Today I bottled 30 bottles each of a cabernet sauvignon kit (for Dave) and chianti (for me). As I was putting labels on the chianti, I noticed one cork with wine seeping out of the top. I’ve never had this happen before. I yanked that one out, and wine spewed out – we had overfilled […]
Tag archive: wine kit
I was racking off my Cellar Craft 5-week Old Vines Zinfandel kit today and noticed this yucky-looking white residue at the top of the wine, sticking to the side of the carboy as it was racked off. There was a lot of lees at the bottom, too. I have an extra liter or so of […]
Time to bottle the sauvignon blanc that had the battonage treatment. That added another 6 weeks of waiting to the kit, I’m very curious how this wine will compare to the “untreated” kit. I will let these bottles wait for about 3 months before doing a side-by-side, to give it as much of a fair […]
I finished bottling the “Bahia Belle” blend and Merlot B (“Embarcadero” merlot) today. Then I finally started another “easy drinker” red kit that I’ve been excited about, a Cellar Craft Lodi Old Zinfandel. I wanted a good, easy house zin to have around for grilling and whatnot, so I did a lot of research on […]
The Yakima Synergy is clear enough that I’m not going to filter it for bottling. It came out great! I did leave about 700 mL at the bottom of the carboy that had some sediment and poured it off into a separate bottle to clear a little more. Tasting notes: Very faint nose of apricots […]
I’ve been wanting to try some battonage on a wine kit for a while, since I first read about the technique. Battonage basically involves leaving the wine on the fine lees for an extended period of time, and stirring the lees up every few days to extract additional amino acids and mannoproteins from the yeast. […]
I used a 5 micron inline filter to bottle the Argentinian Trio today, and I noticed that the last 2 bottles had paper floating in them! Total bummer. I’m not sure if I didn’t set something up right, or what. Oh well, I’ll mark the corks on these and keep them for home consumption. The […]
With all of the carboys from the barrel wine plus the kit wines I have bulk aging, the wine has now overflowed out of the shower and into the guest room. Reservations are now required! The shower is also quite busy. We busted out a little sample of the merlot from the carboy, expecting it […]
I tossed the juice bag from the Riesling, but then thought I should go ahead and send an email to Winexpert to see if the precipitate is a bad sign, or no big deal. I have to say, I’ve been very happy with their customer service – they answered me the next day! Linda from […]
It was time to rack off the cabernet sauvignon kit into a carboy. I noticed a distinct aroma of bananas, just like we smelled when the cabernet sauvignon grapes were fermenting. The color is great, this is going to be a pretty decent wine for the money. Next I set up to start the Alsatian […]