Do you know someone who’s interested in making their own wine, but they don’t know where to start? Then get them the book, First Steps In Winemaking. This book is perfect for anyone who’s been toying with the idea of making their own wine but don’t have a clue where to begin.
This book assumes they know absolutely nothing about wine making and explains all the fundamentals in simple, easy-to-understand language. It’s a completely painless way for them to learn all they need to know to get started
First Steps In Wine Making also makes a nice personalized wine gift. It’s an inexpensive way to introduce someone to a new and rewarding hobby. With this book they’ll be able to join the hundreds of thousands of individuals who’ve already delved into this fascinating hobby.
It goes over all the wine making products they will need: the equipment, the ingredients, etc. It also has well over 100 recipes for making wine from apples, elderberries, grapes, cherries, apricots and  many, many others. It’s just a good all around book.
Even if they decide not to make wine, this book is still an interesting read. It takes the reader on a side of wine that most seldom get to visit. So even if they’re a wine enthusiast instead of a winemaker, this book will still be a worthy addition to their library.
For more information about this book, visit our website. We also have other book to offer as well that covers various topics involving wine making at home.
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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.

When shopping for a refractometer, one of the features you should be looking for is Automatic Temperature Compensation or ATC. This is a particularly important feature especially when working in the field where you are being exposed to the elements.
Refractometers can be dramatically effected by temperature. This is because as objects get colder they shrink and as they get warmer they expand. In the case of refractometers, the glass prism that light goes through is expanding and contracting with temperature. This alters the level of refraction that is given to light as it passes through the prism.
If you’re in a situation where the temperature is always changing it can be a challenge to get an accurate reading. But when a refractometer has ATC then temperature variations are taken out of the picture. (For more about how refractometers works see: How Refractometers Work)
ATC automatically compensates for any change in refraction that temperature may have on the refractometers prism. It does this by slightly changing the angle of an inner lens as the temperature fluctuates.
A long piece of metal is attached to the lens and runs down the barrel of the refractometer. As the temperature changes so does the length of the metal strip through expansion and contraction. This alters the angle of the prism just enough to correct any errors that temperature may be causing.
All the refractometers we offer have ATC which incorporates this method of correction. For more information about our refractometers, please visit our website.
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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.

One of the things that makes wine making so much fun is that you have an opportunity to get creative. Here’s a little tip on how to make white wine with a touch of your own personal flair.
Blending certain fruits with a white grape wine can make a spectacular summertime refresher. One of my favorites is peach or apricot mixed with a Riesling grape wine. The additional fruitiness opens up both the wine’s flavor and bouquet profile.
You could make your own by getting some Riesling grape concentrate or a wine ingredient kit and adding some fresh peaches or apricots to the mix while it’s fermenting. But a better, more-controlled way of adding a fruit to a grape wine is to make the fruit into a wine of it’s own and then blend it to taste with the grape wine right before bottling.
For example, you could make an apricot wine and bottle each gallon in a gallon glass carboy. Then when a you make a grape wine (in this case Riesling) you can just take a gallon glass carboy of apricot and blend to taste with the Riesling wine at bottling time.
You may or may not need the whole gallon, or you may need to open a second gallon jug of apricot. The point being is you have complete control over how the wine is going to taste in terms of a grape-apricot blend.
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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.

Synthetic corks are becoming increasingly popular as a means for sealing up wine bottles. Numbers are sketchy, but it appears that currently around 9 percent of all corked wine bottles in the world are done so with synthetic corks.
There’s lots of reasons for this slow increase in popularity, but the main one is pure economics. Over the last decade, wine consumption has increased roughly an average of 4.5% per year. Natural cork producers are finding it difficult to keep up with this increase.
It takes an incredible 25 years for a cork tree to mature into a cork producer. So simply planting more trees does not immediately satisfy the demand that wineries place on the cork producers. The end result is: as the demand for cork increases, so does it’s price. Enter synthetic corks…
Necessity is the mother of invention and the synthetic cork is just one more example of how this timeless quote is so true.
Synthetic corks have been the markets way of solving this supply-and-demand disconnect. And they’ve turned out to be a pretty good wine preservation system. They are affordable, and will consistently and predictably seal up a wine bottle. Many wineries now prefer them over natural cork for this reason alone.
Synthetic corks are basically a spongy plastic that is wrapped in a harder plastic shell. They react to corking devices and to the barrel of the wine bottle in much the same way as a natural cork, so no special equipment is needed. All the plastics involved are pharmaceutical grade and completely safe to use around food products.
We offer synthetic corks as well because of their ease of use and also because of their popularity. Many home winemakers like them simply for the fact that they can be sanitize more completely than natural corks.
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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.

Recently, many have been asking us which wine ingredient kits come with wine bottle labels and which do not. So I thought now would be as good of time as any to lay out all the detail about who-has-what when it comes to wine bottle labels.
Most of the wine ingredient kits come with designer wine bottle labels, but some do not. These wine bottle labels list the variety of wine along with some basic information like alcohol percentage by volume and so forth. They are all very attractive and professionally done. They’ll make your wine bottles look like the real deal.
The following is a list of the brands that include, and do not include, wine bottle labels in their kits.
Yes, Wine Labels Included:

• KenRidge Classic (23 varieties)
• Cheeky Monkey (13 varieties)
• Legacy Premium Blends (22 varieties)
• KenRidge Showcase (21 varieties)
• Vinterra Pure Juice (10 varieties)
• KenRidge Founder’s Series (14 varieties)

No, Wine Labels Are Not Include:

• California Connoisseur (29 varieties)
• European Select (18 varieties)
• Niagara Mist (12 varieties)
• Heron Bay Premium (24 varieties)
• Heron Bay Ultra Premium (15 varieties)

If the wine making kit that you’d like to purchase does not include wine bottle labels, please remember that we do have wine labels that you can purchase separately.
These labels come with various designs that you can choose from. They can also be ran through a computer printer so you can customize them with your personal information.
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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.

Surfing across the internet for wine recipes these days is fairly easy. Even the most unusual of homemade wines will have a recipe tucked away somewhere on someone’s website. You can find many recipes on our site just as well.
But what’s just as important, but not so easy to find are solid homemade wine instructions. Step-by-step directions that will allow you to successfully make a batch of wine, even if it’s your first time. It makes sense that if you don’t know what to do with a recipe, the recipe is of little value to you.
This is where we come in. We have put together a set of simple, concise homemade wine instructions on our website that will guide you down the path to your first batch of homemade wine.
These directions are basic enough to allow you to apply them to any wine recipe you may find, yet thorough enough to make sure you don’t get lost. Beyond this, we’re always there to help with any question that may arise. We want to see you become a successful home winemaker. It’s in our best interest.
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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.

Buying a personalized wine gift for an avid wine-lover can be a very difficult task. Especially when you know absolutely nothing about wine.
The obvious thing would be to pick out a bottle at your local wine shop, but what are the odds that they’d be thrilled with your selection? You could shop for a fancy cork puller, but how cliche…
How about putting a new angle on an old spin and get them a wine making kit. That’s something they would never expect.
With a home wine making kit they’ll get to experience first-hand how grape juice is turned into wine. It’s an experience that will definitely expand their knowledge of wine.
We have a wine making kit that keeps things straight-forward and simple. It’s called the California Connoisseur wine making kit. It comes with all the equipment and ingredients they will need to make 6 gallons of wine, including a choice of California grown grape juice, such as Cabernet, Chardonnay, etc.
With this wine making kit they’ll learn how to make white wine or red wine. The directions are clear and assumes that they know absolutely nothing about how wine is made.
It’s fun, and the wine is incredible. We have thousands of repeat customers who buy additional wine making juices. Learn more about the California Connoisseur wine making kit.
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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.

Making wine from grapes can require a bit of work. This is not only because you are dealing with fresh fruit as opposed to an easy-to-use concentrated juice, but it’s also because you need a lot of grapes to make a batch of wine.
In general, you’ll need around 80 pounds of grapes to make a 5 gallon batch. With most other berries such as blackberries, strawberries, etc., you’ll only need about 15 pounds to make the same 5 gallons.
All these grapes need to be taken off the stems as well as crushed. You can get away with doing this all by hand if you are only making 5 gallons or so. But what if you’re trying to make enough grape wine to last you all year, while the grapes are in season? Then you’ll need help.
This is where a grape destemmer comes into play. Not only does the destemmer remove the grapes from the stems, but it also crushes the grape, all in the same process. It’s easy, and it’s quick.
Another option would be to just get a grape crusher and remove the grapes from the stem manually. The advantage to getting just a grape crusher is that most grape crushers can crush other fruits besides grapes, whereas a destemmer is limited to just grapes.
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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.