Wine Making At Home... good starter kit?

[vfem]

I would like to dabble in making wine, and by that I mean... try a kit that is simple to get me started.

Anyone suggest a kit... or have advice for a newbie planning this?

I will eventually do the grapes, but I want to try blueberry, strawberry and raspberry since I got those fairly easily.

 

[T.J.]

vfem,
google E.C.Kraus and get their catalog.they have "starter"kits.
wine making is not very hard
your on the right track thinking Blueberry.it makes great wine.
in the past few years i've made grape,muscadine,scuppernong,apple,pear,watermelon,blackberry,peach,and blueberry.
blueberry is my favorite by far.scuppernong is pretty good too

 

[chris09]

http://www.homebrewers.com/product/3008/1-Gallon-Wine-Making-Equipment-Kit.html
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/1-gallon-wine-from-fruit-kit.html
http://www.homebrewit.com/wine-equipment-kits.php

Chris

 

[beavis]

Yep,

E.C. Kraus is the way to go....

 

[wifezilla]

Do you really need a kit? Buckets or carboys, tubing, airlocks and yeast along with a good book will do it. Especially since you will be using a lot of your own fruit.

 

[beavis]

When you are first starting out, I found it much easier to just buy their grape/fruit concentrate instead of use actual fresh picked fruit.

You avoid certain problems, such as fruit pieces getting stuck in the airlock during fermentation, etc...

 

[digitS']

I don't know about many of the fruit wines but the ones I made weren't of the quality that one can find at the store . . . :/

The exception was Elderberry! Are the elderberries ripe in your neck of the woods, V ?

Grape wines didn't hold the allure of those different fruit wines but I couldn't seem to get the fruit wines right. Apple cider brightened some autumn days years ago but even apple wine didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped.

The "kit" I bought years ago was for beer making and it just amounted to going to the supply store and having the guy to put together something that he thought might work for me.

After a few years of tweaking, Dad and I came up with some good techniques and ingredients. After Dad passed 80, I couldn't get him to wash the bottles anymore . The beer equipment fell into disuse but I continued to make a raisin & rice wine thru a few winters. I think that anyone could make a "passable" drink with raisins and rice but it's the elderberry wine and beer that I miss.

Steve

 

[Whitewater]

Hubby (and I, to a lesser extent -- I hold the funnel! And stir! LOL!) is a novice to the world of ale homebrewing, but he seems to have a knack for it and everything we've done -- with one exception -- has turned out splendidly.

That one exception was our attempt to make historically authentic small ale, using a recipe I translated myself from the 17th century. Not enough sugar! It got moldy.

A large part of our brewing success is thanks to Northern Brewer HomeBrew Supply. I don't mean to sound like an advertisement, but these guys really know their stuff and they're willing to share what they know with you! Their ale kits are fantastic and when we get around to making wine (next summer, hopefully) I know they'll be there for us when we do that too.

It helps a lot that they're local, but they have a catalog and a phone # and so on.

Here's the website, with a direct link to the winemaking into page: http://www.northernbrewer.com/winemaking

I discovered that with NB, anyway, you really don't need a whole starter kit for wine if you have the basics for beer. You will need a lidded fermenter (although I suppose our system, with a glass carboy to ferment in and not a plastic 8 gallon bucket with lid, would do as well), a siphon, and a different capping system (one for corks and not beer bottle caps), but that's it -- the glass carboys, the cleaning stuff, stock pot for boiling, the alcohol and temp measuring thingies, all of that is the same.

We will probably make our first batch next year from a kit, 'cause it's easier to learn what to do with printed instructions (and 'cause I want to make peach wine, and we don't have peaches) -- then when we feel reasonably secure, go on to using our own fruit -- raspberries and currants.

Hope you find what you need, vfem, around here fruit wine making is quite a popular past time and people make stuff that FAR exceeds the quality of anything found in the liquor store. MN also has a thriving local actual wine industry too, believe it or not, something about the soil up north makes grapes grow.

I don't do a whole lot of drinking, and I've discovered recently that I strongly prefer a well-made local fruit wine to anything else. I think that you will find the same, that once you figure out how to make your own, you'll never want to buy a bottle again!


Whitewater

 

[vfem]

You guys are ALWAYS a plethura (sp?) of information!!!!

Hubby and I are shopping, and all your talk of beer and ale has his attention now.

So we'll talk about which way we'd like to go now since so many options are available.

I do feel good about a starter kit, because if I fail...which I will... I will have lots of references to go to. Someone else doing the leg work for me gives me more time for the fun part too.

 

[Whitewater]

Tell your husband that homebrewing ale is REALLY super easy -- from one who's done it numerous times -- and you don't HAVE to buy the brand new starter kits they advertise (of course, if you happen to have the extra $150 it's a lot easier . . .), all you need is to scour Freecycle and Craigslist and your local free spots (rummage sales, etc) and get what you need that way. Inevitably sooner or later you'll find somebody getting out of the homebrew hobby and they'll sell you their set up cheap!

Lagers are difficult to homebrew unless you have a set-up for their necessary cold storage, we don't even try. Stouts are fairly easy, we recently made a Guiness clone that was, well, blissfully good. We haven't tried bock yet either, though we've made a couple of fabulous pale ales. Next on the list is a hopless beer, then porter!

Your friends who drink beer -- tell them to save bottles for you (brown, please!) and you'll have a couple cases in no time! You'll want a couple cases too, that's about how much a single homebrew kit makes.

The biggest thing that nobody talks about is that your pot to boil in, your bottles, all that stuff has to be CLEAN. You, of course, already know this from all the jam making you do, but it's just as important if not more so with homebrew 'cause of the yeast and all. You don't want to brew bugs! We sterilize our bottles in the dishwasher

Let us know how your wine-making adventure turns out, I for one am particularly interested!


Whitewater