Low starting gravity on 5 x winexpert reserve kits?

[Berry454]

Just brewed up 5 x Winexpert Cabernet Merlot Reserve kits today each in a 30 litre brew bucket.

These are supposed to achieve 13.5% abv from the kits.

I brewed the kits to dead on 23l on the fermenters as per the instructions.

I vigorously mixed all the fermenters with a spoon manually and finished with my degassing wand to make sure the wine was mixed sufficiently and aerated.

These kits did NOT come with additional grape skins like some of the Winexpert kits do. So it won't be getting any additional sugars from skins or anything!

All 5 kits came out to 1.085

Even fermenting down to 0.995 that's not going to hit 13.5% abv.

Any ideas? Anyone had a similar issue with these kits?

These are the short dated October BBE kits from brew2bottle.

I like a strong red!!

 

[Dutto]

Suspects are:

1. The hydrometer is faulty (movement of the paper is common)
2. The OG was taken well above the calibrated temperature for the hydrometer. (normally 16*C)
3. Normally wine kits recommend a certain amount of ordinary sugar or dextrose and you mixed the two up to put less than specified into the brew.
4. The FV isn’t accurate and because of this (or another reason) you have mixed in too much water into the brew.
5. There was some red wine cordial left in the supply pouch because it wasn’t washed out properly.
6. The manufacturer is making false claims about the product.

I think that covers everything!

 

[Yellow Car]

Bit of a late reply, but I've just put mine on (think we both got the same B2B Clearance deal?) and had a starting gravity of 1.088.

So still not going to make 13.5%, probably low to mid 12s.

How did yours turn out?

 

[Berry454]

Bit of a late reply, but I've just put mine on (think we both got the same B2B Clearance deal?) and had a starting gravity of 1.088.

So still not going to make 13.5%, probably low to mid 12s.

How did yours turn out?

Yeah we likely both got that same deal. I honestly just grabbed 5 of them because of the cost reduction from B2B... But kits being near the BBE shouldn't affect the gravity or sugars in the kits.

I reckon mine finished around 11.8% which why it might not seem a big deals it's actually a HUGE problem when it comes to aging the wine.

It's not for nothing that nearly all commercial reds come in at 13.5% abv. Below 13% they often don't age well.

Regarding the 5 kits that I brewed. They have lots of body like you would expect from a Winexpert reserve but they leave a lot to be desired in the taste aspect. They just taste fairly flat at 11.8 ish percent and they don't really have that warm sensation that you get from drinking a bottle of commercial red. The abv is simply not high enough. They just don't really taste alcoholic like you get with that few extra percents on the abv.

I submitted an email directly to Winexpert but they never responded. Probably near 2 months ago that I contacted them.

I personally won't be buying Winexpert kits again. With a retail price of over £70 if they can't even get the consistency right then I'd rather stick with the other brands that I like to use.

 

[Yellow Car]

The last 2 Winexpert kits that I made ended at .991 and .992, so if this one does the same that will yield 12.73, so not far off the 13% claimed - or I could add 120 g of sugar to make up the missing quarter percent.

Not so good that the taste doesn't live up to expectations though. I've only made white before as I understood that the cheaper red kits don't really measure up to the supermarket stuff. but hoped that a (normally) £75 kit might - but I'll view it as an experiment. Worst case I'll be well sorted for boeuf bourguignon stock for a couple of years