advice for newbie please

good afternoon all
i have started my first homebrew of beer and all seems to be going well with that,
what i would like to know is what extra equipment i will need to do wine also, i bought the wilko starter kit that has the fermenting bucket and pressure barrel too, once my brew has finished will this be all i need to do a wine also or do i need the separate wine fermenter or just a second fermenting bucket,
i intend to transfer it to bag in box rather bottles once finished so dont know if that changes what i need

thanks

Can't help you with the wine, welcome along bud :thumb:
Rob.

Welcome to the forum.

I make wine in both demijohns and buckets, I prefer buckets with a hole in the lid for an airlock but you can use ones without the hole.

thanks,
do i just need the one bucket then, as in do i transfer it at any point from original fv before it goes to bottle,

do you know of any good wine making basics videos, ive looked on youtube but am struggling

When you make kits they usually tell you to make it from start to finish in the same bucket.

If you want to make your own wine from supermarket juice (much cheaper than kits) you will need to rack to a second bucket for degassing and clearing, have a look at this thread the videos take you through the whole process - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=49462


.

Thanks pal very helpful

Let us know what you decide to make.

Think I will just start nice and simple with a kit while I find my feet

Sorry to be a pain but if I do a kit what equipment exactly will I need

Most the kit wines I have used need around 5 litres of space to ferment in. Demijohns are not always 5 litres and I know out of the 10 I have only 4 can be used for Prohibition wines as the rest will not take the 4.7 litres. I have found cider will mark plastic bottles and they are impossible to clean but beer works well in plastic. Some wines can be made in 5 litre old water bottles but some wines may discolour the bottles. The Prohibition kit and Solomon Grundy's kit are the only ones I have done. The Prohibition requires one to transfer so in real terms two vessels are required. The results were very good a 21% AVB liquor type drink well worth all the effort. However the Solomon Grundy's kit although a nice wine was nothing special and £14 for 6 bottles against £3 a bottle ready made from supermarket was hardly worth the effort.

For home brew you want either something rather special or something cheap. Making up a beer costing £2 a pint is great for a very good beer better than any beer you can buy. But I brew beer as a cost saving exercise so I want £0.40 per pint. It costs 1/4 of price of beer in the pub. The same with wine. Collect from the hedge row and make a wine for 20p a bottle is clearly worth the effort. But pay £14 for a kit to make 6 bottles plus sugar means £2.40 at least per bottle. Now when the result tastes like tia maria or cointreau as with the Prohibition kits I have tried it was well worth the effort but for a simple Cherry wine as with Solomon Grundy's kit then hardly worth the effort.

So give instructions for Prohibition kits so you know what is involved and it states on instructions you can use plastic bottles so just trip to supermarket and buy a couple of bottles of water. As with near every kit I have done it never finishes on time. If a kit says one week then likely at least two weeks. The two kits I did from memory took around 4 weeks. But unlike many kits once finished it's ready to drink no need to condition.

From the instructions one sees if you have a hydrometer and clearly all you NEED is two 5 litre bottles. You could do it with one and some other vessel to temporary store while you clean it. I will do more Prohibition kits but will not bother with standard cherry wine kits again. Sorry seems I never scanned in instructions for cherry wine however it took just 8 days before ready to drink from what I remember. It was also easier then the other one but still not as easy as beer.

foggyfoggy said:

Sorry to be a pain but if I do a kit what equipment exactly will I need

Click to expand...

All you need is a demijohn, airlock and bung, steriliser (I use Milton tablets) a syphon tube and some bottles.