Wine making advice for a beer brewer?

What's the best piece(s) of advice you can offer to a relatively accomplished beer brewer looking to take wine beyond the instruction booklet in the kit?

In brewing, my biggest improvements came with an understanding of pitch rate, temp control and water filtration.

How do I take a decent $180 wine kit and make it the best it can be?

Never made wine from kits but the best advice I can suggest is patience, patience and more patience. And ferment at the lowest end of the temperature range the yeast prefers. As a brewer you know all about sanitation and oxidation although with wine since you will age for far longer you want to make sure that there is absolutely no headroom in the carboy after you rack from the fermenter.
Last piece of advice I have is to follow the instructions if this is your first kit. All warranties are off if you don't and if something goes wrong the kit people can blame you. But wine making is a magnitude simpler than brewing, IMO, and if you make good beer you can make good wine. wine makers have less anxiety about their musts than brewers have about their worts...
Good luck

I have made about 5 wine kits over the last year and a half so I'm no expert but I have learned a couple of things. I have made 3 pinot grigios and 2 super tuscans kits, all of them from RJS except one Winexpert pinot, and the best tips I have are to spend the extra money for a higher end kit and be patient.

The first super tuscan I made just turned 1 in October and it is only now starting to get really good. I bulk aged it 6 months before I bottled it but I think the extra time is now starting to pay off. I have made 3 different price point pinot grigios and I've come to the conclusion that it is worth it to spend the extra money on a higher priced kit.

Those $180 kits are wonderful.

I know it's unbelievable coming from a brewing side, but following the directions works perfectly. Those kits work extremely well when the directions are followed to the letter.

I make a ton of kits, some cheap and some (fewer by far!) excellent, and they all deliver what they promise. The cheap kits are "drinkable" (think Two Buck Chuck) and the most expensive kits can rival a $30 bottle.

The best wine I ever made was a kit. It was a 2006 kit, a special release that was a tannat wine meant to age. It aged well, and we just finished the last bottle about a year ago. It was wonderful.

Thanks all... not my first kit, but I've been underwhelmed by my previous kits (though they were slightly lower-priced). I've also had issues with residual carbonation. I know long-term bulk aging can help, but I rigged up a brake line bleeder to follow the drill paddler thing and hopefully suck out all of the residual gases.

The only thing I have done to a kit is add a bit of extra oak, aside from that I go right by instructions and have been very happy with every batch.
PS: I too use a brake line bleeder for degassing, you'll need a glass carboy for that. Plastic will collapse.

Shred said:

Thanks all... not my first kit, but I've been underwhelmed by my previous kits (though they were slightly lower-priced). I've also had issues with residual carbonation. I know long-term bulk aging can help, but I rigged up a brake line bleeder to follow the drill paddler thing and hopefully suck out all of the residual gases.

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Most lower end kits really put a rush on the process....get it done...get it drank....get another kit. Don't rush, let the wine finish, let it sit and it will clear and degas all by itself.....just use more time. AND that has been the hardest part for me! And then you finally get it in the bottle and invest even more time.

Makes waiting three weeks to bottle condition a beer seem like a nano second! I am finding this hobby to be a study in slow motion.

What are the thoughts on using O2 pre-fermentation? Is that a common practice to help will yeast cell health? Also, temp control (or ideal ferm temps)?

Shred said:

What are the thoughts on using O2 pre-fermentation? Is that a common practice to help will yeast cell health? Also, temp control (or ideal ferm temps)?

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No, not really with wine kits. With fruit wines, I stir twice a day to break up the cap, and that degasses as well as brings in some oxygen but with kits it's not needed.

For temperature control, many wine yeast strains have a huge temperature range- some from 59-90 degrees as an example.

I ferment most of my reds in the low 60s, and usually my whites do as well but I have a few that I'll do lower- again, not kits though.

The one thing you, as a beer brewer, need to learn is that this aint beer.

Very little of the techniques are the same, in general they are, but not in execution.

For example, adding O2 is probably the most "never do" thing in wine yet it is routinely done in beer. Temperature control also, not such a big deal in wine, sure some like cooler and some like warmer, but a red fermented at 60 degrees will be extremely close to one fermented at 75 degrees. Time for each step, in beer its 1 day or 3 days, in wine its a week or so, six to 12 months, no real schedule except when you can get to it. Also, there is so much sugar in the must and so much alcohol in the final product that "getting an infection" is really difficult in wine, you really have to mess up something, and they can be cleared up quite easily. With beer, "infections" seem to be way too easy to happen.

If you are really serious, I suggest an Allinone wine pump, it vacuum transfers, vacuum filters and vacuum degasses better than any other piece of equipment. It will also bottle pretty well, but not as good as a dedicated bottling system. Your brake bleeder will only give you Popeye forearms and little degassing.

Wine making is a hobby that can be enjoyed and not rushed.

bernardsmith said:

Never made wine from kits but the best advice I can suggest is patience, patience and more patience. And ferment at the lowest end of the temperature range the yeast prefers. As a brewer you know all about sanitation and oxidation although with wine since you will age for far longer you want to make sure that there is absolutely no headroom in the carboy after you rack from the fermenter.
Last piece of advice I have is to follow the instructions if this is your first kit. All warranties are off if you don't and if something goes wrong the kit people can blame you. But wine making is a magnitude simpler than brewing, IMO, and if you make good beer you can make good wine. wine makers have less anxiety about their musts than brewers have about their worts...
Good luck

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^^^ This^^^

Ive always heard that at a homebrew level, the difficulty of making wine and beer are pretty different. Its easier to make wine, but very difficult to make great wine. Its harder to brew beer, but easier to make great beer.

I think it has to do with how you have more control and variety over the ingredients which make the sugars and the organisms that convert those sugars in homebrewing beer than wine. So I guess ti depends on what your experience is so far with beer before going getting too deep into wine

DoctorCAD said:

The one thing you, as a beer brewer, need to learn is that this aint beer.

Very little of the techniques are the same, in general they are, but not in execution.

For example, adding O2 is probably the most "never do" thing in wine yet it is routinely done in beer.

Wine making is a hobby that can be enjoyed and not rushed.

Click to expand...

Patience is certainly not the issue. I've got a rack in the basement that holds roughly 250 wine bottles. I have other homemade wines down there varying from 1-3 years of age... I'm just looking to take my homemade wines to the next level. I have many award-winning beers and I'd be interested in competing with wines as well.

As for the O2 thing, it seems there is some debate on the topic. In my previous batches I did not introduce O2 pre-fermentation. Based on some things I've read and my experience with beer (and I realize the 2 are different animals, but the fermentation biology behind them essentially is the same) it would seem O2 can be beneficial if for no other reason (though several are listed) than to improve cell health.

This is the most recent article I read on the topic:
http://morewinemaking.com/public/pdf/oxyfer09.pdf

Have you found the reverse to be true?

Shred, One more point: I would assume - but really have no good reason for this assumption - that the makers of kits that cost close to $200 have selected a very appropriate yeast for the wine... but they may in fact select a yeast that will pose the least number of problems for the least skilled user of their product. You may want to do some research and see what the best yeast for the kind of wine you are making - after all, as a brewer you know, different yeasts can enhance, inhibit and produce all kinds of flavors and flourishes that you may want or want to avoid...

There are some nice lower end kits that only take a few weeks. They are good sit down and get drunk wines. They're not going to get awards but they are good at what they are. They tend to be sweet wines.

The high end kits are very nice. You really need 18-24 months before they are going to be great. Bulk aging for 6-12 months then the same once they are bottled.

Start making your wine, but keep doing your beer so you have something to drink for the next 2 years.

The kits are nice as is. They all can be tweaked a bit if you so desire. Many of add extra oak or switch yeasts. I personally don't tweak my kits much. I paid for their expertise. I do my own thing with my fruit wines though.

Shred said:

Patience is certainly not the issue. I've got a rack in the basement that holds roughly 250 wine bottles. I have other homemade wines down there varying from 1-3 years of age... I'm just looking to take my homemade wines to the next level. I have many award-winning beers and I'd be interested in competing with wines as well.

As for the O2 thing, it seems there is some debate on the topic. In my previous batches I did not introduce O2 pre-fermentation. Based on some things I've read and my experience with beer (and I realize the 2 are different animals, but the fermentation biology behind them essentially is the same) it would seem O2 can be beneficial if for no other reason (though several are listed) than to improve cell health.

This is the most recent article I read on the topic:
http://morewinemaking.com/public/pdf/oxyfer09.pdf

Have you found the reverse to be true?

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The oxygen in the air is enough. No need or desire to add more.

Thats easy, dont cook your wine You already have all the skills and know what clean is and that yeast is alive, mostly the biggest thing is now thinking of acid balance and being a bit more patient than with brewing. You can still use your capper, wine fits into beer bottles just fine! WVMJ