Has anyone made Wine Lovers kits?
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No, it can't be. The math doesn't add up.
4,8 liter giving an ABV of 7% gives an OG of the 23 liter to be around 1,046. That means the light body juice is 47 brix.
5,2 liter giving an ABV of 11% , the OG of the 23 liter need to be around 1,079. That means the medium body juice is 68 brix.
16 liter giving an ABV of 13,5%, the OG of the 23 liter need to be around 1,094. That means the heavy body juice is 31 brix.
You can made the juice packs in the light and heavy bodied kits by diluting the juice concentrate used in the medium kit. Grape juice concentrates are typically sold as 65-68 brix within the beverage industry, so i expect that to be their starting point. Anything else would add cost and complexity.
An approximation of how much single strength grape juice (assuming 25 brix, not from concentrate) there is in the three versions goes like this:
light body: 9,0 liter
medium body: 14,1 liter
heavy body: 19,8 liter
BTW if you make the light kit to 5 gallons instead of 6 gallons, the juice content will go from ~39% to ~47% but still less than the content in the medium kit ~61%. I had a look at the Wine lover web page and the state the prize to be 52.5 USD for the light body and 59,5 for the medium. I don't if that is average market prize but if you short the light body kit to 5 gallons, you will end up with 1) a higher prize per liter, 2) less juice in your batch and 3) an acidity that will be off compared to buying the medium kit instead..
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joeswine, which of the 143 pages of "tweaking kits" has your reason for Sun maid Zante Currants? I wasted time going there to find a picture in the original post, but nothing else such as details & why?
In my small mind there are many types of wine & table grapes and similarly, many raisins made from those grapes. I've also mentioned earlier in another thread- I've got a bunch of wild grapes still hanging from the vine on our land that are sort of dried on the vine and intrigue me as an additive.
The Red Flame grape raisins sold by Nuts.com are often sold as a wine additive from kit sellers.
In my small mind there are many types of wine & table grapes and similarly, many raisins made from those grapes. I've also mentioned earlier in another thread- I've got a bunch of wild grapes still hanging from the vine on our land that are sort of dried on the vine and intrigue me as an additive.
The Red Flame grape raisins sold by Nuts.com are often sold as a wine additive from kit sellers.
The short answer is "no".
The 5.2 liter medium body kit may contain no juice at all, just concentrate. The 1 liter concentrates I've used typically reconstitutes to 4 liters, so based upon that, a 5.2 liter kit that reconstitutes to 23 liters is all concentrate.
The 16 liter heavy body kit contains juice as well as concentrate, but we don't know if the concentrate is the same as the 5.2 liter kit.
With kits, we know very little that is concrete. A larger juice/concentrate bag probably has more juice in it, but we have no real information.
I'm not sure why you say that? Their ingredients list has no "juice" in the list for the heavy body Merlot kit:
Ingredients: Grape juice concentrate (preserved with sulphur dioxide), liquid invert sugar, tartaric acid, malic acid, citric acid, tanin, ascorbic acid. Additives (included in Wine Kit) Packet A: Bentonite, Packet B: Potassium Metabisulphite, Packet C: Potassium Sorbate, Packet D: Clearing Agent (kieselsol/chitosane), Packet of Yeast.
I don't know if you read my post above but it's highly unlikely that they should buy concentrates with such a different brix for the same grape, if even available. I haven't heard of any producer doing that during my 40-ish years in the food and beverage industry. Having said that, I only have experience of grape juice concentrates from Europe.
Is it mandatory for kit producers in USA or Canada to put "from concentrate" on the label if they have re-constituted a juice concentrate back to single strength? "Juice concentrate" and "water" becomes "juice" on the label and that way you can "improve" the label, "juice, water, juice concentrate" looks better than "juice concentrate, water". Even if it's exactly the same thing in the "juice" bag that you buy. I have seen numerous creative ways of improving labels over the years (in addition the the juice example, "dried onion" and "water" becomes "onion", "meat and fat" becomes "meat" etc etc). The only reason for a producer to buy a single strength juice would be for labeling reason IMHO.
And BTW, the ingredients list above doesn't contain "water" but it might have been included in the "grape juice concentrate".
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For my last reply, I considered the situation, made rough calculations in my head, and came to a logical conclusion. For this one? I developed a couple of basic formulas.
I checked WineLovers site -- for Merlot (Bordeaux) the ABV for medium body is 11.5%, while for heavy body it's 13.5%. So the reconstituted must for each should be roughly 19.4 and 22.5 brix respectively, according to the translation table I used. [There are other tables, but the differences are not significant in this example.]
When reconstituting 5.2 liters with 17.8 liters of water to achieve 23 liters to get 19.4 brix, the bag contents are about 85 brix.
When reconstituting 16 liters with 7 liters of water to achieve to 23 liters to get 22.5 brix, the bag contents are about 32 brix.
My math may be off a bit, but regardless there is a huge difference between the brix in each bag. The most obvious explanations are the concentrates are different, the larger bag contains juice (well, a lot more juice), or both. If someone has a different explanation, I'd love to hear it.
I don't know about the US labeling laws regarding wine kits. For things like OJ, the label will state "made from concentrate" or something similar.
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Not sure if my point came through but some producers hide the addition of water in the word "juice concentrate", both will be labelled as "juice concentrate" both being made from the SAME 85 brix concentrate to use your example:
Medium body: 5.2 liter with brix 85, labelled "juice concentrate"
heavy body: 16 liter with brix 32 made from the same 85 brix concentrate used in the medium body kit but with added water to make brix 32, still labelled "juice concentrate"without any "water" being labelled. It's still a "juice concentrate". (roughly 6 liter of the 85 brix concentrate and 10 liter of water).
If a buyer ask a grape juice concentrate producer to produce an 32 brix concentrate in addition to the standard 85-88 brix, I'm pretty sure they will ask why the buyer can't dilute it? (and in addition, if any of our product developers claimed he/she needed to buy a 32 brix concentrate, we would need to have a serious talk
)An another remark here; all our calculations above should be taken with a grain of salt as they use "liquid invert sugar " in their formulations to boost brix.
I was going to reply to this point, but got caught up in my calculations and forgot.
Your point is a reasonable explanation, but I can't visualize the business sense in diluting the concentrate with water? Concentrates are used for cost, stability, and weight reasons. If concentrate-only made the best wine, all kits would be 5 liter kits. Juice is added to concentrates to improve quality, e.g., make better wine, although the addition increases cost and weight. The larger the juice/concentrate bag, supposedly the higher the quality of the resulting wine along with a higher price.
Jumping the final brix from 19.4 to 22.5 (16%) will probably improve the quality of the result, but not by that much. So why triple the weight of the kit? Is there a reason here I'm missing?
There's little likelihood we'll get a real answer, and on my part it's just conjecture. However, this is a fun discussion regardless of which theory (if any) is correct. It's got us thinking about the product we are buying.
My calculations should be taken with several grains of salt!
Oh, I was discussing low end kits, perhaps a mistake. I thought wine lovers was low ends kits. I wasn't including the likes of WE, that I'm sure have juice in their premium kits.
But here is an interesting quote from Tim Vandergrift about labeling laws of re-hydrated concentrates:
"Full-size kits
There are kits out there that start at the full 23 liters (6 gallons) in volume. These are distinguished from single-strength grape juice in that they are made at least in part from reconstituted concentrate. In some cases this may be a bit difficult to establish, as packaging laws allow rehydrated concentrate to be sold under the label “pure juice.” This is the reason why you see orange juice cartons in the supermarket that say “Pure Juice — Not From Concentrate.” However, all major manufacturers include labelling that indicates the presence of concentrate in their full-volume kits. As mentioned in the section above, concentrate is a great preservative, even after full dilution, and it ensures that the pH is low enough to prevent spoilage."
That quote makes our guessing even more difficult, is the juice appearing on the label made from re-hydrated concentrate or not? I had a look at the ingredients list from a WE classic Sangiovese and in addition to juice concentrate and water there is "juice" on the label. Do WE ship single strength Sangiovese juice from Italy to Canada? Would that make sense from the costing side? Or are they using some juice that is from a more local source?
Agreed!
I wondered why I would pay for Sun Maid organic raisins when cheaper raisins were available for a third the price. Again, JoesWine came through. The result in several cheap reds was spectacular. As an added bonus, the Sun Maid raisins made my Scottish scones really jump.
Any thought on what I can add to a cheap White Zinfandel from Costco? It's one of those 60 bottle kits for $109. I've had pretty good results by just shorting the water but I'd like to bump it up a notch.
joeswine
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Make a fresh batch of Strawberry fpac and add it to the primary, nice addition
fwdevoe
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My first kit I made was a WL can heavy body.
Followed instructions 100% and final wine was VERY light in body, in fact while wine was in carboy, you could see through it. Don't know what the issue was.
Followed instructions 100% and final wine was VERY light in body, in fact while wine was in carboy, you could see through it. Don't know what the issue was.
Most, maybe all of the WL kits I've done have been medium body with tweaks. As Joe said, they can make a very nice weekday wine.
I have my first heavy body WL kit ready to go so I'll probably be tempted to add an f-pac to that as well to increase body based on @fwdevoe comment. Thanks for the info.
I have my first heavy body WL kit ready to go so I'll probably be tempted to add an f-pac to that as well to increase body based on @fwdevoe comment. Thanks for the info.
I made two. Both the heavy bodied. I did a Washington State Sauvignon Blanc. I tweaked it with Golden raisins and lime zest. I also did a Washington Merlot, tweaked with Merlot grape skins. Both came out better than I hoped. Very good every day table wines, maybe a notch above just good.
If you have the money, I think WL heavy bodied kits are ideal to experiment with.
If you have the money, I think WL heavy bodied kits are ideal to experiment with.
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