Newbie and dont no where to start!

[shazz44]

Hi I would love to have a go at making red wine, but not sure where to start? :wha:
Can anyone recomend a good starter kit please? I havent any equipment yet.
Thanks.

 

[RobWalker]

How much do you want to make? Kits range in size from 1 to 5 gallons and are a great place to start, there's a fair bit to learn your first time around so I always suggesting sticking with an easy, basic kit. You'll need a Demi-John, bung and airlock, some sort of sanitizer and a syphon tube and some wine bottles. A hydrometer will be useful for taking sugar readings too, allowing you to figure out how strong your wine is, and especially useful when sweetening to taste :)

Remember, the most important ingredient to wine is time and patience, a good wine takes a while to mature! All being well, you should have something that's palatable in 3 months.

THBC do a nice starter set, but if you choose to go second hand or grab cheap bits from here and there, it's probably a good reference for what kit you need - http://www.thehomebrewcompany.co.uk/ind ... cts_id=350

Ask around too! You won't believe how many of your friends and family know somebody who does/used to make wine.

 

[shazz44]

Ok thanks for that. Has anyone on here had any experience with pat macks home brewing caps? These sound too good to be true and very easy? :?

 

[smithsj1]

I received a Pat Mack's Home Brewing Caps in the last few days and put a Cider on so should be ready for testing in a week or so.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

In case anyone is wondering -

 

[Dutto]

Welcome to The Forum!

 

[stz]

Hi I started out making cider, then beer, then mead and got REALLY into making beer to the point where it is now my job. Alongside that I made some wine, mostly kit, the occasional country/vegetable wine and the occasional wildcard brew, like squash, random juice, dried fruit, home solaria sherry, garlic wine, stuff like that.

After a long hiatus with wine I bought a 5gal kenridge kit and it'll be ready to bottle this week. It is REALLY good in comparison to my scattered memory of previous cheaper wine kits. I can tell that the quality concentrate really made a difference, it was 10L made up to 23L so for each litre of concentrate I needed to add 1.3L of water which suggests not a lot of concentration in making it. Cheaper kits require sugar, contain less concentrate so are either more sugar and water or use a concentrate that has been reduced down to nothing. That and the oak supplied and stuff seems to be part of it. I found it relatively expensive having made wine for pennies before, but it works out at £1.50 a bottle and tastes very good so far, very full bodied.

I'm going to have a go at some cheaper wine with bulk concentrate, grape powder, sugar, grape juice, oak chips, tannin and acid blend. This is obviously more of a gamble, the recipe isn't already done for me so it could easily come out awful, but I think I can get it down to 90p a bottle, without all the extra fluff it'd be as cheap as 60p.