A Berry Simple Life: How to Home Brew Wine Made from a Kit

So I have been thinking about making home brewing wine for a while now and looked at our local Brew Store for some time and decided that the cost per bottle was a little much for my frugal taste. For my birthday my sister bought me this kit off of Amazon.com

The Mountain Man and I had brewed a good amount of beer before Triple B came along

e their for we had almost all the supplies that we needed to brew this fine batch of Brew. The only thing that we were really missing was a wine corker. Which I picked up at the New Salt City Brewing Supply for a $17.99 which I felt bad about spending but figured I best bottle the Brew or miss out.

So, the process went something like this. I opened the wine brew kit. It consisted of what looked like a stap bag of red wine, 5 chemicals and some yeast, labels and corks. I was thinking ok lets do this....

I start reading the instructions 4 steps...

Step one: Very simple.

Pour the giant slap bag of blood in the bucket, um I mean grape juice concentrate. Sorry I didn't take a picture... :(

Stir add Bentonite, stir for 1 minute

Add Yeast wait 10 minutes, then stir again

Take a hydrometer reading (should be around 1.090 to 1.080)

Wait 7-10 days for a drop in the hydrometer reading

When your hydrometer reading hits between 1.010-.0998 move to

Step two:

Siphon wine (rack) into a clean and sterilized carboy... (Glass water Jug)

make sure that you splash the wine to aerate it. Speeding up the process.

I ended up moving the bucket to the top of the counter to speed the siphon process along.

Step three: Approx day 21: This is the degassing process

Add kieselsol stir for 1 minute, wait 15-30 minutes
Add Chitosan stir for 2 minutes
Add stabilizer stir for 1 minute

Wait...

Step four: Approx Day 28

This is the step that you bottle and cork your new wine.

I have to say in beer making that the first step is the hardest in wine making the last step is by far the most time consumining.

Friends and family of mine have been collecting wine bottles for me. So, I visited all my drinking friends.. to say the least.

Then, I brought homes the bottles that I collected and started cleaning them. What I have learned is that Mirassou is that is the worst ones to clean the labels off. I ended up using oil and a scotch bright pad to get the stick off. Most just took a soak and a scrub brush.

Then I sterilized everything with a chemical was. Moved the wine to my plastic fermenter, then back to the glass one after I cleaned the sediment out of the main glass jug. Then I siphoned the wine to the wine bottles. which made a huge mess.