So I bought my first wine kit. . .

[franpod]

It's a BelVino 7-Day Classic Red. I think it's one of the cheapest ones you can get so I'm hoping I end up with something that I can actually drink! It'll be my first brew so I want to be as informed as I can before I start.
Firstly, it needs sugar (4kgs or 5kgs for dessert wine). After a quick google I'm deciding to go with regular white sugar 4kgs. Fingers crossed with that.
The only thing I'm unsure about is about racking off the wine. Does this just mean to siphon it?
Would anyone have any experience with this kit? Hint and tips are welcome! 

[Will_D]

Hi Fran welcome to the site.

When a wine kit says sugar they mean ordinary white sugar. Lidl is one of the cheapest ( 1-15 for 1kg but they had caster sugar for 0-79c a kilo!!)

Racking off just means transfering from one vessel to another. This can be achieved by syphoning or just by careful pouring from one demi john to another.

Suggest you look here as there is loads of good info about kit wines. The nice kind HB shops have been giving us lots of kits for review

http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/board,2.0.html

Ask away, remember the only stupid question is the one you don't ask!!

[LordEoin]

Just remember not to slosh the wine around before racking. you want to leave all of the sediment behind.
Check this thread out, it has some pretty pictures
http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/forum/index.php/topic,5635.0.html
And welcome to the world of wine making!

[franpod]

Thanks lads! Will, I just bought the sugar there today so I should have everything I need to get started. All I need to do now is set aside a day that I'm free and go do it.
Thanks for the link Eoin, the pictures are a really great help. I knew that the object was to get the liquid out of the bucket and leave the gunk, but I wasn't quite sure which way it came out (and wondered if there'd be so much sediment that the level was above the tap on my bucket?) I'm going to have a good read through here before I start. This forum is a gift!
I'll definitely let you know how I get on! Thanks again! 

[LordEoin]

Wine lesson for the day: the gunk is called lees

[Ciderhead]

As in what flows through Cork , ok maybe not as funny as I first thought

[franpod]

I just thought I'd check in and let you know how I got on. I set the whole thing up on Tuesday and it's been bubbling away in the spare room since. I used 4.5 kg of normal sugar. The instructions said 4kg for normal wine, 5kg for sweet wine. I'm glad I did though because when I took the hydrometer reading it was something like 1.075 (I don't have it to hand), anyway it said that that's about the starting reading for dry wine which I thought was a bit strange but we'll see how that goes. I might have been able to add a bit more sugar without it being too sweet. Would a half kg of sugar at the start make a big taste difference?

The other thing I noticed from the instructions was it said not to use an airlock because the fruit might get stuck in it, but I went ahead and used my airlock anyway and haven't had a problem with it yet.
It's gurgling away though and I plan to have it there for at least another 10 days. So far so good!

[Eoin]

I think you've possibly made the beginners mistake of not mixing your sugars in correctly thus getting a false reading.

Sent from my HTC One

[Eoin]

Oh yeah relax it should be fine.

Sent from my HTC One

[LordEoin]

Yeah, just go with it. What's in there now is staying in there, just let it gurgle away and the yeast will do all the work 

[franpod]

Thanks Eoin(s)! It would make a lot of sense if that was the case. When I was doing my brew, for as much as I could I tried to keep the lid loosely down on the bucket, so that I could limit the amount of exposure the mixture was getting to dust or whatever else is floating around in the air. I don't recall putting a big lot of time into stirring it. I'd say that's exactly what happened. 
Anyway, I'm fairly confident that the process is heading in the right direction and I'm happy with it so far.