Am I making hard work of it?

[DavidNW]

Hi everyone,

Recently started making wine from kits. I have 5 demijohns, which I have used to make my wine in. So far, I have only used one fermentation, as the kit's instructions state. I now know that the more 'up market' kits say to do a primary and secondary fermentation.

Could you good folks suggest an equipment setup for me, as all I have so far are the 5 demijohns?

I plan to make my wine from 30 bottle wine kits. I'm thinking the demijohns are rather redundant if I plan to make wine on a larger scale. It's been simple so far, as I have just been buying small wine kits that produce 6 bottles.

Many thanks

David.

 

[AndyYam]

Buy a plastic 23L 6Gallon carbouy. I'm in the Uk and cost around £21 in homebrewing shops or £27 delivered online.

 

[DavidNW]

Buy a plastic 23L 6Gallon carbouy. I'm in the Uk and cost around £21 in homebrewing shops or £27 delivered online.

Many thanks, will look into it

 

[cpfan]

Could you good folks suggest an equipment setup for me, as all I have so far are the 5 demijohns?

Besides one (or two) 23 litre carboys, you will also need a lot of other equipment. Do you have a hydrometer, racking cane & tubing, corker, etc etc?

If not, look at some of the starter equipment kits from the advertisers here at the forum. There are also several discussion threads about starter kits. Although these retailers probably don't ship to the UK, it will give you some ideas about what you need, when you shop closer to home.

Steve

 

[DavidNW]

Besides one (or two) 23 litre carboys, you will also need a lot of other equipment. Do you have a hydrometer, racking cane & tubing, corker, etc etc?

Steve

I have all of these. Was just thinking of getting these for the primary and secondary fermentations. Would this be okay?

http://cart.payments.ebay.co.uk/sc/view

Or indeed use the 5 demjohns as secondary fementers - would make degassing easier, but mean a lot of siphoning.

 

[JohnT]

When you are saying "demijohn", are you talking about the standard 54 liter demijohns?

If so, they ar too big for the kits you make. a 54 liter demijohn will hold 72 bottles of wine (approx).

In either case, you are only doing one fermentation no matter what the wine is held in. Racking (the process of transerrring the clear wine from one container to another - leaving behind the sediment) is a different story.

Most wine kits have you ferment in an open "primary" fermentor for two reasons. First, oxygen is beneficial to yeast during the "growth phase" of fermentation. An open primary encourages this. Secondly, fermentation can be rather aggressive and having your wine in a primary (one that is 30% larger than the volume of must) helps prevent the "volcano effect".

Other benefits for a primary are numerous, like a more effective release of gasses, but the ones I list above are the best resons.

Fermenting in an open primary (one that is just loosely covered with plastic) is what I recomend. During growth phase, O2 is supplied to the must, but once fermentation gets going the must is protected by a "blanket" of co2. Once fermentation calms down, less co2 is produced so it then becomes important to get the wine into a secondary container.

I would recomend that you adopt this technique regaurdless of what your instruction say.

 

[DavidNW]

Thanks very much, everyone. The information is so helpful and much appreciated.

JohnT: my 5 demijohns are the 1 gallon size.

 

[JohnT]

Thanks very much, everyone. The information is so helpful and much appreciated.

JohnT: my 5 demijohns are the 1 gallon size.

Oh (lol) sorry, my bad.

In that case, I would also advise that you get a carboy. A 30 bottle kit should leave a gallon of extra to use for topping off. Cleaning and racking one carboy is a LOT less work then having to do the same to 5 1-gallon jugs.

 

[DavidNW]

Thanks everyone. really helpful!