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For the past 3 or so years, I could get them from Amazon using my Prime membership, until recently when Amazon dropped Prime eligibility for them. I just checked now, and Prime eligibility has returned (at least for right now) for the Cabernet kit but not for any of the others. That's not much...

Duh. Thanks, I was looking right at that and didn't see it.

The product description doesn't mention whether the adhesive is the easy-to-remove type. Is it?

Before my wife and I moved to where we live now, I also used distilled water, due to the extreme hardness of the water in the central coast of CA. Now, our city water is primarily from reservoirs fed by snow melt from the Cascades. For added insurance and to remove any traces of chlorine, I...

Lately I've been printing on standard 20-lb printer paper, cutting with my wife's paper cutter and gluing them on with milk. It's certainly not waterproof, but they're sure easy to get off. Could be a problem for white wines in some regions of the country but not for us here in the Pacific...

The "Details" on that label, which the description says is "for laser printers", say "You can also print on this with a laser printer, although testing is always recommended." What do you suppose they mean by that? One way or the other, it's a typo: Either that sentence shouldn't be there at...

Do you mean 4 weeks in addition to the two week primary fermentation or 4 weeks total?

On another note, I'm puzzled about the instructions for this Barbarasco kit. Step 1 is, of course, the primary fermentation but Step 2 is "Stablizing and Clearing". What about secondary fermentation? Do they really mean to eliminate the secondary? I've never seen this before.

Maybe it's 16L of juice and 2L of skins? Dump them in together, before adding water, and you've got 18L. Just a guess.

I started my Barbaresco a couple of days ago. I was also surprised that the starting SG was a scarce 1.08. The grape skins pack seemed larger to me, as well. I posed a question a few weeks ago about how much the grape skins pack might raise the starting SG, because it has to, doesn't it? Someone...

Sometime in late November or early December. My retailer had to order it from his distributor. Maybe they just used two 1L bags instead of one 2L bag. Neither one was as big as a 2L but altogether it was a lot. After adding the skins, it brought the level in the fermenter to a very scary level...

Maybe they just divided the usual amount of skins into two bags. I don't know, this is my first time with this kit, but I do know that it was a huge amount of skins, compared to what I've found in the RJS En Primeur kits I've used.

That probably would help with the accuracy, but there will still be some undissolved sugars in those skins that them yeast bugs ("them yeast bugs" is a phrase I fondly continue to use 40 years after a university macroeconomics professor of mine used it while lecturing the entire class on how to...

Same here, except for this one. It had two. I don't know if it was an error, because WE doesn't list kit inventories on their web site. I added them both, anyway, and it's tasting pretty good, even at bottling time!

Thanks, that gives me a better idea. Is your estimate per bag? This kit had 2 bags. There were a lot more skins than I've gotten with other premium kits. If I add your estimate of .015 to my starting SG, that results in an ABV of 14.3%, which seems about right.

Hi, does anyone have an estimation of how much the bag(s) of grape skins add to the final ABV? For instance, I just bottled a batch of WE Eclipse Old Vines Zinfandel. The starting SG was 1.082 and the final was .992, which should nominally result in an ABV of 12.2%. But this kit includes two...

Where did you find wine kits at Costco? I've never seen any, and I just searched their web site.

I let 2 or 3 empty bottles accumulate on the counter, then I boil about a liter or liter and a half of water, and fill each one to just above the top of the label. After about 3 or 4 minutes, the labels peel right off. The glue that's left on the bottles is still soft at that point, and some...

Agreed! I save the aging for the premium kits, and getting quick and easy turnaround on the inexpensive kits helps me resist the temptation to start drinking the premium stuff too soon. I think I will incorporate adding some tannins to the next batch, as you and others have suggested.

I've been doing that for years, but only for my everyday table wine. It works out very nicely for that, but I would only do it for inexpensive kits. I bottle my better stuff, and label it. Here's a link to a post where I detail the process...