What to ignore in wine kit instructions?

Hey folks,

I'm trying my hand at a wine kit. I'm reasonably competent with the beer stuff, but don't know much beyond what I've read here on wine making. With many of the beer kits, it seems like the best advice is to throw the instructions away. What should I do differently (if anything) from what the winexpert instructions (here) tell me to do?

My instincts are to follow the instructions up to the bottling step, but then to leave it in the carboy for a while. Or am I just better off letting it age in the bottle? In particular, I'd like to avoid gassy wine. That sounds...unappealing. Do I still want to whip the snot out of it before adding my clarifiers?

Thanks!
-MalFet

It all sounds about right. Use distilled water for all of the water steps. I would leave it in the primary for at least two weeks. If I think of anything else I will let you know.

When topping off the carboy, use similar wine if you can. It will add to the complexity and not water down your wine.

Bulk aging is always better to a point. Keep it in the carboy as long as you feel comfortable.

Wine kits are usually pretty darn good- unlike beer kit instructions!

They have step by step instructions, and degassing when they say will be fine. After degassing, they usually have you top up and then bottle after a couple of weeks. At that point, you can bulk age if you want but you can also bottle if you want. The wine is always clear and sediment free and not gassy by that time, so it's a matter of choice.

The instructions also tell you to add some k-meta (campden) if you'll be aging a bit. I recommend doing that at bottling, because it also is an antioxidant as well and it's not a big amount of sulfite.

Cool, thanks guys

One more question. I've been browsing around trying to figure out degassing options. I'm in a glass carboy right now with a very narrow neck. At some point, I'll pick up a drill attachment, but I am trying to keep equipment at the cheap end until I tasted a few finished products. It seems my options are: shaking (easy but likely ineffective), racking to a bucket to degas (effective, but undesirable b/c of the extra transfer), sucking it up and buying a drill attachment (not the end of the world), or...something else. Any cheap and easy suggestions?

MalFet said:

Cool, thanks guys

One more question. I've been browsing around trying to figure out degassing options. I'm in a glass carboy right now with a very narrow neck. At some point, I'll pick up a drill attachment, but I am trying to keep equipment at the cheap end until I tasted a few finished products. It seems my options are: shaking (easy but likely ineffective), racking to a bucket to degas (effective, but undesirable b/c of the extra transfer), sucking it up and buying a drill attachment (not the end of the world), or...something else. Any cheap and easy suggestions?

Click to expand...

Are you mechanically inclined? I've seen people use "mity vac" to degas. You know, those small doo-hicky things some guys use to bleed brakes?

Otherwise, what I've done is get a long plastic dowel- those kind that open and close mini-blinds are great- and heat up the end. Use a hammer and pound it flat. Then sanitize and you've got yourself a manual degasser. Stir, stir, stir, until your arm falls off. Then do it again, about 5 times. That's pretty effective.

Another tip- degas as warm as you can. Bring the wine up to 70 degrees or higher- that makes degassing 100 times easier, as the colder the wine the more it "grabs" the co2. It's hard for me to do this time of year, so I'll often bulk age for a bit just to make degassing easier in May!

Do the brake bleeder degassing. The fittings and hoses in the harbor freight kit couple right to the second port on a carboy cap. Just pull the air lock and cap that hole,hook the vacuum up to the other port and pull a vacuum. Works like a charm!!!

Similar to Yooper design without the hammering.

I took a length of rigid plastic tubing (3/8"?), inserted a spade drill bit in one end and with some heat from the stove top bent the other end of the tube at about a 30-40 degree angle to give it a bit of whipping action. It really is a 50 cent solution. I cheaped out because I assumed I would not be making more than one wine kit in my life. As I recall I did about 10 minutes of degassing and was done.

The wine came out great, but wine is one of those things that I don't want to drink 30 bottles of the same thing.

Thanks for the tips guys. The curtain rod on a drill approach worked a treat, but the MityVac seems really cool. I'll had read about that on here, but wasn't sure if it was a new experimental thing or something tried and true. I'll definitely go that route if I end up doing this again.

I'm curious to see how the wine turns out. Beer is so much about process that I feel like I'm only limited by my technique and patience. Good malts, hops and yeasts are important too of course, but they are readily available. Wine seems to be so much more about the grapes, and that makes me wonder what I'll be getting.

I've just started with wine after brewing beer forever. With beer, we are so preoccupied with oxygen. Keeping it out, then getting it in. Opening the fermenter and stirring is just not something we would do. However, if you make wine from grapes, the amount of oxygen that the wine is exposed to is unbelievable. First, the fermenters are open (red wine I'm talking about), then you are constantly in the fermenters punching down the grape skins. Then, you take them all out, put them in an open air press, and press them silly. The wine runs off into a bucket (more aeration) and then you pour that into carboys (more aeration).

I think this is why kits and wine books say to aerate the first racking and stir up the lees. You are just not going to get more oxygen in solution then a vintner pressing grapes. This is why kMeta is important in wine making, because it scrubs oxygen out of solution.

Lees act as antioxidants as well. That is another reason to kick up some lees.

With wine kits, when starting out (and especially with Winexpert kits), I'd just follow the directions to the letter. Wine kit companies spend a lot of time/money on R&D trying to figure out the easiest ways to get the best product, and usually the instructions reflect that thinking. Winexpert kits are among the best-documented processes out there, too.

I like the idea of using the mini-blind "stick" as a degassing tool, but be aware it's not food-grade plastic.

GL!

Instead of a curtain rod, I used a plastic faucet water supply line similar to this:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001EEYA3E/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

They come in 36" length and I think the one I picked up at the local home supply was PETE.
Nice little nub on the end and everything.

MalFet, sounds like you've already figured out a lot. Follow the instructions except for the following: 1. degas more than the instructions call for, and be prepared to test for gas later (put a little in a little bottle and shake it; you'll see) and rectify it. 2. Plan to let everything take a little longer than the directions say. Don't rush anything. Bulk age for a couple months, then expect to bottle age for a few more months.

Jim