Choosing the right kit ...

Now that sort of question will let the cat amongst the pigeons!

There are a lot of wine kits out there from the downright awful to surprisingly good! If you are in the USA then your range is quite vast and I am sure that you will get recommendations of all sorts. In UK I have found that, of the kits available here, the Brew King Selection series ( from Canada) is the best value especially when making red wines. You can make kits that are ready to drink in 24hours!!!!!!!!! to those which need a few months to achieve a semblance of "real" wine. If you are serious about making your own wine then it isn't going to be a quick fix! As you will find out on this NG, time is of an essence. So I will suggest the following.

1. Buy a kit at as high a price as you can afford. I would recommend that you buy 23 litre kit ( 5 gals imp, 6 gals US ) and that involves buying quite a bit of ancilliary equipment as well!
2. Follow the instructions and bottle up when ready.
3. Start drinking your first wine far too early --- we have all done that --- it will taste quite excellent.
4. Buy another kit and make it up as soon as your equipment is finished with your first batch. Then keep it as long as you can before drinking it.
5. Visit this NG and keep asking silly ( basic ) questions.

I would warn you that if you are starting on the wine making path it could lead to a serious involvement. My own capacity for wine production peaked at about 200 gallons ( Imp) and I now maintain a steady level of about 80 gallons of wine in various stages of developement in my small flat ( apartment ) and I go to sleep in a well ventilated bedroom to the gentle "plop plop" of my latest blackberry/elderberry wine.

I really recommend that you go to your local "Home Brew" shop and ask for advice. Most shops will not try and sell you too much eqipment and there are a lot of "starter" kits out there. After your first try you will then be able to make up your mind as to what you will want to do next. There is no doubt that the major supermarkets have an excellent choice of very good wines at ridiculous prices which is a lot easier than making it yourself. I have just bought a very good Australian Cabernet/Merlot from Tesco at £2.50 ( half price) which is far superior to my own wines! And my own best kit wines cost me, bottled, labelled (and aged for a year or 2) about the same! My "fruit" wines are less expensive but most take longer before I drink them! Like I said at the beginning --you are entering dangerous waters!

Good luck

From my own personal experience with kits, you generally get what you pay for. Although the cost-per-bottle will be much cheaper with any kit than with a comparable purchased wine, the more expensive the kit the better the resulting wine has been, IMHO.

(I'd also recommend bulk aging in the carboy several months longer than indicated in the kit instructions).

Woods

I'm not sure what the on-line starter kits would come with. You will need a primary fermeter, which is a big plastic bucket, larger than the 23 l volume of the kits. You will need a 23 l carboy, which can be glass or plastic. People tend to trust glass more, easier to clean, but heavier and breakable. Two carboys are nice to have so that you can either siphon from one to the other, or have two batches on the go. You will need an air lock for each carboy, and possibly for the primary, if it comes with a lid with a hole. You can also cover the primary with plastic (I find that a green garbage bag works). You will need a siphon with a little plastic attachment on the end to raise the intake above the sediment, and a clip on the other end to be able to stop the flow. You should get a hydrometer... although I will get jumped on for this... I never use my hydrometer any more. I like my wine dry, and I leave the kit long enough that it is very dry. In a cold basement, you should use the hydrometer to gauge the progress. You will need a big plastic spoon for stirring.

When it is time to bottle, if you use corks, you will have to buy, borrow or rent a corker, unless you use stoppers. The cost of a double lever corker might be worth saving a couple of 90 minute (each way?) trips to the wine store. A floor corker is great (I just bought one) but if you don't know that you're in the hobby for a while, it's an expense.

Most wine shops have deals that include a mid-level kit and all of the above (except a corker and corks) for less than the cost of a second kit. The equipment is really not that expensive... is downright cheap compared with the cost of the kits & juice that it will be used on, if you get into it.

Most kits have a best before date, and ones that I just bought are good at least until next spring and don't have to be refrigerated. Refrigeration would extend the life somewhat and I think you can freeze the juice bags. If you are more than about three months away from starting, I would just wait and order later.

It may be warm enough for white wines (which one wants to ferment slowly at lower temperatures), but you will want to raise the must temperature to 70-80ºF for reds. The easiest way to accomplish this is to purchase one of the heating pads sold at your local discount drugstore for $10-15. They will keep a 5-gallon primary or carboy at the required temperature. The may be too warm for one-gallon jugs, so you will need to put few layers of towel in between.

Conversely, 65F is a bit warm for cellaring your wine (55-58F is considered "ideal"), but a constant 65F year round without refrigeration is something many of us wish we had.

If you order from a reputable source, you should be quite satisfied. Most "starter kits" usually do contain everything you need to do the job, with quite helpful instructions. Check out Presque Isle

The kits I've seen come in cans which can be stored indefinitely at room temperature. Your cellar would be even better. If you buy a bucket of fresh grapes, you will have to start right away, or freeze them, but otherwise you should be able to wait a bit. But why wait? The sooner you start, the sooner you can taste the delight of your own wine! :)

FWIW, I'm making my first batch of wine this year. I'm still waiting on my equipment to show up.

What I did was to browse a lot of Internet shops, read this newsgroup, and do a lot of surfing on wine making. I took a lot of notes, and basically believed what I heard from several sources. :p

I liked this site for purchasing stuff;

and this one for reading up on how to do everything;

I looked at what all came in the kit, then took a look at what I thought I needed from all my reading. I decided to purchase things individually because I wanted to use my own grapes, not a can of juice. ;) I used to contents of the starter kit to make sure I had what I needed.

Hopefully everything should show up this week and I can pick my grapes and get going. It sounds like it can get about 10 degrees cooler before I

We'll see how my first attempt goes. I'm sure it will be a learning experience.

Good luck, and cheers, Will