Little secret here that we like our booze. Even more is how much yours truly loves wine. I love everything about it and our proximity to the central coast of California only feeds the demon because frankly the if variety is the spice of life, then, we are in some spicy territory.
Recently I have been wanting to take my love of wine to another level and one area that has always interested me is the actual wine making process. Surely as I thought to myself when I had an extra 200 dollars burning a hole in my pocket there was something out there that I could come across that would satisfy that curiosity and recently, I came across a great company, Midwest Brewing Supplies and more specific their awesome amateur wine making kits. Holy balls, this is going to happen!
Now as most of you may know (or are about to find out) you can make wine pretty much out of any kind of fruit juice if you know a little bit about chemistry. I frankly don’t so I went with a kit that comes with all the needed stuff to create a batch of 30 bottles of wine. The kit I went for specially was the Complete Wine Package Equipment Kit w/ Double Lever Corker ($159.99) which comes with a whole arsenal of wine making weapons.
The Starter Winemaking Equipment Kit Includes:
- 7.5 gallon plastic fermenter with lid
- 6 gallon glass carboy
- Stopper
- Airlock
- Bottle Brush
- Wine hydrometer
- 8 oz. of Easy Clean no -rinse cleanser
- 30 corks
- Racking tube
- 5 ft. of 5/16″ siphon tubing
- Bottle Filler
- Shut-off valve
- 24 wine bottles (clear with Chardonnay, green with Merlot or White Zinfandel)
- Your choice of (1) of Vintner’s Reserve Chardonnay, Merlot, or White Zinfandel ingredient kit
- Double lever corker
I also picked up some extra cleaning/santization products, a wine thief (for drawing wine from my fermenter), and an auto siphon to make things a bit easier. All in all I am out around $200 dollars not counting shipping.
I personally chose the Merlot wine because of the three included, it was the one I like the most. And I figured it was a nice middle of the road red wine to cut my teeth on. As I said before, this kit is designed to make 30 750ml bottles of wine and comes with 24 bottles. Of course if you are like me you probably have a few bottles lying around to reuse, and that is perfectly fine if you clean and sanitize them the right way.
As of right now, we are going to leave this as a preview. Coming up next week will be post one in a series of my first wine making experience. Follow along over the next four to six weeks as I move from fermenting to bottling and finally to drinking.
