Brewing wine is a faff

[chrissyr63]

I've made a couple of 30 bottle wine kits recently and aren't they a faff!
Mixing and fermenting goes nice and easy but:
Degassing over 3-4 days
Stabilising
Finings A
Finings B
Rack and bottle (cleanse, sterilise 30 bottles)
Let it settle for a few weeks or months.

Am I over working here!

compare to a beer brew and in the glass after a few day (well maybe 14).

 

[Drunkula]

The gravitas of wine is a foible painted on history by a charlatan.

But making wine is a cup of tea compared to beer and it has far less chance of going wrong.

So I disagree. Most of the steps you mention involve pouring in a packet and walking away. Boo hoo.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Degassing over 3/4 days :shock: it takes me a minute max.

Have a look at this - https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/degassing-wine-the-quick-and-easy-way.48971/

I agree bottling is a pain but if you use a bucket clip and a little bottler (Google them) it takes a lot of the pain away, some people here use bag in a box so no bottling. (I use the little bottler tube with my Syphon tube I didn't want to drill my FV)

When I clear I add fining A then go and watch T.V for an hour then add part B there is no need to stand over the FV.

 

[chewie]

You could use bigger bottles, nothing wrong with 1 litre or 1.5 litre spirit bottles, all pubs and clubs bin there bottles so doesn't take long to gather enough up.

 

[chrissyr63]

Was making a beaverdale kit. This says swirl the container a minimum of 3 times a days for 3-4 days to degass and I do use a degasser. And fining is add A swirl and wait 24 hours then add B and wait 3-7 days.
I agree it is all simple stuff but just takes so much elapsed time. And then leave it to mature.
Maybe it is just I enjoy the AG process of making beer - and I do mainly keg so that removes the bottle washing!

 

[Chippy_Tea]

You could use bigger bottles, nothing wrong with 1 litre or 1.5 litre spirit bottles, all pubs and clubs bin there bottles so doesn't take long to gather enough up.

Good point i used to bottle into 2 litre plastic spring water bottles when i first started but eventually moved to glass when i got my bottling set up sorted.

.

 

[StFlipper]

I regularly brew both 23L beer kits and 23L wine kits (Beaverdale, Kendridge, Atmosphere) and I find the wine kits a bit easier and less time consuming than beer, mainly because I bottle the beer so there are 48x500ml bottles to sterilise and rinse vs 30x750ml wine bottles.

For degassing I use one of these degassing sticks https://www.home-brew-hopshop.co.uk/degassers-paddles-spoons/471-stainless-steel-degasser-23l.html which attaches to an electric drill. I found the plastic degassing stick very unsatisfactory - plastic particles grind away where the stick goes through the bung, and drop down into the wine (thankfully they float so can be removed during siphoning). With the stainless steel degassing stick the bung is made of hard nylon so that doesn't happen.

In general I've found the timetable for 23L wine kits is something like:

• About 10 days for the primary fermentation, then rack into the secondary.
  Although the kit instructions say that fermentation can continue for another 2 weeks, I always find that the SG is already pretty much at the target after just 10 days. For example I'm making the Beaverdale Gewurztraminer at the moment, and on day 10 it had already gone from 1.084 to 0.994, ie. it's already at the target SG.
• Maybe another 5 days just to be sure that fermentation is done (but as I say, it essentially is).
• 2-3 days for the degassing and stabilising stages, and adding the finings (kieselsol and chitosan).
• 5-7 days to clear.
• Bottle.

so 4-5 weeks from start to finish, and with white wines the result is perfectly drinkable straight away. The best wine kit I've ever made was the Vineco Atmosphere Amarone, which I'm sure is meant to be stored for years before drinking, but actually after only a couple of months it was astonishingly good, and the equal of £20 bottles I've tasted.

With beer kits it's often 10 days primary, 5 days dry hopping, 2 weeks priming in the warm, and 2 weeks clearing, so a bit longer than white wine.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I found the plastic degassing stick very unsatisfactory - plastic particles grind away where the stick goes through the bung, and drop down into the wine (thankfully they float so can be removed during siphoning). With the stainless steel degassing stick the bung is made of hard nylon so that doesn't happen.

I don't use a bung when degassing i put the degassing wand directly into the DJ or FV therefore have never had plastic bits in my wine.

.

 

[chrissyr63]

I use the wand directly as well - as said plastic bits were created when trying to us the bung.

 

[StFlipper]

Sounds sensible. I seem to remember that the plastic wand (if it's this one - https://www.home-brew-hopshop.co.uk/degassers-paddles-spoons/2302-degasser-the-wine-whip.html) pulls out of the crappy plastic bung. The stainless steel one has a pin through the nylon bung so it's all one piece, but then it doesn't have the same plastic shredding problems so there's little reason to separate it.