Wine Making Kits Guide

Just about everyone enjoys a nice glass of wine with a fancy meal, but did you know that you can easily make your own wine at home? Wine making is an enjoyable hobby that requires just a little bit of time and money to get started. There are several varieties of wine that you can make in your home, and doing it yourself will give you a better tasting wine than you'll find in a restaurant.

In this article we'll take a look at the various types of wine that you can make from a kit, what to expect from the wine making process and what sort of things you need to know before you get into wine making.

The types of wine that are available to be made from wine making kits are as varied as your choices in a supermarket. That is to say, just about every variety of wine can be made at home from a kit. Some of the more popular white wine varieties are chardonnay, riesling, sauvignon blanc, pinot grigio and chenin blanc. Some of the popular red wine selections are chianti, pinot noir, cabernet sauvignon, merlot and shiraz.

One thing to keep in mind when choosing a wine to make at home is that different types of wine require varying lengths of time to develop fully and be suitable for drinking. White wines, such as chardonnays, pinot grigios and rieslings, can be made in as little as two to four weeks, and are generally ready to drink as soon as they're bottled.

Red wines, on the other hand, such as pinot noirs and merlots, need more time once they're bottled to let the flavors fully develop. A minimum of two to six months "resting" time is generally recommended for red wines, once they're in the bottle, and a year is even better. So, if you're planning on bringing a bottle of your own wine to the office Christmas party, be sure to plan ahead and give yourself enough time to make the wine properly.

Once you've decided what kind of wine you want to make, it's time to get your wine making kit. There are two basic types of these kits. The first type of kit comes with both the ingredients for the wine and the wine making equipment that you need. The second sort of wine kit just has the ingredients you need for the wine.

Obviously, if you haven't ever made a batch of wine before, and don't have any of the necessary equipment, then you'll need to get that before you can start making your wine. Getting everything together in one bundle, instead of purchasing your items separately, can save you time and money. Once you've gotten all the equipment that you need and have made your first batch of wine, you can just buy the ingredient kits in the future.

The typical wine making process - not what you'll be doing at home - starts with crushing, chopping, mincing and smashing the grapes to get every last drop of juice out of them. The pulp-and-juice solution is called the must. The must is what is allowed to ferment and forms the base of the wine that is being made.

When you are making your wine from a kit, you are thankfully spared the hassle of preparing the must for yourself. The ingredient kit that you get will have everything you need to make your wine, and all of the ingredients will have been prepared for the wine making process so that no additional processing is necessary.

From this point on, the process that you go through at home will be much like the process that happens at commercial wineries, albeit on a smaller scale. This process has three basic stages: the primary fermentation, the secondary fermentation, and the stabilizing/clarifying stage.

In the primary fermentation stage, you'll add the must, the yeast and some additives to the water in your fermentation bucket (pictured above). This solution will sit for about a week while the yeast does its thing, eating the sugars from the grapes and producing alcohol and carbon dioxide. The CO2 is released via the air lock on your bucket. Nearly all of the solid ingredients will fall to the bottom of the bucket in this stage and will be left there for you to clean out when you start the second stage.

Once enough alcohol has been produced, you move the wine into a carboy for the secondary fermentation stage. This is done via a siphoning tube and is called racking. The wine will sit in the carboy for another week or so, while the yeast continues to ferment and the sediment continues to settle.

The third and last stage is the stabilizing and clarifying stage. The wine is moved from the current carboy into a new, clean carboy, and several ingredients are added to the wine. These new ingredients are designed to stop the fermentation process, aid in the removal of the last bits of solid matter, and produce the final flavors of the wine. This stage usually lasts one to two weeks.

Once the final clarifying stage has concluded, it's time to bottle your wine. You're going to need several bottles for this - 10 to 12, or possibly even more, depending on the size of the wine kit you got - and you're also going to need a corking machine. You can rent a corker for the day if you don't want to buy one just yet, or you could also use screw cap bottles.

Once the wine is bottled, it's best to let it sit for at least a couple of weeks, or even more for a deep-bodied red wine. Hold out at long as you can, and then crack those bottles open!

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