A few wine kit questions please

[yashicamat]

Evening all,

Well, today I purchased a Beaverdale Chardonnay wine kit for the princely sum of £39. I was looking for a Kenridge as was reccomended by Sparky Paul, but the LHBS didn't stock those. Anyhow, I've come away from the place with the kit, a twin handled wine corker, a bag of corks and. . . no hops! I must be getting pretty good at restraint.

A few questions though please:

1) The kit instructions seem to suggest adding the bentonite at the start of fermentation - is this correct? I thought bentonite was a fining so to add it at the start seems odd, unless it works just by picking up stuff as it settles, therefore allow it to get mixed by the activity of fermentation and as that dies off, it pulls the rubbish down with it?

2) As a veggie, I was slightly annoyed to see the chitosan finings. Are these really essential? I clear my beers with just 0.5ml per litre of kieselsol and my beers are crystal clear.

3) Does wine make much froth when fermenting like beer does? I have two Better Bottles which are (I think) ideal for wine fermenting / racking, but with the kit made up to the reccomended volume, they'll be very little space for any foam. Google searches have come up fruitless on this one (excuse the pun) so I am suspecting not, possibly because of the absence of head forming proteins in wine compared with beer?

4) Daft question perhaps (and it's a little way off yet), but do you sanitise the corks? Being made of porous wood it seems like a proper sanitation would be almost impossible, although it's obviously accomplished somehow. Or do the included sachet of preservatives prevent any kind of infection?

Cheers all anyway. Intending to get this one on tomorrow.

[simple one]

Haven't done kit wine (yet), but done lots of country wines. So can answer some of your questions, and hazard a guess at others.

The foamy yeast issue. You should get about a cm or two of loose scummy foam on the surface for a few days. But not much else. I guess if the FV was narrow necked then this would be increased and vice versa. The yeast tends to be in suspension or it drops to the base of the fv. (although this is with country wine yeast, champagne yeast and a shiraz type wine yeast (name escapes me), its always plausible that you could have some mental wine yeast which goes beserk)

Finings. Generally all wine will clear if left long enough, especially if the must was clear. The finings will just increase the speed of this process. So in my opinion, not so nessacerry. If you are not happy with the clearing speed, bin the chitenous one, and go buy a different veggy one. Or rack it a few more times, this usually helps.

The bentonite... never heard of it! But I would trust the instructions on that. Surely they can't have made such a big error as to have printed the wrong sequence of events for there ingredients.

The corks. I use plastic corks with layers of cling film and rubber bands (acts as balloon, should the cork pop out due to over CO2 formation within bottle). But I have seen people sanitise their wooden corks.... I think they then rinse and dry, before use.
There really is a lot less to worry about with wine. The alcohol environment of the wine kills of alot of bugs. I haven't had one infection yet. And I havent used any chemicals on them either.

[Horden Hillbilly]

1) The kit instructions seem to suggest adding the bentonite at the start of fermentation - is this correct? I thought bentonite was a fining so to add it at the start seems odd, unless it works just by picking up stuff as it settles, therefore allow it to get mixed by the activity of fermentation and as that dies off, it pulls the rubbish down with it?

Yes, you do add the bentonite at the start of the fermentation.

2) As a veggie, I was slightly annoyed to see the chitosan finings. Are these really essential? I clear my beers with just 0.5ml per litre of kieselsol and my beers are crystal clear.

They do speed up the clearing process, but your wine will clear up without the finings eventually. Another way of helping to clear it up is to "de-gas" the wine after the fermentation is over. To see how I de-gas my wines click here.

3) Does wine make much froth when fermenting like beer does? I have two Better Bottles which are (I think) ideal for wine fermenting / racking, but with the kit made up to the reccomended volume, they'll be very little space for any foam. Google searches have come up fruitless on this one (excuse the pun) so I am suspecting not, possibly because of the absence of head forming proteins in wine compared with beer?

It probably will foam a little, but not as much as a beer.

4) Daft question perhaps (and it's a little way off yet), but do you sanitise the corks? Being made of porous wood it seems like a proper sanitation would be almost impossible, although it's obviously accomplished somehow. Or do the included sachet of preservatives prevent any kind of infection?

It is claimed that cork is a naturally sterile substance, & I can recall reading an article about this advising wine makers to soak their corks in warm water to soften them before corking the bottles. I use the silicone coated corks from H&G myself. They are more expensive, but there is no need to soak them & they are easy to use in a corking tool.

[yashicamat]

That's fantastic info, HH.

My kit states a transfer at 1010 is a good idea as well . . . but yet it will still ferment down to 995ish anyway in another container, so is there a reason behind this transfer? Ta.

[Providence]

I've been making Beaverdale kits for years now. I am making their reds now but have done the Chardonnay more than once in the past. Reds and whites have always turned out fine by making it in a closed wine fermenter and leaving it until it reaches final gravity and THEN racking it. Most of the whites have been almost clear before racking. If the kit includes oak chips, there is a better 'oakiness' to the wine if you don't rack it after one week. I have always put Bentonite in the whites at the beginning. They have all been clear by about 4-5 weeks without the addition of anything. I have a boxful of unused chemicals! I used the stabiliser early on in one of the whites and found that the flavour of it hung around for ages, so I've never used it since. The finings are only necessary for people in a hurry and the Beaverdale kits are good enough to be left to mature naturally.

I now do quick whites (no such thing as a quick red IMHO) like the Solomon Grundys. They will also clear naturally if left alone but do not seem to improve much if left, so may as well drink at 3-4 weeks. My wife was using too much white wine for spritzers, so I stopped spending so much on wine that was going to end up drowned!

[yashicamat]

Done and dusted - in the FV with an OG of 1083 (pretty much bang on what the instructions suggest). Opted to use a bucket in the end as "just over 23 litres" as quoted would be far too close to the top of the better bottle in my opinion. At least there's plenty of headspace in the bucket I've used.

[avtovaz]

where did you get it for £39?