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The black cherry one is quite nice.

The kits from wilkinsons have everything you need to make a batch of wine with except the sterilising compound which you can get at the same shop. Old wine bottles are fine once sterile but if they are screw topped, make sure the tops and the outside of the thread on the bottle are also sterilised. Make sure the wine has completely stopped bubbling before you put the wine into screw top bottles or there might be a build up of gas.

Enjoy summer01-it's fun and rewarding.

How much does the kit cost?

Depends what you buy. If you want to buy stuff individually then you need a demijohn at approx £10, a siphon £2, a airlock and bung £2 and a wine making kit from £5 to £7.50, all from Wilkinsons. The only other thing you will need is steriliser, less than £1 and maybe corks. Bottles can be old wine bottles which will need corks or as I use old spirit bottles which don't need sterilising if you don't contaminate them when they are empty, as the alcohol acts as its own steriliser. Screw top bottles are fine as long as the wine has finished fermenting before you decant into them.
Once set up each batch will only cost you as much as the kit and any bottles and corks you might buy. Each kit makes 6 bottles.

aye i think we should!

No need for fruit when you buy the wine kits as they contain concentrated fruit juices in the can section. Once you get the hang of making the kits you might want to use fruit instead of concentrates, in which case you will need plenty of fruit and a large bag of sugar, each recipe is different though so can't be more specific than that.

I can see a brewers droop epidemic coming!

Arm wrestle it.

To work out the strength of the wine you need to buy a trial jar and a hydrometer, only a couple of quid each.Sterilise both jar and hydrometer before use. What you do is put some of the liquid from the demijohn into the trial jar BEFORE any yeast is added-ie fruit concentrate plus water. This liquid contains sugar which the yeast will turn into alcohol, so you use the hydrometer to find out the specific gravity of this initial liquid. Do this by placing the hydrometer into the trial jar plus liquid as stated above. The hydrometer floats and all you do is take a reading from where the hydrometer floats in your trial jar (full instructions will be enclosed with the hydrometer). Put the liquid back into the demijohn after taking your reading. Make a note of this reading and do the same measurements AFTER the wine has finished fermented (finished bubbling). Subtract the before and after values for the specific gravities of both liquids and you will get the amount of alcohol in the end product. It's not as hard as it sounds.

My mate did this and put it in 2 litre plastic bottles. It was constantly fermenting and you couldn't actually take the tops off as it'd just explode. We called it 'Dicks Head' as his name was Richard and it had this infinite forming head. Seem to remember drinking it all.

On one of the boats I was serving in the days workers (chefs, steward and mess men) decided to use the rice and yeast from the galley to make rice wine. This was done in square plastic buckets and was kept in their lockers in their little cubby hole mess. Anyway, the skipper couldn't find his binoculars and his target guide book (Janes Fighting Ships) or his stop watch which made it rather hard for him to carry out his attacks (dummy ones of course). He reckoned someone was mucking him about witht he hope of getting out of a day at sea so he threatened to carry out a locker search to find the culprits. As we were dived at the time there was no way anybody could get shut of his stuff, or the wine. The day workers panicked and brought the buckets into our mess for us to drink so as not to incriminate themselves. The stuff was still bubbling and smelt horrible but we did it and ended up the worse for wear. The skipper then found his stuff, he'd put his coat on top of them on his bunk, so the heat was off but too late for us. We were still bevvied when we were at harbour stations coming back in that evening, we'd had our normal daily tot as well. And do you know, there wasn't a hydrometer in sight.

This place is on Derby Road Tranmere. It sell everything that you need.

Here is a recipie for Turbo Cider for those that dont like beer or wine cheap to make tasty and wont give you a hangover.

Turbo Cider Recipe:

4L of pure apple juice

1 packet of yeast You can use bread yeast or wine yeast

Sugar/Honey – optional

Method:

1. Sterilise Sanitize everything needed

2. Place 4L of apple juice into a demijohn

3. Place 1 packet of yeast into the demijohn

4. Give it a damn good shake

5. leave for about 36 hours to ferment. Add the other 1L of apple juice. If you add all the Apple Juice at once it does have a tendency to bubble up through the airlock, hence 3L 1st, then 1L later

6. leave to ferment (mine took a week, but can take longer. Need to ensure the SG is constant for 3 days, or less than 1 bubble per min in the airlock) with rubber bung and air lock in the demijohn

7. Bottle – I use plastic PET bottles with 2 tbs of sugar if you like it fizzy or no sugar for flat cider

I used Aldi apple juice the SG was 1.046 (so that means the ABV 5.5% approx) but I wanted a slightly stronger Cider, so added about 80g of Sugar and a 2 or 3 teaspoons of honey. The SG was then 1.055 (ABV 7.5%), but this should drop slightly after I add the final 1.5L of Apple Juice in a day or so. So should end up with Cider with ABV of 7%.

Any questions just ask

I Love this. I used to brew a lot years ago and i have been thinking of making cider for some time. Whats SG? Also do you use ordinary carton apple juice?

The SG is starting gravity depending how strong you want it it should be between 1040-1060 but I dont bother taking hydrometer readings for this as its ready when its stopped bubbling for a few days.
You can use any apple juice as long as it says made from concentrate the best ones I've found are the ones form Aldi in the litre cartons. The good thing about this cider is its ready to drink in a couple of weeks.