Making Wine From a Kit at Home
The best way to learn about the winemaking process is to make wine from a kit for your first few batches then gradually experiment with ingredients as you become more familiar with it.
November 2014
By Lori Stahl
Making your own wine can be easier than you think. In Making Your Own Wine at Home (Fox Chapel Publishing, 2014), author Lori Stahl provides friendly, easy-to follow instructions for making homemade wine. She starts novice winemakers off with tips for using a kit and helps open their eyes to a vast world of different flavored wines. This excerpt, which is from Chapter 2, “Step-By-Step Winemaking,” provides instructions and tips for making your own wine from a kit.
Buy this book from the GRIT store: Making Your Own Wine at Home.
Making Wine from a Kit at Home
Unpack the kit and gather the materials and ingredients. The kit will include juice, oak, chemicals, instructions and a materials list. |
Kits are simplicity itself and are the best way to learn. The equipment required is the same equipment you will use in your future winemaking endeavors. The techniques are techniques you will build on when making wine from fruit. With this tutorial, you will learn how to make a French Chardonnay from a kit.
Every kit contains juice, oak, chemicals, very clear instructions, and a list of everything you need to get started. Winexpert, owned by Andres Wines, a large Canadian winery, manufactures a nice selection of wine kits. Recognized for its innovation and dedication to quality, Winexpert is considered to be the leading manufacturer of premium wine kits.
Before you begin
You’ll need to consider a few important items before you start: location, timing, and cleanliness.
Location: The temperature of the area where you leave the wine while it is fermenting should not fluctuate much and should remain somewhere between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit (18 and 25 degrees Celsius). Another important tip is to know that occasionally fermentations get unruly and spew about the surrounding area (know that I’ve had issues along the way with both primary fermenters and secondary carboys). Choose a spot out of direct sunlight and up on a table so you do not have to disturb what has dropped out of the wine and settled on the bottom when you rack your clearing wine.
Timing: Take a good look at your calendar. Note that the steps need to be done in a certain sequence and in a certain number of days. Ideally, you should plot your starting date based on being available when the following steps need to be carried out. In addition to your own schedule, you may want to consider the earth’s as well. Legend, lore, and ancient traditions—even modern-day science—note links between the growing cycles and the cosmos. Within the wine industry, you’ll find wine buyers who refuse to taste wines on rainy days and wineries that very carefully schedule dates of tastings for industry experts and buyers based on the lunar calendar. I sync my winemaking activities with the moon phase when I can.
Cleanliness: One of the most important aspects of winemaking from kits, concentrates, or fruits is cleanliness. Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize anything and everything that will come into contact with your wine.
The essential first step to learning is, of course, opening up the kit! Right on top you’ll find all the packets and the instructions laid out. Get out your calendar, write the type of wine and the start date, and write the date of the next step.
All the ingredients you’ll need will be in your kit. |
Always remember to sanitize. |
Preparing and Fermenting Wine
Collect a few gallons (or several liters) of water that is optimal for winemaking as well as a sterilized pot to heat it in. Heat the water; when the water is hot, pour it into the primary vessel. |
Stirring vigorously, sprinkle bentonite on top. Stir for 30 seconds. |
Add the juice. | Add a little warm water to the bag and shake it to make sure you get all the juice. |
Add the remaining liquid in the bag to the fermenter. |
Top up the fermenter to the 6 gallon (22.7L) mark. |
Stir well. |
Sample the liquid with a hydrometer if you have one. However, kits |
Check the specific gravity with the hydrometer. |
Add the oak, if included. |
Check the temperature, and when the juice is between 65 and 75 degrees Fahrenheit (18 and 24 degrees Celsius), open the package of yeast and sprinkle it on the surface. Do not stir. |
Cover your primary, but do not seal the lid tightly, in order to allow |
Place the kit in a warm spot. Check a day or two later to be sure |
Transferring the Wine to the Secondary Fermenter
After 5 to 7 days, you’ll be ready to transfer your wine from the |
To rack, sit the primary up high and the bucket down low, then begin the transfer. The closer in height the fermenters are, the longer it takes to complete the transfer. |
After you have transferred a little more than half of the liquid, tip |
As you get near the bottom, move the bottom of your siphon over to a |
Place a bung and water-filled airlock onto the carboy and put it |
Adding Additional Ingredients to the Wine
After 10 days, or when your hydrometer reading is at the appropriate |
Add the dissolved chemicals to the carboy and stir vigorously. |
Make sure to stir up all of the sediment on the bottom and get it back into suspension. |
If you can, use a stirring paddle that attaches to a cordless drill, as |
Next, shake your packet of isinglass (to help the wine clarify) and add it. |
Stir vigorously again. |
Top up your carboy, and replace the airlock. Good practice is to dump |
Racking the Wine Into a Clean Carboy
Rack your wine into a clean carboy. As always, sterilize everything that comes into contact with the wine. |
Remember to tip the carboy well in advance of the last of the liquid, |
Bottling the Wine
Before bottling, rack your wine one final time. (Sometimes you can skip |
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Make sure your bottles are completely clean, giving them a final rinse with a potassium metabisulfite solution. Be careful to remove any residue if you are using recycled bottles. A new or clean bottle merely needs to be filled with solution and then emptied out. |
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Drain the bottles before lining them up to be filled. Being organized is key to successful bottling. |
Attach the bottle filler to the siphon. |
When bottling, be sure to add extra liquid for the space taken up by the bottle filler. |
Optimal fill level is two finger widths between the wine and the cork. |
Group all of your like wine bottles together and fill them in groups. |
Sanitize the corks in a potassium metabisulfite solution before corking. |
Cork in groups. |
One tip if you are going to use any 375mL (12.7 fl. oz.) bottles is to have a little block of wood or even a paperback book at the ready to put under the bottle. Some corkers cannot reach little bottles without propping them up a bit.
Label your bottles, either with wine labels if your wine storage area is super clean, or with black permanent marker on freezer masking tape. Place the corked bottles into a cardboard box and tip the box just enough so that the corks are in contact with the wine but not enough that the wine could seep out. After about two days in this position, you can safely store them on their sides. If you are using real corks, do store them on their sides to keep the corks moist and fully expanded.
Tah dah! Now that you have successfully made a kit, you are undoubtedly confidently ready to move on to future winemaking endeavors. Making wine from concentrate is the next step.
Want to make wine from concentrate? Read Using Concentrated Fruit Juice in Homemade Wine to learn all about it.
This excerpt has been reprinted with permission from Making Your Own Wine at Home, by Lori Stahl and published by Fox Chapel Publishing, 2014. Buy this book from our store:Making Your Own Wine at Home.