Carafe 21 White Kit

Started 7th May 2012

Carafe 21 comes in both red and white. I'm not keen on white wine, but the missus likes white wine in the summer, red in winter. 

Carafe 21 White Kit

30 bottles of white in 21 days sounds pretty good to me, so we've given this one a go too. If the missus doesn't like it for drinking, she'll use it for cooking.

The kit containes all the ingredients except the water and sugar. You also need a big 5 gallon bucket.

It helps to have a hydrometer - you have to test the gravity at 12-16 days to check the ferment has finished. If the gravity is below 1000 after 16 days, it's ready for the next stage. If not, you have to wait longer for the ferment to finish, which means the wine will take longer than 21 days.

From what I understand (which isn't a great deal at the moment!) there's no real harm in moving on to the next stage sooner - it just means the wine will be sweeter and less alcoholic as some of the sugar won't have fermented.

It's also handy to have a thermometer. The instructions say to dissolve sugar in water and pour into the bucket - the easiest way is to do this in a pan on the cooker, but that means you end up with warm water. If the water / liquid is too warm, there's no point adding the other ingredients, especially the yeast - heat will kill the yeast and the best you get is mould growing on the fruity liquid. A long thermometer only costs a few quid.

The buckets are on the go now, we need to add more water and sugar tomorrow then leave for another 9 days .... fingers crossed!

Verdict:
Bottled this 11th June 2012. Like the Carafe Red, it took a bit longer than expected.
We got 26 bottles out of it, so I definitely miscounted when adding the water.

On the plus side, it tastes really good. I'm not a lover of white wine, but this is a very good white, definitely as good or better than some of the well known labels in supermarkets. It could be that it tastes better because I was short on the water, but can only tell if I do another kit.

Would we buy it again? Absolutely!

Other home made white wines like gooseberry wine can take several months to mature, sometimes over a year, but this is ready in just a few weeks and it's really good.