How Wine Making Kits Work
So you’re thinking about making some wine? That’s great! Wine making is a very enjoyable hobby that just about anyone can do from home. It can also produce some of the best tasting wine you’ve ever had.
One thing to note about wine making kits is that while homebrewing beer can produce a batch within about a month, making your own wine usually takes 2 to 6 months. So you’re looking at a substantial time commitment, but if you don’t mind waiting for a bit, then making your own wine can be a fun and enjoyable hobby.
The Wine Making Process
In order to get a clear picture of what exactly to expect from your wine making kits, it’s helpful to have a good grasp of wine making in general. Let’s take a step-by-step look at the whole process and then we’ll see where the kits that you buy come in.
1. The first step in wine making is taking the base ingredients of the wine, and processing (via chopping, cutting, crushing, or boiling) them into a pulp. This pulp is called the must when it is prepared. The most common base ingredient for wine is grapes, but you can also make wine from other fruit, berries, and certain flower petals and leaves (such as dandelions, rose petals, and honeysuckle).
2. The second step is pressing the must to squeeze every possible drop of juice from the fruit. Some wines skip step one and start directly here at step two.
3. The must is now taken and placed into a large vat. In this third step, various ingredients, including acid, sugar, yeast, and some nutrients, are added to the juice. This solution is allowed to sit for 3 to 10 days, covered, while the primary fermentation process takes place. In this process, the pulp, sediment and the other solid parts of the must will sink to the bottom of the vat.
4. In step four, the secondary fermentation process takes place. This step usually lasts for 2 to 6 months and allows the last proteins from the grapes to be broken down by the yeast. It also allows the remaining grape and yeast sediment to settle down at the bottom of the fermentation vessel, thereby clarifying the previously cloudy wine. In commercial wineries, the second fermentation process takes place large stainless steel vessels or in oak barrels, depending on the taste qualities desired for that batch of wine.
5. The next to last step in the wine making process is the refining and filtering stage. If there is any remaining sediment in the wine, certain substances are added to the wine at this point to remove it. Winemakers may also blend multiple batches of wine at this stage to produce certain taste characteristics. Finally, preservatives, such as sulfur dioxide and potassium sorbate, are added to the wine just before the last step.
6. The last step is bottling the wine. The finished product is poured into bottles, which are traditionally sealed with cork, although many alternative bottling methods are becoming more popular, such as synthetic corks and screw caps.
Now that we’ve got an idea of the wine making process, we’ll take a look at wine making kits and what to expect from them in my next post.