Wine Making - FAQ

Our Wine Making Kit yields a gallon of vino, which fills five standard 750 mL bottles of wine.

Our Wine Kit includes everything you need to make wine, including vineyard pressed juice and equipment. All you need to source are five 750 mL bottles. Don’t worry - you have 4 weeks to find bottles before bottling day.

Your homemade wine will finish at roughly 14% ABV (alcohol by volume). The precise ABV may vary slightly depending on factors during fermentation like temperature, yeast activity, etc. The best way to determine your wine’s exact ABV is with a hydrometer. You’ll take samples of your wine before yeast is added and before you bottle. The samples are compared to calculate the ABV.

Our general rule of thumb is to use a kit within 18-24 months of receipt for best results, but the components don’t necessarily ‘expire’ or go bad. Wine can certainly be made with a kit that’s older than 2 years. As long as the kit wasn’t stored in a wet or hot place, which can potentially compromise the packaging or contents, the contents should still produce a great wine.

If your wine kit’s been in storage for a while you may notice some of the natural sediment has settled inside the juice bag - this is normal. You can give the bladder a gentle ‘massage’ to loosen any deposits - they won’t harm your wine. Clarifiers are added throughout the process to draw out any sediment, yeast, etc. 

If your kit is very old or you simply prefer to start fresh with a brand new batch of ingredients, try our Wine Recipe Kit. Our Wine Recipe Kit is an ingredient refill that includes juice base, yeast, additives, sanitizer, etc. needed to make a gallon of wine with the equipment you have in your kit.

Our wine kit does include Chitosan, a clarifier that is derived from shellfish. Though our manufacturer ensures that due to the way the clarifier is processed all of the proteins from the shells are degraded. You can absolutely omit this item altogether if you’d like to make a vegan wine or if you want to avoid use of animal or shellfish products. With the omission of this clarifier we would just recommend giving your wine a few more days (beyond the instructions' timeline) to aid in clarifying the wine. This will allow the sediment some extra time to fall out of suspension and settle in a layer at the bottom of the jug. Leaving this ingredient out & adding time to the process won’t harm the wine or impact the flavor.

Your concentrated wine juice may appear dark in its bag, but is perfectly normal. The vineyard-pressed grape juice is packaged in oxygen-barrier material to keep it safe in storage. The juice is combined with ~0.5 gallons of water on day 1 of the process. 

Wine will also appear darker in the fermenter than it will once finished & in your glass. Time and the included clarifiers will clarify the wine during the 4 week process. The wine juice base contains natural sediment and deposits, which can get stirred up when pouring into the fermenter & darken the color. Chardonnay oak can also darken the appearance a first. But any sediment will eventually settle out of the wine at the bottom of the fermenter.

Yes it is! Our wine kits include a combined packet that contains both the Potassium Metabisulphite & Potassium Sorbate - “Sulphite/Sorbate 2g".

Our general rule of thumb is to use a kit within 18-24 months of receipt for best results, but the components don’t necessarily ‘expire’ or go bad. Wine can certainly be made with a kit that’s older than 2 years. As long as the kit wasn’t stored in a wet or hot place, which can potentially compromise the packaging or contents, the contents should still produce a great wine.

If your wine kit’s been in storage for a while you may notice some of the natural sediment has settled inside the juice bag - this is normal. You can give the bladder a gentle ‘massage’ to loosen any deposits - they won’t harm your wine. Clarifiers are added throughout the process to draw out any sediment, yeast, etc. 

If your kit is very old or you simply prefer to start fresh with a brand new batch of ingredients, try our Wine Recipe Kit. Our Wine Recipe Kit is an ingredient refill that includes juice base, yeast, additives, sanitizer, etc. needed to make a gallon of wine with the equipment you have in your kit.

Don’t worry - your wine will be just fine. This simply points to a super active & healthy yeast. Yeast activity peaks in the first few days of the process. If this happens you can briefly remove the airlock, dump the contents, refill with fresh water and return to the fermenter. 

An overflow into the airlock can be caused by fermenting at too warm a temperature (above the recommended 70-75ºF temperature range). Try relocating to a cooler room to keep the yeast within range or even wrapping the carboy with a wet, cold towel.

If this overflow persists, you can use the transfer tubing in the kit to create what’s called a “blow-off.” This serves the same function as the airlock - letting CO2 escape, while keeping oxygen out of the carboy. You’ll simply install one end of the flexible tubing into the rubber stopper and the other end into a glass of water. This blow-off assembly can be used for as long as needed.

Our Wine Kit includes corks, which work best with standard 750 mL wine bottles. You can save bottles from wine you enjoy at home or try our Wine Bottling Kit. You can also use twist-off wine bottles and their caps.

Yep! Sediment is to be expected in any naturally fermented beverage. While the included clarifiers help draw sediment out of the wine, you may notice some sediment collect in your bottles in storage. If you get any sediment in your wine glass, it won’t hurt anything except the appearance.

We recommend enjoying your homemade wine within 6 months of bottling for the best flavors. Homemade wines aren’t designed to age for long periods - even under the best conditions & temperature control. With that said, a homemade red can definitely get a bit better with age. But unlike commercial wines, you won’t find a homemade wine peaking in flavor after several years like you might when cellaring a commercial wine.