I have been making beer for over 10yrs and mead for about two. My father has been harassing me to make a batch of Merlot. I think I'm about to finally break down and get a Brew King Select kit and get it started. I plan to make it per the instructions for the first time and rack onto marbles to yield a low headspace after racking.
Is it to late to start a kit and still be in bottles by xmas? I don't mind telling him to let it age 3-6 months in the bottle. I basically have no idea how long wine takes but I make meads and Lambics that I make and forget about for 12-18months so I know the drill and can wait if needed.
Is the yeast provided adequate or should I use a liquid strain?
IMHO, Christmas should be fine. If you start in June, bottle in September you will have 90 days in the bottle. Longer is better but 90 days will suffice (I've made about 20 brew king kits).
The supplied yeast is fine too IMO. You might consider adding some oak to your primary if you like an oaky flavor and/or add some tannin. Also, there is a range of SG to which you dilute with water. Dilute to the high end (less water) for a better result (in fact, I have reduced the water to 5.75 US gallons total volume with good results).
That seems like a short amount of time. I'm used to letting Mead sit in secondary for 6-12months to clear and then bottle. Do the select kits come with oak cubes? Why would you add them to the primary instead of the secondary, shorter contact time?
A number of people have pointed out in this newsgroup, and I have confirmed with my own tests, that adding oak to the primary results in a much better integrated oak flavor in the final product. I have found adding oak after fermentation results in a wine that . . Well . . Tastes like it has had oak added. If added in the beginning, the oak harmonizes much more with the wine and tastes like it is part of the wine, for lack of a better description. I have wondered about this issue as I see lots of commercial wines being fermented in steel and then aged in oak barrels. I have com to the conclusion that oaking with chips or cubes is much different than aging in barrels.
Six month is OK, but 18 is better. Drink a bottle at Christmas, but save the rest for consumption at intervals of a couple of months. You'll see the improvement over time.
Mead often takes longer to age out than wine. That is with fresh fruit compared to mead. But kits are really designed to age very quickly. I do not know exactly what they do to them but they can be ready to drink far sooner than wine made with the same fresh fruit. If you start it now it will probably be fine by Christmas but might be better later.
That said, I am not impressed by any of the red wine kits I have made. White wine kits, yes, but not the red wine kits. But that is just my opinion as others really like them. For red wine, I like to go from fresh fruit but then you are looking at 2 years or more.
Bear in mind that kits are designed to produce reasonably drinkable results in a short period of time. The better ones (like the Brew King Selection series) will definitely benefit from some months of aging (carboy and bottle) but should be pretty drinkable within 3 or 4 months. Meads and other non-grape fruit wines seem to take a good deal longer to clear and reach drinkability. I don't know why, that's just the way they are, at least in my experience.
Yes, most of the better red kits come with some sort of oak (usually sawdust, for the kits I've made). There may be some slight difference in adding oak during the primary fermentation, rather than later; my guess is that with the sawdust they usually include, you're going to get full extraction from the oak pretty fast. Using it in primary (and discarding when you rack into a carboy) makes life a little simpler. I don't think it would harm anything if you wanted to add it later, or keep it when you rack to the carboy . But if your intention is to follow the directions for your first kit, I'd just follow the directions for the oak.
About the only area where I'd deviate from the directions is in timing
- as long as your carboy is topped up and under airlock, there is no real urgency to doing things according to the timetable in the instructions; I'd probably take 3 months or more before bottling, rather than the 6 weeks the instructions cover.
Thanks for the info. How important is it to top off when racking? I don't have any wine to top off with and it seems your just diluting it if you add water which can't be good. I have 6gal carboys I plan to use and purge with CO2 prior to any racking and I can also purge after racking and adding the airlock. I also thought about using marble to bring the volume up to the top of the carboy.
You can buy an inexpensive wine similar to what you are making. You can put glass marbles in to take up the space. A little water won't be noticed, but too much will be. Ed
I haven't made kit wine for many, many years so I am no expert. However, generally the lighter whites age more quickly than the reds and although either would be drinkable by Christmas you may want to consider a white such as a Riesling or even a Chardonnay and IMHO it would be a better wine by Christmas than the Merlot. This assumes that your father likes white wines as well as reds.
It is very important to top off. If you do not want to dilute with water or with a different wine (I don't like to) you can get around this by getting some smaller jugs and extra airlocks to rack into. It is good to have a few
3 gal jugs and/or some 1 gal jugs. 1/2 gal jugs will really round out your collection.
Grab a 5 gallon carboy for aging, and fill it to the neck. Bottle the other 2-4 bottles for early consumption.
I picked up the ~$90 Mosti Mondiale (?) Cab Sauv from grape&granary. It's all juice rather than concentrate. The early bottle we had was wonderful. I also have the upper-end Merlot from BK waiting for its turn in the fermenters (oddly, it's seems that it's still slightly concentrated; I thought it would be pure juice). It came with three packs of oak.
Also, you can just order more oak when you buy the kit.
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