ABC Cork Co Wine Making Kit | 6 Gallon Wine Kit | Premium Ingredients for DIY Wine Making, Makes 30 Bottles of Wine (Cabernet Sauvignon, Medium-Bodied)

I bought this somewhat on a lark because my wife and I are beginning to drink through our stock of better home made wines, some of which I want to age for a few years. So this was bought as a cheap daily drink to stop us from having to raid the good stuff.This kit is meant to produce 5 gallons, but I only have 6 gallon carboys, so I decided to augment it with a can of Alexander's Sun Country cabernet concentrate. This turned out to be a good call, because this kit, plus the can, plus water up to 6 gallons yielded a must of just over 24 brix if memory serves, which is right about where I'd like it to be.A less generous way to interpret this would be to say that this kit will NOT make a 6 gallon batch. It can probably only BARELY make a 5 gallon batch. You'll need to either augment it with concentrate or something else such as fresh/frozen grapes, or at least sugar (which would be kinda lame though, as it would give you the correct final alcohol but the flavor would be very thin). Or simply use a smaller vessel... if you can find one. The kit might have enough oomph to make a 4 gallon batch, but good luck finding a 4 gallon carboy.I should also mention the acidity. Now I'll admit I didn't start taking pH readings until after I had combined the kit, concentrate and water... BUT... it seems as though this kit is not acidic enough. I know by now that if the must has an unpleasant flavor like cough syrup that is probably a clue that it is lacking acidity. Sure enough, the pH was 4.4, which is way too high. Fortunately I had some tartaric acid on hand, so I added it until the pH was around 3.5 and the flavor was much improved (cough syrup taste gone). I didn't test TA because my kit was out of reagent, so I don't know what the TA was. And like I said, I tested pH and tasted after it was already combined with the Alexander's, so I can't give specific recommendations on how much acid to add. It's entirely possible that the acidity would have been fine if I had just used the kit and water to make a 4 gallon batch. I can't say for sure, so I'll just offer a general word of caution: This is not the first kit I've encountered that needed acid adjustment, so just be sure to test and adjust accordingly. Getting the acidity right is one of the most important aspects of winemaking and it can mean the difference between making something you'll be happy with or something flat, insipid, and off-putting.I'll try to remember to update this review when the wine is done and has aged a bit.

I have just made the must yesterday, and found that this is approximately 6.0 L or 1.56 gallons of wine concentrate with an estimated SG of 1.320. The box says it is 5.2 L, but that's not the case for what I received. The container is a very high quality plastic bag with a plastic bottle top. What I think they are doing is providing enough of the concentrate to yield 6 gallons of must with an original gravity near 1.085, which would yield a wine at about 11.5% ABV, and then they vary the volume depending on what the gravity turns out to be after the juice has been concentrated. If you were to make only 5 gallons, then the gravity would be 1.10, and ABV just over 13%. The yeast included is EC 1118, not what I would use (I'm using QA23, but I'm making pyment) but it is a very easy to brew yeast that is fairly tolerant of the errors of neophytes and will make a good wine. It will ferment the wine to bone dry. The must tasted pretty good. I suspect it will be a pretty decent pyment, but it will take more than a year to see for sure. The kit includes 5g EC1118 (10g would be better), no yeast nutrients at all (fortunately, EC1118 requires low YAN), bentonite as a clarifier, potassium metabisulfite and potassium sorbate to stabilize the wine, and KC finings for further clarification once the wine is finished. I think with another 5g packet of EC1118, and yeast nutrient you would have all you need to make a good wine, and would still make a good wine with just what's included, but it will take longer to age out so it doesn't give you a hangover when you drink it as is, due to the fusels that will be produced in the low YAN environment and under pitching the yeast. For a few bucks extra and doing a little reading before you make this wine you can avoid that and drink it a little sooner.

I actually ordered and made this wine a couple years ago. I hadn't made wine at home for several years and I wanted to get back into it. I made 30 bottles and still have a couple left so they've been aged. I was concerned that the degassing step wasn't working and I kept stirring for much longer (days) than the instructions say but went ahead and finished everything and put it in bottles. We took a couple bottles to a friend's house for the holidays and they actually raved about it (so of course we brought more another time). Is it the best wine I've ever had? No, but it's not bad and I always surprise myself that I am drinking something I made myself. We drank the first bottle not too long after fermenting and it was not bad. I think after aging it was even better. I would buy this kit again. Next time I would like to try a chardonnay.

Overall I couldn't be more pleased with this kits price, it was right on the mark any less would cause me to believe the quality is lacking while any higher would have caused me to look at another vendor so my opinion is the manufacturer of this kit has hit the price point right on the head. The flavor appears to be perfect and as I smell this wine fermenting it smells truly awesome my only concern is the lack of flavor an oak barrel would add would be missing ,So I cut up a few blocks of oak and charge them and in a separate jar poured a small amount of juice the chard oak pieces and some yeast hoping to add to the fermenting bucket later in hopes to imparts the character of the wood into the wine. The one thing I would like to see added to this kit is some yeast nutrients and maybe some chard oak chips.