wine kit flavor

Got a question looking to get back into home brewing but with wine this time as it agrees better with my diabetes. I looked at the kits and what I'm wondering is if there's a noticeable off flavor from using concentrates that come in a lot of kits. I went all grain with beer really quickly as any wort concentrate gave a very noticeable (to me anyway) off flavor. It wasn't just my beer it was anyone's I tried I could tell if it was all grain or not.

Was wondering before I spend a $100 or more on a kit and 6-12 months storing a batch of wine.

Also just for kicks and giggles, hows the hangover with homebrew wine? I don't have more than 2-3 glasses very often but I could drink homebrew beer all day and usually feel great in the morning even energetic, but overindulge in a typical commercial macro and I'd be sick for 3 days.

I've been making red kits for a couple years now, and I'm pretty impressed with the results. As long as you're willing to have the patience, I'm sure you'll be pleased with the results. I made a Pinot Noir kit (Winexpert I think) last year that was okay at six months, but now is fantastic at a year. I think they tend to lack a little in the tannin, but that's easily made up with powdered tannin or oak cubes. Some of the higher end kits will come with grape skins and make fantastic wine. I've never had a kit that didn't produce wine at least as good as store bought, most have been far superior.

As far as hangovers, I don't have any with homemade wine, from kits or from scratch. I've had friends and family comment on the effect as well. I think it's a side effect of small batch size, better temp control, and some other factors that come from being more involved.

Sounds good, thanks! Just been hesitant from my experience with beer concentrates, think I'm gonna dig the carboys and buckets out and try and get something in em over the next few days.

I have only made wine from the kits. I did a Chardonnay from a Wine Expert kit that my Mother and Brother said was the best they ever tasted. (my brother has done a lot of wine tasting over the years) I did a more expensive kit with less impressive results since then.

I have a Pinot Noir that my brother also said was very good. My other friends that I have shared with have had good things to say about my wines.

I like all the wines I have made from the kits, but would not say I have a discriminating palate. I can't describe flavors much beyond - "I like it a lot" or "this one is not up to par"....

The hangovers from homebrewed wines in my experience are no different from commercial wines.

BigNick73 said:

Sounds good, thanks! Just been hesitant from my experience with beer concentrates, think I'm gonna dig the carboys and buckets out and try and get something in em over the next few days.

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Beer concentrates (Malt extracts) are very different from wine concentrates. With the beer it involves doing part of the beer brewing process.

With wines I believe it is just evaporating, in a controlled manner, some of the water out of the grape "juice".

With wine kits, quality does matter.

A cheaper kit may be ok, but it has lots more concentrate and little or no juice.

For example, a basic Winexpert kit from the Vintner's Reserve line ($65-75ish) has 7.5 liters of concentrate to make 6 gallons of wine. It does have a bit of a wine-concentrate taste if you look for it, but the wine is ok and similar in quality to a $5 bottle of wine.

The best kits, Winexpert's premium kit called Eclipse to compare the same company, may have 18L of concentrate/juice (so it's not as concentrated), some grape crushed grape skins, and more. Those go for up to $190, but make a really good commercial quality wine similar to a $30 of wine in some cases.

I do a mix of kits, the cheap ones for our everyday drinkers, and an expensive one now and then for guests and for special occasions, and many in the moderate price range which is good enough for many guests, and for us as well.

I just did two kits- one Mezzaluna by Winexpert ($68) and it's ok, and one En Primeur amarone by Cellar Craft, and it's outstanding- but the amarone kit was more than twice the cost of the Winexpert kit ($170)! It has 18L of juice, two packages of grape skins to ferment on, good quality oak chips (not sawdust like the cheap kit), and even some raisins since amarone is a huge bold Italian red.

I would say that if you are not a wine snob and like Two Buck Chuck, a cheaper kit is "ok". We actually keg our cheaper kits and don't even bother to bottle them, so we can dispense them in a decanter as needed.

If you really like good wines, you'd have to "go big or go home", since anything less than a premium kit would be very disappointing.

Thanks for the replies I went and picked up a winexpert italian montepulciano for my first run, I was between that and the amarone, local brew store doesn't have a huge selection in the wine kits. Never had either style but the monte was listed as being a bolder/heavier bodied wine in the brochure so we'll see. I've found I like stuff in the Malbec, Grenache, old vine zinfandel, cabernet,etc.. spectrum. I'm not a wine snob yet, I'm guessing it'll probably be like beer and over the years I'll get more and more picky.

For what it's worth, I've learned 1 thing from making wine kits... If you plan to go dry and not back sweeten, I recommend not using the sorbate that is used to stabilize the wine after the primary fermentation, it will leave a residual sweet "bubble gum" off taste to your wine, giving it that cheap wine taste. I just rack mine a few additional times and let it bulk age at least 3 months before bottling (but use campden or meta to preserve)

I've tasted my wine before the sorbate and it tasted great, only to be disappointed afterwords. Took 3 batches before I figured this out.

But I am convinced the cheaper kits with more concentrate add sweeteners which probably contributes to the off taste as well.

Not sure where you are my first try at wine was Muntons "country wines blackberry" at only €11.45, you just add water and sugar. It only did 1 demijohn and it took only about 3 to 4 weeks to get to drinking point. personally i added water when drinking it as it was too strong for me.