01-03-2011, 08:14 AM
It's really hard to give specific help on how to produce a good wine. Using ez-caps and the provided yeast can produce horrible wine or as good as the best you could buy anywhere. It's all in the process, ingredients and time.
You can make a batch of drinkable wine in 10 days. Or you can rack it, age it, rack it again, age it some more and have a totally different product which many would consider to be a higher quality. You can buy canned or boxed kits of specific types of grapes and make a wine that could possible compete with anything commercially produced, again depending on the process.
But remember, the main 'thing' that EZ-CAPS does for you is give you an easy way to make 'sparking wine', not just plain wine. You can let it ferment for weeks and eventually it will lose ALL it's fizz (natural carbonation), but if you're going to do that there's no reason to really use EZ-CAPS. Just take some small balloons and poke several holes in them and secure to the bottles with rubber bands. Once the balloon deflates weeks later, fermentation is done and then you can clarify, rack, etc.
But if you want a sweet/semi-sweet sparkling wine, then EZ-CAPS makes it super easy to do, which is what I personally prefer.
You are doing the right thing though. It's all about YOUR process. Juice is pretty cheap and so experimenting, like you're doing, is the best way to find out what works for you. You'll probably pour out an entire bottle or two your first go around since you did so many varieties. Just let us know how it turns out.
You can make a batch of drinkable wine in 10 days. Or you can rack it, age it, rack it again, age it some more and have a totally different product which many would consider to be a higher quality. You can buy canned or boxed kits of specific types of grapes and make a wine that could possible compete with anything commercially produced, again depending on the process.
But remember, the main 'thing' that EZ-CAPS does for you is give you an easy way to make 'sparking wine', not just plain wine. You can let it ferment for weeks and eventually it will lose ALL it's fizz (natural carbonation), but if you're going to do that there's no reason to really use EZ-CAPS. Just take some small balloons and poke several holes in them and secure to the bottles with rubber bands. Once the balloon deflates weeks later, fermentation is done and then you can clarify, rack, etc.
But if you want a sweet/semi-sweet sparkling wine, then EZ-CAPS makes it super easy to do, which is what I personally prefer.
You are doing the right thing though. It's all about YOUR process. Juice is pretty cheap and so experimenting, like you're doing, is the best way to find out what works for you. You'll probably pour out an entire bottle or two your first go around since you did so many varieties. Just let us know how it turns out.
Robin