Winexpert Classic - Italian Pinto Grigio

[buddsy]

Trouble is there seems a price hike. Classic kits have gone from £55 ish to £77 ish

I do like the kits and the instructions with the place for recording date and gravity is a nice touch.

After seeing a post about brewing wine from supermarket juice Im wondering about going this route? The classic kit contains 8 liters of juice although Im not sure if this is pure or concentrated?

Im wondering how different the following would be to the kits? I suppose the quality of the juice is everything.

8L pure grape juice £22.40
Bentonite £1.95 100g
Sulphate/Sorbate
Chitosan
Kieselsol £2.85 / 100g

I may give demijohn full a try to see how it goes?

buddsy

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

I do like the look of the California Chardonnay WineXpert 6 bottle kit. It's a decent price. However I'm a big fan of fruit wines generally speaking, but their fruit wine range I think is a rip off. At £36 for a 6 bottle kit and only finishing at 6%, I think that's extortionate and you'd be better off going to the shop.

I'm referring to these.


https://www.themaltmiller.co.uk/product/winexpert-island-mist-black-cherry-6l/

 

[ChrisT]

@buddsy I just did a quick check on B2B and the classics are listed as £55 and the reserve at £78

@Tess Tickle Those are 6l of concentrate, so 30 bottle equivalent. I just made a Blood Orange Sangria and it's very very drinkable! Yes it's very "light" at only 6% but would dissapear very quickly when chilled in the summer. Shame I only just made it, I hope it'll keep over the winter?

 

[Tess Tickle's Brewery]

Those are 6l of concentrate, so 30 bottle equivalent.

Oops! In that case it's very good value then!

They should make it more clear on the website, as it doesn't state what size it is. Very misleading.

 

[ChrisT]

Oops! In that case it's very good value then!

They should make it more clear on the website, as it doesn't state what size it is. Very misleading.

Personally I think it's a very good summer drink and I'm not sure how it will survive over the winter at 6% but I'll give it a go.

Also, I made the 30 bottle WinExpert CHardonnay last year, but I made it for immediate sharing and drinking. Went down very well 6 weeks from starting, so I don't know if it keeps as well as the others I've kept.

 

[ChrisT]

After seeing a post about brewing wine from supermarket juice Im wondering about going this route? The classic kit contains 8 liters of juice although Im not sure if this is pure or concentrated?

Im wondering how different the following would be to the kits? I suppose the quality of the juice is everything.

The juice is concentrated and most of the 30 bottle kits I feel are similar, On The House, VineCo, WinExpert. In fact the instructions are almost identical. There is an arguement put forward that the more concentrate the better result, personally I'm not so sure but I'm leaning towards agreeing.

Having said that, my experience of the "Reserve" or "Private Reserve", says that it might not be worth the extra. The more expensive ranges offer increased amounts of concentrate, but of different grape type over the "normal" ranges.

 

[buddsy]

The juice is concentrated

Im wondering if I were to use 100% juice after all is that how wine has been made traditionally?

buddsy

 

[RoomWithABrew]

Do you add the K or Na meta when bulk aging?

 

[ChrisT]

Im wondering if I were to use 100% juice after all is that how wine has been made traditionally?

buddsy

Do you mean grape juice from a supermarket? If you do then head over here

https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/supermarket-juice-wine-how-to-guide-and-recipes.49462/
Loads of information and recipies. Makes very drinkable wine, but not like kits made from concentrate.

 

[ChrisT]

Do you add the K or Na meta when bulk aging?

I just add the sacket provided with the kit when the fermentation has finished, before clearing. I haven't yet added anything else at any point, my oldest aged wine was almost 2 years old and had improved in drinkability. I know the kit instructions say to add K meta for aging more than 3 months but as said I haven't.

I age in mostly brown demijohns, in the dark, in a little room under my house, north facing.

 

[buddsy]

Here is a pic of the wine yesterday in the fermentor.

This morning its bubbling away nicely.

buddsy

 

[ChrisT]

Nice!

 

[buddsy]

The yeast that was sitting on top has dropped into suspension of the whole volume, fizzing and bubbling happily. I always love it when a brew starts fermenting.





buddsy

 

[ChrisT]

Magical isn't it!

 

[Seanav]

Hi All

Newbie Brewer here , just tried a 6 bottle kit -got 5 bottles out of it , tricky to do with equipment scaled for 30 litres , but learned a lot (I think). Have the Private NZ Sauvignon Blanc 30 bottle on the go now , intend to age it for at least 6 months , Reading this thread I'm jealous of the fermzilla , love the idea of dumping the yeast (but would it fit in my fridge ?)

Anyway , 1 interesting thing so far .Have a fridge and inkbird , decided to be cheap and just use the heat element as the ambient temp in Dublin at the moment is about 15 degrees , so thought cooling would happen naturally when the heating side turned off. Set the temp to 21degrees , thought it would swing between 20 and 22 .......but the temperature kept rising up as far as 24 degrees , i presume from yeast activity producing heat ..... anyway had to plug the fridge in to bring it down

Also wondering something. Wine Expert instructions are to ferment at 20-25 degrees but much of the internet says white wine should be fermented at 15 degrees .... Ive chosen to follow wine experts instructions (although the instructions seem generic to both red and white) but has anyone brewed at the lower temperatures of 15 degrees ?

 

[RoomWithABrew]

I've fermented the winexpert kits in the lower end of their suggested range and all have come out well.
Normally find that no added heat needed if well insulated in a fridge and cooling is the most likely needed thermal management.
I use the fermentasaurus and can drop the yeast out at the end of ferment. So ferment and secondary clearing all in the same vessel and no transfers or extra cleaning. Seems quicker to clear when you can see it's clear and the conical I think helps.
But flat bottomed vessels have worked for many hundreds of years.

 

[buddsy]

I did read your thread and welcome to making wine.

Very interesting how warm it got even though I had read the fermentation process can create its own heat.

Ive never heard talk of brewing wine at 15 but Im by no means and expert. I usually just go by what it says on instructions or on the yeast packet when brewing beer. I feel the yeast producers are best to say what temp their yeast works best at but like I said thats only my thoughts.

I did have a smaller fridge before I got my Fermzilla snubnose at which point I picked up a taller fridge.


buddsy

​

 

[ChrisT]

Hi All

Newbie Brewer here , just tried a 6 bottle kit -got 5 bottles out of it , tricky to do with equipment scaled for 30 litres , but learned a lot (I think). Have the Private NZ Sauvignon Blanc 30 bottle on the go now , intend to age it for at least 6 months , Reading this thread I'm jealous of the fermzilla , love the idea of dumping the yeast (but would it fit in my fridge ?)

Anyway , 1 interesting thing so far .Have a fridge and inkbird , decided to be cheap and just use the heat element as the ambient temp in Dublin at the moment is about 15 degrees , so thought cooling would happen naturally when the heating side turned off. Set the temp to 21degrees , thought it would swing between 20 and 22 .......but the temperature kept rising up as far as 24 degrees , i presume from yeast activity producing heat ..... anyway had to plug the fridge in to bring it down

Also wondering something. Wine Expert instructions are to ferment at 20-25 degrees but much of the internet says white wine should be fermented at 15 degrees .... Ive chosen to follow wine experts instructions (although the instructions seem generic to both red and white) but has anyone brewed at the lower temperatures of 15 degrees ?

Yes the yeast generates heat while it's working. Although a 6 degree difference seems a lot from what I've seen, I ferment in buckets in my utility room. I've got some WinExpert Riesling (for the Mrs) on the go at moment and looking over the fermentrack log biggest difference between ambient and wine is 2 degrees.

I've been tempted by conical fermenters for a while, going to hold out for the arrival of Apollo in the UK.

 

[buddsy]

I've been tempted by conical fermenters for a while,

I just remembered a mistake I made with the last red WinExpert kit I made with my conical fermenter and am pointing out so others dont make the same mistake.

Usually I use mine for beer making and its usual to apply a bit of CO2 to either purge air out or during transfer. Im trying to remember exactly what I did but I think after racking into the conical I purged with CO2 and I think I added a bit of pressure so it would be easy to bottle via the floating dip tube. Couple of days later I realised what I had started to do was to carbonate the wine! I don't remember how long or how much pressure I added but the wine was slightly fizzy and took me a couple of months after re degassing to finally remove it. During which time it sat in a carboy with a airlock.

Im not sure what I was thinking...or not.

buddsy

 

[ChrisT]

Im not sure what I was thinking...or not.

buddsy

Had you been sampling a previous brew by any chance????