May 9, 2008, Newsletter Issue #96: Kits Don't Always Have The Answers

Tip of the Week

There are kits on the market designed to help wine making at home go smoothly. They help you mix, ferment, package and enjoy your wine. Plenty of these kits are helpful and work well. However, the kits don't always answer all of your wine making questions. So be sure to do some reading on the topic of wine making before using them. For example, users claim that some kit makers don't emphasize what to do during the stabilization process. This leaves some home wine makers scratching their heads during the second fermentation step - wondering whether they should mix all the sediment back into the batch before stabilizing it. The expert consensus is, when making your own wine, resist the urge to rack the wine before stabilizing it. During secondary fermentation, the sediment at the bottom of the batch must once again be mixed into the wine and allowed to settle again. Some home wine makers are tempted to stop the process right there, since the rest of the liquid looks clear. According to experts and those who have experimented with both ways of doing it, this would be a bad idea because the clarifying or fining agent acts much more efficiently when it works in combination with the contaminants that are mixed back into the wine. So if your kit doesn't specify what to do during certain steps, have a wine making guide or other literature handy as back up.

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