So why would I buy buckets of juice over kits

[xanxer82]

I wouldn't mind trying a few juice buckets myself. A chilean red would be nice. I have yeast, kmeta, sorbate, bentonite, chitosan etc...
I wonder if George gets it and can ship to my door.
Making a couple of fresh juice pails would be a good precourse to making wine from fresh grapes, which is what I plan to do this fall.

 

[rawlus]

from my own experience, white juice buckets tend to produce better results than red juice buckets. for reds i prefer frozen musts over plain juice as you still get the maceration of skins so the final result tends to have more body, tannin, mouthfeel, and color. on a small scale, you can press @ home a bucket or two with a large colander over a bucket, put the skins in the colander, then press the skins into the colander with a stainless bowl approx the same shape as the colander.

if i did plain red juice, then i would add a bag or two of frozen grapes from a lug that you purchased beforehand and hand-destemmed and crushed. bzac has described this method before and it is something i think even kit-users can really benefit from. order and get a lug of red grapes next time your supplier is taking orders and just destem it, and lightly crush by hand to open the skins - divide into a number of freezer bags and keep frozen until needed to boost either kit juices or fresh juices. merlot is a good all-around blending grape, i think malbec is as well.

 

[nrlightfoot]

I did a pail of Lodi Gold Pinot Noir once. WEAK!!! Weak in colour. Weak in body. Presumably weak in flavour because we oaked it, and thats all we could taste. $50 and some time & effort wasted.

That sounds just like a Pinot Noir to me (sorry it didn't turn out, but I couldn't resist).