Home brewing kits ....

Bump!

Are we counting wine making as home "brewing"? If not, then I guess I'm in the wrong place (but I don't really care :p Surprised there isn't an "official" Home Brewing/Wine Making thread though).

We have a big elderberry bush outside the house, and every summer it's full of berries and every summer I look at it and think "should look into make some wine at some point..."

Well, after several years of procrastination, I finally get round to it - a bit of research and I find that it's actually quite a bit simpler than I initially thought; I was initially under the impression that I needed loads of time, a few hundred £ worth of equipment, and loads of space, but that's definitely not the case!

I ended up following this recipe:

https://www.brewbitz.com/pages/elderberry-wine-recipe

After ordering one of the 6 bottle starter kits from their shop (which includes all the yeast etc. needed to make it).

I roped the kids and other half into helping strip the berries from the stems, we ended up with about 2.1kg in total, which is just slightly below the amount in that recipe, so I reduced the other ingredients down slightly as well.

Started out at with an SG of 1.114, and after ~2 weeks, this settled at 0.992, giving an end ABV of ~16% (nice :D).

Gave it a little taste at this point, and not going to lie, it wasn't great, but everything I've read says that Elderberry needs at least a few months to mature, so I was kind of expecting this anyway. I transferred to a glass demijohn (picked up 2 for £15 from someone selling their old kit on ebay) and stuck in the back of a cupboard for 2 months - racked again a few weeks ago, tasted it again and a definite improvement - it's now drinkable, not amazing, but definitely feels like it has potential, so looking forward to maybe bottling around Christmas :) (some potential presents for the family ;)).

When I ordered the kit for the elderberry above, I was a few £ short of the free delivery cut-off, so I added a 6 bottle Beaverdale Pinot Grigio kit as well (the other half prefers white, and PG is her favourite), so once the elderberry was out of the bucket, that was the next one on the list.

The kit was surprisingly easy, and after ~4 weeks (just over 2 weeks of fermentation, a week of stabilising/shaking, and a week of clearing) we had 6 bottles ready (well, 5 + 3/4). We were very impressed with how it turned out, we found it a lot nicer than the usual cheap-midrange supermarket wines, and closer to something you'd pay £10-15/bottle for. Unfortunately those 6 bottles did not last long at all!

Next on the list was a 6 bottle Beaverdale Shiraz - this was pretty similar to the pinot (the kit instructions are identical), the only difference being the addition of oak chips at the start of fermentation. The fermentation on this was wild - started within a couple of hours of pitching the yeast, and was foaming almost to to the top of the bucket (8L bucket, with 4.5L of wine in), with the airlock bubbling almost constantly for about 36 hours! This one was done sooner than the pinot - just under 2 weeks, and then 3 weeks of stabilising/clearing (the instructions said 1 week to clear, but I've been busy, so left it another week). Not quite so impressed with this one - it's nice, but closer to a £5-6 bottles you'd buy. Drinkable, but not amazing (although so far we've only had the 3/4 "left overs" bottle which ended up with some of the sediment in, so maybe the other bottles will be nicer, and will probably improve with aging).

During this time, and following the success of the pinot, we decided "go big or go home", and ended up buying a 30L bucket and 23L carboy, and grabbing a 30 bottle pinot grigio kit - so that is currently in primary, with another week or so to go :)

Turns out this wine-making malarkey is a bit addictive, and yesterday I decided that - since we weren't currently doing anything with the small bucket and the gallon demi-johns, and I had some yeast left over from making the elderberry - I'd love to try a mead, so I bought a load of honey and started the prep for that last night - will be adding the yeast later tonight! Technically it's going to be a "metheglin" rather than a mead, since I've added some spices to it; a cinnamon stick, a clove, half a teaspoon of allspice, and a vanilla pod (also some fresh blood orange juice for hopefully a bit of citrus flavour). Hopefully this one should also be ready just in time for Christmas!

All in all, total costs I'd put at:

Initial starting equipment (starter kit, 15 bottles, corker) + 6 bottle pinot kit - £81
Additional chemicals (steriliser etc.), corks for demijohns, 6 bottle shiraz kit - £43
30 litre bucket (with airlock etc.), 23 litre carboy, 30 bottle pinot kit - £86
Honey & spices for mead* - £25

Total: £235

While that sounds a lot, that will end up with:

6 bottles of elderberry
6 bottles of pinot
6 bottles of shiraz
30 bottles of pinot
6 bottles of mead

= 54 bottles, or ~ £4.35/bottle

Of that, only about half is actually "consumables"; e.g. the wine kits, corks, chemicals, ingredients etc. So as I make more, those costs should drop significantly, since I now have all the necessary equipment :)

We also got some labels printed up - obviously completely unnecessary, and adds to the cost a bit, but we thought they looked nice :)

rHwOIJ3.png


aHMy7u4.png


* I went for the fancy "Morrisons best spanish forest honey", going for the cheap stuff, and forgoing the vanilla pod, this could have been closer to £6!
 
Last edited:
Awesome stuff.

I'd bought my dad a beer kit for Christmas years ago, and then after that turned out alright, we stopped off at a local brew shop and bought a red wine kit. This was crazy expensive at ~£120 for 40 bottles, so £3 just for the ingredients and had high hopes. However it was ****ing awful. Found some of the bottles at the back of a cupboard around 5yrs later but sadly no improvement.

Love the labels.
 
Last edited:
I've had a few recent abortive efforts. Mostly with getting side tracked. But looking to have a go at a few of the beer kits I have knocking around. Mostly done liqueurs from foraged or home grown ingredients recently which have all turned out well. Although I never get a look in at the Blackberry Whiskey :-( the wife finishes it before I het a chance.
 
Martynt74 said:
Awesome stuff.

I'd bought my dad a beer kit for Christmas years ago, and then after that turned out alright, we stopped off at a local brew shop and bought a red wine kit. This was crazy expensive at ~£120 for 40 bottles, so £3 just for the ingredients and had high hopes. However it was ****ing awful. Found some of the bottles at the back of a cupboard around 5yrs later but sadly no improvement.

Love the labels.
Click to expand...

Damn, that's definitely one of the more expensive kits - the Beaverdale ones are only around £50!

Saying that, I've been eyeing up one of the WinExpert top end kits - it's a Tempranillo Shiraz, and the kit includes grape skins, which apparently add a lot of body and depth to the wine - that's about the same price; £120 for 30 bottles.

From most of what I've read online, the white kits are generally better than the reds, which tend to come out a bit "thin", and so the grape skins do make a big difference, but it is a big jump in price!
 
Add the yeast to my mead last night, after making a starter with the blood orange juice, the airlock has just started bubbling away nicely :)

The big batch of Beaverdale pinot has dropped to an SG of 1.011 this morning, so is probably going to be ready for racking to the carboy this evening as well (the instructions say to do this at 1.010 for best results).
 
I take back what I said about the Shiraz, opened one of the other bottles with dinner tonight, perfectly clear and tastes lovely :) must have just been the remains of the sediment in the first bottle which was spoiling the taste! Think I'll grab a bottling bucket at some point which should make it a bit easier
 
Let us know if you find a good one. Our taller style Youngs Fermenter that we're using as a bottling bucket, with a little bottler "stick", leaves about the last gallon below the tap. I know it's to stay above any yeast and crud, but to get more (beer in our instance rather than wine) into bottles for secondary ferment, it involves a cross between gymanstics and wrestling to angle the bucket just right to get a clear brew into the bottle, if we don't want to abandon a fifth of the batch.
 
Thanks - I'm not sure if there's much difference between the different branded buckets really; they probably all come from the same mould in the same Chinese factory!

A trick I read on one of the forums was to raise the side with the tap whilst doing the final fermentation (so there's more sediment on the opposite side), e.g. by putting a piece of wood or something under it. Then when bottling, move the piece of wood to the side opposite the tap - lowering the tap, but most of the sediment stays on the opposite side. No idea how effective that will turn out to be though. A gallon is a lot to lose - when doing it using a siphon (with the little "cup" on the end to keep it out of the sediment), we've been losing 1/4 - 1/2 of a bottle (out of 6 bottles), although the last one does tend to pick up some of the sediment which affects the flavour.

I know you can get filters instead, which is probably a better way of minimising the waste, but then of course you have filters to replace instead...
 
seabiscuit said:
Let us know if you find a good one. Our taller style Youngs Fermenter that we're using as a bottling bucket, with a little bottler "stick", leaves about the last gallon below the tap. I know it's to stay above any yeast and crud, but to get more (beer in our instance rather than wine) into bottles for secondary ferment, it involves a cross between gymanstics and wrestling to angle the bucket just right to get a clear brew into the bottle, if we don't want to abandon a fifth of the batch.
Click to expand...
I'm sure this is similar to when I'm kegging my homebrew. What I try to do is on the morning of kegging I'll ever so gently prop up the 'rear' of the fermenter with something, and then leave it all to settle again. In this way I get the most out of the thing, whilst minimising disturbing the yeast bed with my shaking arms/hands! Experience has told me where abouts the yeast bed gets to with my stainless steel one, but I imagine in a well lit environment one might see through the wall of the plastic ones.

Ah! I see Haggis has said something very similar/even more impressive :D.

I've been using a conical for a while, which I expect makes this a bit easier. Although every kegging/bottling day still seems very stressful!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom