The kit comes with a 6 gal carboy (large clear bottle shown) but for making wine from raw ingredients, a carboy matching the size of the batch to be made (usually 1 gal or 5 gal) will also be needed.

In addition to what is included with the kit, the following will be needed: 30 – standard 750ml used or new wine bottles (not the screw cap type), a very small $2 package of meta bisulfite ( 1/4 teaspoon per 6 gal batch will be used), a 4″ funnel, one or two 2L clean soda bottles for the cleaner, a $15 thermometer capable of reading from 32-120 degrees F. (the juice must usually be in the 60-80 degrees range for fermentation to occur), a bucket to catch overflow when bottling, and a wine degasser $20 (a long rod with fins on the end that is used with an electric drill to remove CO2). Cardboard wine boxes with dividers are helpful to hold empty bottles and the full ones awaiting corks.

Hand corkers, like the one included with this kit, are hard to use. After making a few batches a floor corker may become attractive – the $60 plastic jaw floor corker works fantastic.

The Better Bottle plastic carboy included with this kit is a certainly better than a glass one. It won’t add off flavors, is much lighter than a glass one and won’t shatter. It is helpful, but not essential, to have a second $28 plastic carboy, a $2 airlock and a $2 stopper (bung).

The included powdered cleaner/sanitizer (usually “1-Step” or “Simple Clean”) is all that is needed for bottles and equipment as long they are diligently cleaned immediately before and immediately after they are used. Mix about 2L at a time and don’t save or reuse it. Rinsing is not required. An extra $3 bottle brush mounted on an electric drill will make bottle cleaning a snap.

Avoid detergents and bleach because they will permanently impart their flavors to the plastic equipment and then to your wine. The are also hard to completely rinse off of glass and metal.

The included racking cane (a hooked plastic tube) works but a $12 auto-siphoning racking cane would be a huge improvement.

Starting off with a white wine kit will allow you to see more of what’s going on and help you perfect the task of siphoning the wine without sucking up the solids. For those who can’t wait several months to start tasting, white wine also tastes better when very young.

In summary, with the addition a few missing parts and a small tweaking, this equipment kit is a excellent start for those interested in making modest sized batches of wine from wine juice kits. If you intend to make wine from raw ingredients, you will need gain a fuller understanding of what the recipe requires to determine if the kit is complete.

Rating: 4 / 5