Last time, I updated you all on the progress of the Rosso Fortissimo wine ingredient kit, I had just put it to bed for secondary fermentation. Things have been going well so far, and — fingers crossed — they continue to do so.
According to the instructions that came with this kit, I was supposed to leave the wine in secondary fermentation until at least day 20. Well, I ended up leaving it until day 22, basically because that’s how it worked out for my schedule. I figured leaving it an extra day or two wouldn’t hurt it at all — at the very least, I’d be ensuring that secondary fermentation was complete!
Checking the specific gravity with my hydrometer on day 22, it read 0.998. The instructions say secondary fermentation is complete and you’re ready to move on and siphon the wine into a clean carboy if the specific gravity is 0.998 or less, so I took that as the green light to go!
Next, I added the packet of potassium metabisulfite that came with the wine kit and stirred vigorously for two minutes per the instructions. I then realized that I actually wanted to rack the wine into a different vessel BEFORE this step, but it was too late at this point to do much about that. Technically, the suggestion to rack the wine wasn’t in the instructions until after the potassium metabisulfite addition, but I would have felt better anyway if I had done it first, just in case I accidentally left some behind in the original vessel. Maybe this doesn’t even matter — we’ll see.
Anyway, I then siphoned the wine immediately after the 2 minute stirring step for the potassium metabisulfite.
At this point, the instructions said that if gas was still being released to go ahead and stir the wine over the next day or two. Well, it was hard to say if it was, because I’ll be honest I didn’t pay too close attention to it, but I decided better safe than sorry and I would go ahead and stir the wine a few times over the next two days.
Two days later….
I then added the potassium sorbate, and subsequently siphoned the wine again into a clean carboy so I could actually see if the wine was clearing or not. I know I know, I really should have racked the wine first prior to adding the potassium sorbate just in case I accidentally left some behind in the process, but like the last time, I just didn’t think about it. Here’s hoping I did it swiftly enough that none of it had a chance to settle.
After siphoning the wine into a carboy that I could actually see through, I added the packet of kieselsol and stirred gently for two minutes.
Then, I waited one hour.
Next, I added the packet of chitosan and stirred gently for one minute.
Then, I waited three hours.
Finally, I stirred the wine again for two minutes, re-fit the airlock, and said goodbye until day 42.
I realized I made a couple minor errors this time, but I’m hoping that this wine ingredient kit will be a little forgiving and it won’t really matter in the end. Here’s hoping for clear, tasty wine in the next couple weeks!
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

It’s bottling day for the Gewurztraminer wine kit! I’m so excited about this one because so far, it’s been tasting really nice!
One final specific gravity measurement with my hydrometer today and it looked to be somewhere between 0.994 and 0.995. I’ll just call it 0.995 to keep it simple.
I wanted to know what the final alcohol content was of my wine, so I looked up an online alcohol content calculator that used the beginning and ending specific gravity levels to calculate that. The original specific gravity reading was about 1.113 and the final reading was about 0.995. Plugging that into the online calculator, that gives me a percent alcohol value of 16 with this wine kit. I don’t think I’ve ever had a 16% alcohol by volume Gewurztraminer, but hey, there’s always a first time for everything!
Even though the alcohol seems kind of high, it still tastes pretty good if you ask me! In fact, I think this Gewurztraminer is probably the best wine I’ve made so far! I think part of it has to do with the fact that a good chunk of the time the wine was hanging out in glass instead of plastic, so it doesn’t have nearly as much (if any) of that plastic flavor that I kept getting on my first few wines.
I ended up bottling this wine kit a little differently than in the past. First, I racked the wine into a clean and sterilized carboy that did not have a spigot on it. Then, instead of cleaning out the carboy that did have a spigot, I decided to just bottle the wine kit directly from the carboy without a spigot. That meant siphoning the wine directly into each wine bottle without the aid of an on/off “switch”, which at first I was kind of nervous about.
Turns out, it’s easier than I thought. No extra messes were made! Once the wine bottle got full enough, I just stood up to stop the flow and slowly lower the bottle to add a little bit more wine if needed. A couple of times I put a little bit too much in the bottle, so I just poured the extra back into the carboy. No problems!
Once I got down to the very bottom, I just poured the remaining wine into a bottle by lifting and dumping the entire carboy through a funnel. Since I had previously racked the wine into a clean carboy leaving all dregs behind, I wasn’t worried about pouring the remainder in like that. In fact, that’ll just be the first bottle we drink and we won’t give it to anyone else just in case.
I ended up filling 21 bottles with wine kit, with the 21st bottle only actually filling up about ¾ of the way. The kit was supposed to make 30 bottles ideally — I remember I spilled some of the juice on the floor in the very beginning, so that probably had something to do with it. Oh well, 21 bottles is better than 0 bottles!
All-and-all, bottling this wine kit went pretty well. The wine smells delicious and I can’t wait for it to age a little. But I have to be honest… right now it’s testing my patience!
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hi there everyone!
As I mentioned last time, the Gewurztraminer I’m currently making from a wine ingredient kit was going a little bit slower than the instructions that came with it said, but then again I’m not surprised since primary & secondary fermentation was a little bit slower due to some room temperature issues. All that’s straightened out now, so I anticipate things should start moving along on a more normal schedule.
I ended up ending the fermentation and moving to the next step when the specific gravity on my hydrometer was holding steady between 0.995 and 0.996. I know the instructions said it should be less than 0.995, but it was hovering very closely to that value and not moving or showing any gas activity for two days straight. I made the call to move forward, as I didn’t think it was going to change any more.
So, instead of starting the degassing stage on day 20 as the wine kit instructions anticipated, I’m starting it on day 22. Not too delayed, so I’m still happy.
I ended up racking the wine twice — once to get it into a clean carboy, and then again to get it into the primary fermenter so that I could more easily stir the wine and get all the trapped CO2 gas out. The instructions mentioned to rack it once, but I’m thinking doing it a second time shouldn’t hurt it too much. We’ll see, I guess!
Per the instructions, I added the potassium metabisulphite and kieselsol and over the next two days ended up stirring the wine a total of 7 times (the instructions said to stir 6 to 8 times over the two days).
Prior to adding the stabilizing/clarifying ingredients that came with the wine ingredient kit, I moved the wine once more into another carboy. This time, moved it from the primary fermenter into a clear carboy so I could actually see when the wine was clear enough to move forward. The primary fermenter is opaque, so that would make it much more difficult to eyeball things and make a judgment call if need be.
I followed all instructions for the stabilizing/clarifying step, except for adding in the extra racking step at the beginning.
Also, for some reason, I seem to be missing an extra bung for the carboy, so I had to put some tinfoil over the opening and cover that with a measuring cup to try and keep the air out. Come to think of it, I seem to be missing my original primary fermenter that came with my first wine ingredient kit, so I’m thinking there is one box that didn’t quite make the 1600 mile move we recently made to our new home. Whoops! That’ll be in my next order from ECKraus for sure!
Now it’s a waiting game until bottling. By the way, I tasted the Gewurzt again and it tastes really nice. Hope it stays that way!
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hey all!
Just a quick update in case you missed my last entry: my Gewurztraminer wine ingredient kit seems to be going along well, though it’s just a little bit slower coming out of secondary fermentation than the instructions that came with it predicted. It probably has another day or two to go, so I’ll just check the specific gravity every day. By the way, it tastes great for this stage…
On the other hand, the Rosso Fortissimo wine ingredient kit, had a specific gravity of 0.999 which is less than the 1.000 recommended in the instructions that came with it, so it is ready to move into secondary fermentation. This is a process winemakers call racking. That’s where I left off my last post, so I’ll pick up from there!
I gave the Rosso Fortissimo a little taste while I was checking the specific gravity, and I think it’s tasting pretty nice for this early stage. I got a lot of bright cherry character, while my husband made note of some good tannin structure. We’ll see how it develops — but I’m optimistic at this point.
The next step for this wine was to transfer or rack it from the primary fermentation vessel to the secondary fermentation carboy. I had cleaned and sterilized all equipment prior to getting started, so I was all ready to go after checking the specific gravity.
I was debating whether or not to use the siphon tube and hosing for the racking, or if I should just hook the hose up directly to the spigot at the bottom of the fermentation vessel. At first I thought I’d use the siphon tube, and had it all clean and sterilized, but then I decided at the last minute it would be a heck of a lot easier, quicker, and probably less messy to just hook the hose up directly to the spigot. I mean, what else would there be a spigot there for, right!
The racking went really well, and I stopped it right at the point where I could see all the lovely dead yeasts and other gunk at the bottom of the fermenter. I’m sure a little bit snuck in the secondary fermentation carboy, but I’m sure it was minimal based on the stuff that was leftover in the first tank! There an excellent post about racking wine on this blog that’s worth noting. It explains how to minimize wine loss during the procedure.
These wine ingredient kits didn’t come with any enzymes or anything, which normally one would add at this stage, so I just closed it up with a rubber bung and fermentation lock and said “nighty-night!”. There already seems to be some gentle bubbling activity in the fermentation lock, so things seem to be progressing nicely. Now it’s a waiting game — I’ll keep my eyes on it every day to make sure nothing starts growing on it, but theoretically I won’t have to do anything with it for at least 10 more days (Day 20). At that point, I’ll check the specific gravity to see if it’s ready to move on to the clearing stage.
Fingers crossed things continue to move along well!
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hi, everyone!
I’m happy to report that both my white and red wines seem to be fermenting nicely! The Gewürztraminer has been happily milling about in secondary fermentation, while my Rosso Fortissimo has been plugging along in primary fermentation.
I left the fermentation lock securely on the Gewurzt during this whole process, despite my nagging curiosity to remove it and give the wine a sniff. It looked great, and nothing appeared to be growing on it, so that was good enough for me to assume all was going well.
In regards to the Rosso, I gave it a gentle stir throughout the primary fermentation in order to keep those grape skins wet and submerged. I did miss one day right at the very beginning, but I don’t think that really had any effect on the wine, because at the end of the primary fermentation it all seemed great to me.
Even though people have said you tend to get more extract from the grape skins if they are left loose in the carboy, I did really like the ease and convenience of keeping them in the cheesecloth pouch that was provided to me in the wine ingredient kit. I remember leaving them loose when I made the Carmenere, and that was such a pain in the butt to clean up. I just made sure I gave the bag a good stir every day and hopefully that’ll be enough to get a good enough extraction for my husbands and my standards. We’re not shooting for any award winners quite yet!
Both wines were scheduled to move onto their respective next steps on the same day, so it was going to be an extremely busy day for me if they were both ready! I measured the specific gravity of both with my wine hydrometer, and truth be told, they were both NOT ready to move on.
The instructions for the Gewurzt said in order to move on to the degassing stage, the specific gravity should be less than 0.995, and no bubbling seen. After measuring the specific gravity and converting the result to account for the calibration temperature of the hydrometer, the SG of the Gewurzt was 0.996. So close! But not close enough! I’m not surprised it wasn’t quite there yet. If you recall, there had been some delays early on in the process due to fluctuating temperatures during primary fermentation. Also, paying closer attention to the fermentation lock, I did notice that there was still a little bit of bubbling going on.
So, I decided to let the Gewurzt sit for another day, and I’ll just check it daily until it’s ready.
The Rosso, on the other hand, had a specific gravity of 0.999 after temperature correction, while it was less than the 1.000 recommended SG for this wine, so it was ready to move onto the secondary fermentation. I’ll fill you in on all that in my next post!…
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

Hi all!
I’m very excited today, as it’s the first time ever I’ve attempted to make two wine ingredient kits at the same time!
The other day, I tucked the Gewurztraminer in for it’s 12 days or so in secondary fermentation, and since I have the equipment, ingredients, and space, I figured why not start another wine!
For my second wine ingredient kit of 2015, I’m going to make the Cellar Craft Showcase Red Wine – Rosso Fortissimo. I had sterilized everything the night before, so I was pretty much all ready to go and get started today.
The one thing that I remembered being a pain in the butt last time was marking the 23L mark on the fermenter. I know I know, it’s not THAT big a deal, but when the biggest measuring device you have is only 2 cups (500mL), filling the fermenter up to 23L with water to mark it is kind of annoying.
After putting markings on my fermenter, I dumped out the water and then added back in 2L plus the bentonite package. I mixed that as well as I could, though there were a couple of small lumps remaining when I gave up on that part. I don’t think it’ll be a big deal. I’m sure they’ll all get mixed up well eventually!
Then came what I think is the hardest part of the whole process: adding the wine juice. I always feel so awkward during this stage, since the bag is so heavy and sloshes around like crazy. I wish they made something a little sturdier so I would feel a little more secure about pouring it in.
Well, of course while I was pouring the wine juice into the fermenter, my hands slipped and I spilled a bit on the floor. You can see from the picture that it’s really not that much, but at the time I was a little nervous that I was going to spill more. Thankfully, that didn’t happen.
For the grape skins that came with this particular kit, I decided this time I would use the mesh bag that was supplied, since last time I remembered it was really a pain to get all the bits out of the wine when it was time to move on to secondary fermentation. I feel like I needed a third hand to do this, but I figured out a way to sort of secure the mesh to the top of the fermenter — at least in the beginning — to try and make the process a little easier.
Once the bag got too heavy, I had to apply some pressure to the bag with my elbows to keep it from falling in before I was finished squeezing all the grapes out of the pouch. Surprisingly, this went off pretty smoothly. I mixed everything together and then put on the lid. The instructions that came with this wine ingredient kit said the best time for checking specific gravity is between 12 and 24 hours after beginning, so that’s what I’m going to do before I move on any further.
After cleaning up the grape skin massacre on the floor with a mop and cleaning the spatter off the cupboards and doors, I felt like a little bit like a criminal cleaning up the scene of a crime. Hopefully in this case, I’ve already done my time and the rest will be smooth sailing.
I’m really hopeful for this wine ingredient kit. Despite any trials and tribulations, the Rosso Fortissimo smell incredible and can’t wait to see how it turns out.
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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.

There is a great spread of prices between our different brands of wine making juices. Some are in the $30 range while some are over $200. Many of our customers simply wonder why.
There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Level Of Concentration:
   The first reason has to do with the how much these wine making juices are concentrated. At one end of the spectrum is our SunCal brand juice that comes in a 46 ounce can (about 1-1/2 quarts) for producing 5 gallons of wine. On the other end of the spectrum are our 18 liter wine ingredient kits (4.75 gallons) that is only slightly concentrated for making 6 gallons of wine. One is just much more concentrated than the other. Higher levels of concentration tend to take out some of the finer subtleties of a wine, making the wine more a everyday-drinker. Wine making juices that have been concentrated less or not at all will have flavors that can develop into something more complex or layered as it is aged.
2. The Selection Of Grape
   Not all grapes are the same. Where and how they are grown can make a big difference. The soil, the climate, the age of the vines, all come into play when evaluating the grapes. Simply put, certain regions can command a higher price for there grapes because they make better wines. So, as you go up in price, you are going up in grape selection as well. This is no different than wines you buy commercially at the store. As a general rule-of-thumb, the better the selection of grape the more you will pay for the wine.

Having Said All This. . .
How much money you’ll want to put into the quality of a wine making juice may be different than the next winemaker. This has to do with how well you are able to discern the difference between various levels of quality. It makes no sense for you to buy a level of quality you are unable to taste, appreciate or even looking for.
Some of our customers are completely happy making wine from nothing but our SunCal selection. They use this brand over and over again and are completely satisfied with the quality. They can see no reason to spend anymore on wine making juices based on the quality they are already getting.
Other winemakers consider SunCal an everyday, common wine that they would not want to put their efforts into. These home winemakers would prefer to spend their time making more top-end wines.
The Bottom Line…
Figure out what level of quality suites your level of wine appreciation. Start out with maybe our California Connoisseur or European Select. These are mid-range wine making juices. After that maybe try a KenRidge Classic or a Cellar Craft Sterling and see what you think. By trying different levels you should be able to hone in on what is best for you.
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

Hi everyone!
If you recall, Day 8 of the primary fermentation for my Gewurztraminer came and went with not much fanfare. According to the instructions, secondary fermentation should start on Day 8 IF the specific gravity was less than 1.010 on the wine hydrometer. Well, mine was not quite that low — almost, but not quite. It was 1.016 to be specific.
I waited one more day and checked the specific gravity again. This time, it was even closer at just over 1.010. I thought for a second if I should go ahead and move forward, but decided to turn off the heating pad and let it go one more day. It was SO close to 1.010 but since it was hovering just over that value, I decided killing the heat and let it slowly go for one more day would probably be the best thing to do.
So, Day 10 came and I checked the specific gravity on the hydrometer again. The temperature had dropped down to 64.5°F. since I didn’t have the heating pad on, and the specific gravity was….drum roll please….1.006! Perfect! That’s less than 1.010, so it was ready to move onto the secondary fermentation stage!
I had previously cleaned and sanitized all the wine making equipment I needed to prepare for secondary fermentation, so today’s step took hardly any time at all. I kept the tubing in the solution overnight just to make extra sure any travel dust or whatnot was gone and done for.
I hooked up the sterilized tubing to the spout on my primary fermenter, and let the wine flow into my glass carboy. I tipped the fermenter a little at the end to get as much wine transferred as possible without letting too much sediment in there. I think I did a fairly good job on that, because there was a nice amount of sediment left on the bottom of the fermenter when it was all said and done.
Finally, I cleaned and sterilized all the equipment I used and put them up to dry.
A couple of notes on this Gewurztraminer so far:

• • It smells great! I didn’t taste it this time, as I was drinking some herbal tea and I knew I wouldn’t be able to taste the wine very well, but I did give it a nice sniff and it smelled wonderful. Smells like fermentation—a healthy fermentation!

• Remember how I said it was really cool in the finished basement where I am now making my wine? Well, turns out that in the haze that was unpacking the house and getting everything set up, I neglected to notice that every single vent was actually closed! No heat was even getting in there! No wonder it was so cool! I ended up opening up the vent in the small winery room, so if all goes well I won’t actually need the heating pad unless absolutely necessary! Score!

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My name is Leigh Erwin, and I am a brand-spankin’ new home winemaker! E. C. Kraus has asked me to share with you my journey from a first-time dabbler to an accomplished home winemaker. From time to time I’ll be checking in with this blog and reporting my experience with you: the good, bad — and the ugly.