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Making wine.
Well I've added wine making to my list of hobbies tonight. I've been making beer for some time now but I've never tried any wine kits. I just started the Island Mist, Wild berry Shiraz tonight. I was wondering if I could get some help understanding some of the stuff is that's in the kit that I'm not failure with from my beer making experience. What do...
Bentonite (packet 1 added in the beginning)
Potassium Metabisulphite (packet 2 added 2 weeks later)
Potassium sorbate (a preservative? packet 3 added with packet 2)
...do in making wine? These are things I don't use in my beer making.
Thanks
Darius
That is a pretty accurate description of those packets. What kind of wine do you like? Sweet, white or red? Those Mist wines will be ready in about 4 weeks, are really sweet and work great with a 7up or something. I think they are ok, I like dry red myself. I have made those mist kits for the mother and for summer drinking at the lake. You don't need to age that kit at all though, best when young.
Thanks
Daniel
The antimicrobial action of SO2 is extremely pH dependant - if you want to use a KMBS solution to sanitize equipment you will need to acidulate the water (you could use citric acid or squeeze a lemon into the water) for it to be effective. The pH should be below 3.5, but the lower the better. Be careful in these cases as any SO2 solution that can sanitize will also produce enough SO2 gas to choke you if you're not wearing a respirator. Wear a respirator. Note also that yeasts do produce SO2 in the fermentation process (to bind acetaldehyde which is toxic to them. It also kills wild yeasts/bacteria and eliminates some competition, which is good.) Yeasts might produce up to 10-15 ppm SO2 naturally, depending on strain.
Bentonite will remove suspended proteins and help in lees compaction, making the wine "heat stable". Not much of a concern for red wines unless you want to avoid a chill haze.
K-sorbate is considered a fungistat, which is only effective against yeasts (no effectiveness against bacteria), and it DOES NOT kill yeasts at that. It only prevents them from metabolizing and growing/budding. It is most often added to semi-sweet wines before bottling to prevent any refermentation in bottle (usually Zygosaccharomyces is the culprit in bottled sweet wines.)
Thanks
Darren
I'm intrigued by this post for a number of reasons. Do they actually have wine/beer making kits you can by if you are a true novice (which I am)? And if so, where do you get these?
How do you learn about all of the chemicals and ends and outs of doing this sort of hobby? I always thought wine was smooshed grapes that fermented over time in oak barrels. Obviously, that is just a novel concept, but where did you learn all of the "extras" besides the grape that are necessary to make a glass of vino?
You can make wine out of practically anything. I have not had dandelion wine, myself, but I've heard of it. I think it's made from the flowers, if I remember correctly. Peach wine, pear wine, raspberry, strawberry, blueberry...you name it, you can ferment it and make wine. 
My late father-in-law made a killer peach dessert wine that was very sweet and about 70% alcohol...or at least it hit you that hard. One little glass and you were giggling under the table.
It's important to know some tips of making wine. Happily, there are home wine making kits and methods that will fit just about anyone's experience level, space and time requirements, as well as their budget and desire as to just how much effort they want to put into wine making. Regardless of how sophisticated you may want to become in your home wine making, you will need a few things to make the experience and the wine enjoyable.
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