I have seen review for The Range 'Make Your Own' white, rose and cider so I thought I could add my review of the red. So far I have made two lots of 5 gallons of the red, with a third just started, one important thing, they warn you to put the FV onto a tray or the like as it can be quite an active ferment, they ain't kidding, luckily I use an oversize bucket about 7 gallons in old money, I also put it in the bottom of our airing cupboard which is heated by a simple electric bar heater with a thermostat set at 24 degrees centigrade.
The kit contains red concentrate in a plastic pouch with five sachets of, yeast, oak chips, stabiliser and two finings and instructions in a side pouch of the container.
Just a point to the unwary, make sure you stand the pouch upright before you cut it open, both pouches are opened at the same time.
Add the concentrate with 5 litres of boiling water wash out the pouch, dissolve 3.5 kg of sugar and top up to 23ish litres with cold water, when the temperature drops below 30 degrees C add oak chips and yeast. As it was the warmest part of summer the cooling down took hours, so now I add 3 litres of boiling water and top up to 23 ish litres and the temperature is about 27 degrees C.
Into the airing cupboard, the aroma of fermentation spread throughout the room, much to my daughter's disgust, it's in her bedroom!
It actually took 10 days rather than the seven stated in the instructions, but it did ferment out to 0.994, start s.g. was 1082, calculates at 11.7 ABV.
Out of the airing cupboard and add the stabiliser, and finings 'A' stir to degassfor several minutes, they say two but I found that four or five aided the clearing, wait for an hour add finings 'B' stir again for 10 seconds and put to rest in a cool place.
After 3 days, checked to see if it was clear and had a problem, this wine is such a deep red you need to rack some off and use a torch to see if it's clear! Thankfully it was. I use lemonade bottles to bottle it into and get 11 by two litre bottles plus if you're as tight as I am you can carefully get about another litre off the lees to settle in the bottle.
It is a little rough and very dry if drunk straight away but I add a small amount of lemonade to a glass. They do say that after two or three months it rivals commercial wines, one day I might even find out!
Over all, considering the cost of the kit is £24.99 and four kilos of sugar is £2.76, 69p per kilo in Lidl, that's £27.75 for 30 bottles, about 93p a bottle, IMHO this is very good wine for an incredibly good price.
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