December 2012 – Page 2 – Winemaker's Academy

Wine kits are by far the least expensive way to get into wine making. It requires the least amount of equipment and makes the smallest amount of wine. Let’s take a look at what determines the cost to make wine for the first time.

The Equipment I Purchased

To get started I picked up the Vintner’s Reserve Shiraz wine kit. This included the grape juice concentrate and nearly all of the additives required to make the wine. However, wine kits do not include any equipment.

Both equipment and the quality of the kit determine how much it costs to make wine. — Kit Winemaking Equipment

With that in mind I picked up this wine making equipment kit from Midwest Supplies. This kit included the following:

Primary Fermenter
Glass Carboy (6.5 gallon)
Hydrometer
Corker
Corks
Bottle Brush
Sanitizer
Airlock
Carboy plug

Continue reading “How Much Does it Cost to Make Wine from a Kit?”

It's best to remove wine labels well ahead of time. This can be a time consuming process so you want to start early.

Reusing wine bottles is the perfect way to save some money when making your own wine. The problem is how do you remove the labels?

I’ve found there are mainly three types of labels, paper, plastic, and plastic coated paper. Paper labels are easy as they’ll come off after only a few minutes in water. Plastic labels peel off but leave a mess (more on that below).

The toughest labels to remove are the plastic coated paper labels. They don’t peel off and water can’t penetrate the plastic so you can’t soak it off.

After a bit of practice, however, I stumbled upon a method that works really well for paper and plastic coated paper labels. Check out this video to see how I do it. Continue reading “How to Remove Wine Labels”