Deeps wrote: ↑Wed May 29, 2019 6:31 pm
Have you got any recommendations Jenny, the wine I've tried over the years has been pretty rank.
Hi Deeps, Historically, I've made craft wines with a mix of raisins, grape juice concentrates and... ordinary sugar, with maybe some magic ingredients such as dried apricots, elderberries, boiled potatoes, dandelion petals, rose-hips etc. Those wines were never meant to be like shop bought wines, so they were uniquely my creations.
More recently, I'm back to mainstream styles, like Merlot, Cabernet, and Sauvignon Blanc and I've tried kits from wilkinsons, but they were always VERY disappointing, probably because they compromised on sugar source.
But now, i reckon I've cracked it... Youngs cellar 7 kits!
These come as a whole gallon of well selected, concentrated grape juices. Not cheap at about 30 quid a kit, making 30 bottles, but they are the bees' knees. No granular sugar to add and dead simple to make. Ready to bottle and set aside after about 12 days. Drinkable at about 6 weeks.
Cellar 7 kits
30 bottles of Cabernet goes a long way, even for me.
Similar story with my home brew beer. I used to brew from basic ingredients, back in the days when even Boots sold fresh hops. There's some rubbish kits from Wilkinsons and even 'The range', but these are ruined by reliance on lots of granular sugar.
Here again, Youngs kits are pretty good. But I use
These John Bull Bitter kits Where they say add 1kg sugar, i use 500g granulated sugar and 500g
Beer enhancer
Again, you only get what you pay for and these are not super cheap.
Avoid beer kits from Poland. I tried a few from my local brew shop and they were rubbish. Eventually, the shop dropped them after complaints.
Incidentally, besides trying to maintain a pretty big stock of brewed beer in bottles, I now, also have a stockpile of kits and brewing sugars set aside so i'll have something to do and work with post SHTF. Call it 'water treatment'