfite. In 3 months repeat, in 3 more months repeat. I would suggest once more. Bulk age for 9 months.

Rack into a clean bucket or carboy adding sulfite again, and bottle. Then bottle age for at least 3 months.

Dry reds like these need a good year for flavors to come together. Will only get better at 2-3 years.

With that said which kit is it? The lower end kits are drinkable earlier then the higher end ones.

Click to expand...

So, you are adding sulfites at each rack? For three rackings? How much sulfite for a six gallon batch? Wouldn't oxygen get in there if you are racking after fermentation is complete? That's what I don't get about de-gassing.

You add sulfite at rankings to prevent oxidation of the wine, and keep bacteria at bay.

Racking and time will degas and clear the wine as well as get the wine off the dead lees. Wine can pick up off flavors from the lees.

rtrent2002 said:

Random question here, sorry to hijack the thread. The last 2 batches of my cherry/apple and straight up cherry had a chemical plastic smell. I threw the first batch out because I thought it picked up some chemical byproduct from the primary container. Second batch was same but I used food grade container. Is this just typical of cherry wines? Maybe it's just my nose not use to the smell of cherry wine.

Click to expand...

You can let it sit, and see if that smell dissipates, but it should not smell like that after fermentation, and could be from stressed yeast, particularly if it's a "rubber" smell.

TurnipGreen said:

So, you are adding sulfites at each rack? For three rackings? How much for a six gallon batch?

Click to expand...

NO. do not add sulfites at each racking! You'll be overdosing the wine.

A general rule of thumb if you don't have an SO2 meter is to use 1 campden tablet per gallon (dissolved in a little water) in every other racking, and at bottling.

Or, 1/4 teaspoon of k-meta per 6 gallons (dissolved). That's about the same amount.

Ideally, you'd keep 50 ppm or so of sulfite, but using it at every other racking is a good guestimate.

So, I thought I was ready to bottle this weekend. I pulled a sample and it taste great, looks pretty clear but there is still a little bit of gas in the wine. Can I just rack the wine to a bottling bucket and degas it in the bucket? Would I be better served degassing in the current carboy, mixing up the little bit of lees?

All my other carboys are full of beer right now or 6 gallon, leaving too much headspace.

Rack it... Better yet, vacuum rack it.

Bottling from the carboy is difficult to keep any Lee's out of the bottles.

I definitely don't plan on bottling straight from a carboy and I'm pretty sure I don't have the means to vacuum rack.

Would just the racking degas it a bit? How do I know if that is enough?

we do not add sulfites to any of our kit wines and we have some that are 2 1/2 years old, and they look and taste fantastic!

So this past weekend I racked it again the degased for about thirty min with a drill. Now it's sitting down in the basement and I'm gonna just leave it there for a bout a month. There's still a little bit of co2 in there.

But in reading up on this it sounds like the co2 is more likely stay in there at felled temps then room temp. I guess I could bring it up to a closet, but wifey has limited my closet space and it's at max capacity with beer for at least a month anyway.

So is it worth it to bring it upstairs when I can or can it just forget about it in the basement until it naturally off gasses?

I pulled a sample yesterday and I think it is losing a bit of the gas just sitting around. I think I'll leave it for another month then maybe pull an other sample. It taste pretty nice so the next sample will be a bit bigger. If I keep it up I'll have one less bottle to clean!