Just how much grape juice is in the cheap wine kits?

[Berry454]

After brewing some of the cheap wine kits such as the Solomon Grundy golds and wine buddies £20 range I have began to get very curious at just how much grape concentrate is in these kits.

An average litre of grape concentrate (mixed varieties) costs £14. And still around £8 even at wholesale.

So surely these kits can't just contain grape concentrate.

Anyone know just how much grape concentrate is in these kits?

 

[soupdragon]

The Range make your own red

2.2kg kit. 65% of the juice compound is grape stuff so that makes 1.43kg in the kit. Can't comment on the others that you mention but I'd imagine they're similar, although I think there's slightly more actual juice in these as the Winebuddy kits are around 1.7-1.8kg total weight. @Chippy_Tea has done this a few times and it seems to go down well. I've got my first of these on a few days ago so can't really comment on it yet

Cheers Tom

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The Solomon Grundy kit I made recently had 1 litre of juice far less than the Make Your Own kits and you can tell when you drink it.
I am going to rty a Wine Buddy next so I will post here when I make it.

 

[Berry454]

The Range make your own red

2.2kg kit. 65% of the juice compound is grape stuff so that makes 1.43kg in the kit. Can't comment on the others that you mention but I'd imagine they're similar, although I think there's slightly more actual juice in these as the Winebuddy kits are around 1.7-1.8kg total weight. @Chippy_Tea has done this a few times and it seems to go down well. I've got my first of these on a few days ago so can't really comment on it yet

Cheers Tom

Regarding that 2.2kg kit Tom with 1.43kg of grape stuff. My point though is how much of that 1.43kg is actually grape concentrate. 1.43kg grape stuff could mean anything from grape extract to plain old grape juice.

I know with the Solomon Grundy cabernet Sauvignon that I brewed recently. It contained about 1 litre of juice. The 1 litre of juice definitely wasn't all grape concentrate because it was to thin in consistency.

 

[soupdragon]

Regarding that 2.2kg kit Tom with 1.43kg of grape stuff. My point though is how much of that 1.43kg is actually grape concentrate. 1.43kg grape stuff could mean anything from grape extract to plain old grape juice.

I know with the Solomon Grundy cabernet Sauvignon that I brewed recently. It contained about 1 litre of juice. The 1 litre of juice definitely wasn't all grape concentrate because it was to thin in consistency.

If you look at the picture red grape concentrate is 65% of total weight. Note the wording on the box, concentrate rather than compound. The other ingredients that would normally be in the compound are listed after that. The sugar, other fruit juice concentrates and grape skin extract.
I may be wrong but I read that to mean that 65% of the total weight is pure grape concentrate.

Cheers Tom

 

[soupdragon]

Just found an email from a while ago when I enquired with the manufacturer. I was trying to compare them to the 7kg kits like Cellar 7.


Hi Tom,

Thanks for your patience,
I have just heard back from the tech team,
The concentrate blend in the pouch has a fill weight of approx. 2.2 kg and contains approx. 65 % red grape juice concentrate, along with some glucose syrup and other soft fruit juice concentrates (elderberry and blueberry).
he kit also required an addition sugar addition of around 3.5 kg sucrose white granulated sugar – how this compares to the 7 kg kits in terms of quality will depend upon the proportions of juice and sugar in these kits, but based on experience I’d guess a lot of such kits do contain quite a high proportion of sugars.
Let me know if you have any other questions,

Kindest Regards,
Abby - Customer Experience Advocate - Make Your Own


Hope that helps?

Cheers Tom

 

[Chippy_Tea]

The concentrate blend in the pouch has a fill weight of approx. 2.2 kg and contains approx. 65 % red grape juice concentrate, along with some glucose syrup and other soft fruit juice concentrates (elderberry and blueberry).

MYO kit -

• Packaged Size: 24.5 x 19 x 10cm
• Weight: 2.3kg

So taking into account 1 litre of water weighs 1 kg there is going to be 2 litres of juice in the MYO kits that is double the Solomon Grundy kits not a wonder the MYO kits are better.

The WineBuddy kit is 1.8 Kg so obviously somewhere between the Make Your Own and Solomon Grundy kits.