So…. I haven’t been keeping up with this Blog very well. Cheryl and I have tried two different kits. Both turned out fairly well. We filtered both using Buon Vino MiniJet. The filtering really worked well…. but maybe too well. It seems to have taken some of the fruity flavor out of the wine…. or replaced it with a paper taste. I will continue to work at flavor issue when filtering.

For this kit, we are going to try a couple of different things. This kit will be the Reserve Du Chateau 6 Week Wine Kit, German Gewurztraminer, 55-Pound Container purchased from Amazon. This kit is a concentrate, but doe not need to have any water added to the juice. When we rack this wine for clarification and age, we will use a 5 Gal carboy instead of the normal 6-gal we had been using. This means that we will not need to add water, but we may lose a little wine. I believe that this will make a better quality wine. The kit should be here on Saturday

7/13/2013 Started the wine on this day.
Although we used the above kit, we modified by using a different yeast Red Star Côte des Blancs. After aprox 12 hours we have positive indication of fermentation. I will update at the next step.

S.G. 1.080
Temp 76°

7/26/2013 Moved wine into secondary fermentation. Took a little taste sample and we were pleased with how it is progressing.

S.G. 0.994

8/3/2013  Degassing and clearing of wine.  Moving over to a 5 gallon carboy to ensure oxygen content is minimum.  Took a small sample and discovered a bit of a vinegar taste.  We are hoping this will clear up in this step.  The S.G. reading today was 0.990 which indicates a fairly dry wine if everything works out as planned.  We are planning on leaving the wine in the clearing process for a week to 2 weeks since we have stabilized it.

S.G. 0.990