Best wine making starter sets according to redditors

For the record, oaking sticks aren't just used "to make cheap booze taste like less cheap booze".

I'm a home winemaker. Buying an oak cask for aging wine is cost prohibitive, and requires a large amount of maintenance while not in use, making it entirely impractical for home use.

Oaking spirals are an easy way for home users to give their wines and spirits an "oaked" flavor, even if brewing or aging in glassware.

http://www.thebarrelmill.com/infusion-spirals.html

http://www.amazon.com/American-Oak-Infusion-Spirals-Medium/dp/B0064OBE74

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brewing/brewing-ingredients/flavorings/oak-products

http://www.infusionspiral.com/

Since I actually find the links in the sidebar to be fairly unhelpful, at least for someone as detail oriented as me as a beginner, and I'm still enough of a beginner to remember how hard it was to get started, I'll go ahead and give you a start here.

Equipment needed

• Primary Bucket
  
• Carboy
  
• Airlock (x2 to make your life easier) + rubber stopper(bung) + vodka for sterile agent, could use water instead. I like vodka. Also, you could use balloon here instead of all this.
  
• Hydrometer, so you can measure your starting gravity and estimate the strength of your brew.
  
• Racking Cane
  
• Siphon Hose
  
• Bleach or some other sanitizer
  
• You can get everything up till this point with a homebrew kit, here's one for a 3 gallon batch, plus a few extras that aren't necessary but are nice to have. Like a bottle filler.
  
• Large (can hold several gallons of water) Stockpot
  
• Large metal spoon for stirring
  
• Small bowl for starting your yeast
  
• Small spoon for stirring your yeast
  
  Equipment Wanted If you think you'll get really into this, here's some equipment that I have that I feel makes life a lot easier.
  
  
• Auto Siphon so you don't have to use your mouth to get things started. You don't need a racking cane if you have this.
  
• Fermentation Sampler. Is an easy place to read your hydrometer (don't drop your hydrometer into your carboy by accident, regret!!) and makes it real easy to get a small glass for sampling without having to risk the mess of siphoning into a glass.
  
• Cloth bag to hold primary ingredients to lessen particles in your mead during racking.
  
  Ingredients Needed
  
  
• D-47 Lalvin is a type of Yeast specifically used for brewing. I don't know if I can speak very well to the differences in yeasts, but I like this one because in my limited experience it propagates and dies quickly so you have less time in the brewing stage and more time in the ageing stage which is what makes Mead delicious.
  
• Honey! See amount listed in recipe. I personally like to purchase locally. Some recipes will indicate a specific type of honey. Others that are heavily flavored won't matter as much. I believe I used a clover honey in this, but I don't think you can tell with all the other flavors.
  
• Molasses. Regular in the store molasses works fine.This is acting as my nutrient (to feed the yeast) and additional sweetener because I knew I wanted a very sweet mead. Bonus, I'm pretty sure this is what gave it most of it's color.
  
• Pumpkin mash. You could use Libby's pumpkin mash here, but I wanted to be as "from scratch" as possible so I roasted 4 pie/sweet pumpkins.
  
• 1 bottle cinnamon sticks. This is the size I used.
  
• For the spices - really just put in the spices you feel appropriate for pumpkin pie. I ended up with the ratios I did because that's what smelled nice in the primary bucket. Ha!
  
• Spring water. You know the water you can buy at the store in jugs? That's the stuff. The reason you want to use this instead of tap is there's no fluoride or chlorine to possibly taint the taste of your mead.
  
  To Brew a Mead
  
  

1. Sanitize all of your equipment. First wash everything with soap and water. If this is new equipment, you can probably skip that part and move on to sanitation. To do this, you can use the sanitation packets (if you bought the kit and have them) or you can use bleach. (There are other methods too, but these are the ones I'm familiar with. If you use bleach, it's 1 Tbl/1gallon of water to make a sanitary solution to wash things in. Soak all your equipment in your sanitary solution for 20 minutes. Then rinse. If you used bleach, you will need to rinse a lot. Over and over again till you can't smell any more bleach. In my experience, 4x rinse has worked for my bleach solution.
   
2. Prepare your primary. This is only necessary for a recipe like this one where you have a lot of ingredients that don't go into the Must. In this case, you'll put pumpkin mash directly into the primary (assuming you've already roasted and cooled your pumpkins or are using canned pumpkin mash) or into a cloth bag so you don't have to worry about mush particles getting into your siphon later.... Pour in molasses, orange peels (which you've also washed) and all your spices.
   
3. Prepare your Must. The must is your heated honey-water mixture. You use your large stockpot, put in all your honey (you might want to melt it some by placing the bottles/jugs into a hot water bath in your sink or in a different pot on your stove, this makes it easier to pour and use all the honey), and as much spring water as you can fit in the stockpot on top of the honey without over flowing. (Unless you're making a 1 gallon batch - then make sure you don't use more than 1/2 a gallon- 3/4 gallon.) Note: you don't have to heat the honey for any kind of sanitizing purpose. I heat my honey/water mixture just enough so the honey dissolves nicely in the water. I feel like this makes it easier to mix everything, but you don't have to! There's a whole bunch of hubub about it killing flavor and whatnot. I only feel this is true if you accidentally boil it. DO NOT BOIL your Must!
   
4. Cool your Must to about room temperature. To do this, you can put your stockpot into a cold bath and track the temperature fall, you can add it to your primary bucket and add in chilled spring water till almost your goal volume (not quite), or put it covered in your freezer/fridge till it reaches around 70degrees. Don't let it get below 65degrees though, that's too cold. Whichever way, add the must to your Primary bucket after and bring your volume up to goal by adding spring water.
   
5. Prepare your yeast. Follow the directions on the back of your yeast packet to bring your yeast to life. Typically, this means heating a couple cups of water to 109degrees in that small bowl you sanitized, adding your yeast, stirring vigorously with the small spoon you sanitized, and letting your yeast propagate for 15 minutes.
   
6. Pitch your yeast! While the yeast is propagating in it's small bowl, give your primary a couple stirs to mix everything up. After the time has passed, upend or pitch your water/yeast mixture into your primery bucket.
   
7. Stir vigorously! This is my SO's favorite part. We play crazy music and stir like crazy (using that big metal spoon you sanitized) for 5-7 minutes. This get everything mixed up good and adds the oxygen the yeast needs for fermentation. So the more bubbles the better!
   
8. Take your starting gravity. Either stick your hydrometer straight into your primary bucket or use a sampler. Write it down and use one of the links on the side to figure out your potential alcohol content, or use the chart that came with your hydrometer.
   
9. Put your lid on your primary bucket and add your airlock to the bunghole (hehehe) aka that rubber surrounded hole in the top. Add vodka (or water) to the airlock to create an airtight seal. Place your primary vat into a cool dark place for a week or two.
   
   NOTE If you're making a 1 gallon batch, you can put your batch directly into your jug carboy and shake instead of stir. You can also use a balloon instead of an airlock. I recommend sanitizing a food-grade funnel to put all your ingredients in if that's the case. To make smaller batches - just divide everything in my recipe (except the yeast, always just use 1 packet of that regardless of the batch size) by 6.5x. For example - for a 1 gallon batch you would use 1.5 cups of pumpkin mash instead of 10.5 cups. etc etc etc.
   
   As time goes by
   
   

• Several weeks down the line you'll want to rack your mead. What this does is several things. You move your mead from Primary to Secondary. Secondary should be a glass carboy for long-term storage. This reduces the chance of plastic tainting the taste of your mead and reduces the chance of your mead alcohol slowly degrading your plastic primary. The reason it's nice to start in a plastic primary is for easy mixing and it leaves a lot of head space for your vigorous yeast activity. When you transfer to secondary (glass carboy) you reduce the amount of mead exposed to air, thus reducing the chance of infection. Also, every time you rack it cleans your mead of sediment, making it that much more drinkable.
  
• You'll want to rack several times before you consider bottling.
  
• The longer your mead sits, the better it gets. Unlike beer, plan for the long term.
  
• Keep your mead cool and dark. At one point I had access to cool but not dark, so I put a blanket over my mead.

Hell, Amazon sells a simple pot still: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A4EVWYY

It definitely will.

I ferment peppers in a glass jar with one of these: https://www.amazon.com/American-Oak-Infusion-Spirals-Medium/dp/B0064OBE74/ per gallon. Using a cask will give you a lot more surface area coverage.

It will start to denature at 149F. What I did was add this stuff to the mash tun after mashing for 20 minutes at 144-146F and then did an hour long rest.

Some people use it in the fermenter, some add it while transferring from mash tun to boil kettle and do a 30 minutes stand (provided you stay under 149F). Adding it to the mash was easy enough and I got good results (1.058 —> 1.000).

This is the kit I started with

http://www.amazon.com/Deluxe-Wine-Making-Quality-Durable/dp/B013S1WDUC

I didn't need anything else but ingredients.

I wouldn't know but iv heard the plastic can retain flavors and smells of your last brew.

I would say the oak was perfect and blended well with the slight bourbon flavor. Using chips can get out of hand, but 5 days should be just about right. I used 4oz of chips, link below, soaked them in 1835 Bourbon, and dumped the hole thing into the fermenter. (Make sure to shake them up a few times per day so they stay coated) https://www.amazon.com/Home-Brew-Ohio-6340A-American/dp/B00P16EBR6/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1524507683&sr=8-4&keywords=oak+chips

The turkey fryer will work great.

If it lets you, I would get this one. I say if it lets you, because it's actually from midwestsupplies. But if it's through Amazon, I think it will work.

Otherwise This one has a few more goodies in it. I think that may actually be a better one.

I don't even know what to do tbh. I bought a crap corker that Amazon reviews said should be ok if you're brewing small batches, which, according to them was around 60 bottles. I jumped at it because it was 5 quid and I was only bottling 6.

So after the first one, it explodes :( It was one of these.

Yet at the same time, I really don't want to spend 60 quid on a corker for 5 bottles now. I might try this one the reviews seem ok. I bought some Youngs corks and they said not to soak on them. I dunno why they would say that, so I didn't. Maybe that was the problem.

I personally would use a moonshine still or an air still

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00BWUJKHG/

I have one and solar for house so still able to use it if power goes out


https://milehidistilling.com/product/econ-8-gallon-with-traditional-pot-still-head/

https://www.amazon.com/Distiller-Moonshine-Alcohol-Stainless-Thumper/dp/B00XZ381F0

You can order ultra ferm from White Labs, or amyloglucosidase/gluco-amylase online or from Amazon, but that won't solve your problem for tomorrow :(

This kit comes with everything you'd need to get started. I have almost all of this stuff by purchasing piece by piece, but it cost me WAY more than a hundred bucks.

https://www.amazon.com/North-Mountain-Supply-Gallon-Complete/dp/B07DJZF99M/ref=sr_1_12

https://www.amazon.com/OLizee-Stainless-Alcohol-Distiller-Moonshine/dp/B01AUM1HZE

https://www.amazon.ca/Stainless-Household-Moonshine-Distiller-Essential/dp/B076SP1F7F/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521137748&sr=8-1&keywords=still+spirits

The first item u posted costs $335.... is there a cheaper alternative? Also can u link to any specific guide on how to do this? I'm very interested since you make it sound so easy, but I don't have much money to start a whole mini distillery (obvi, since i made this post about how im broke lol)

edit: is this the same thing? https://www.amazon.com/Still-Spirits-Turbo-Air/dp/B00BWUJKHG

> Essential oil stills

Will this work?

https://www.amazon.com/Distiller-Moonshine-Alcohol-Stainless-Thumper/dp/B00XZ381F0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494693460&sr=8-1&keywords=essential+oil+still

So I was looking at a non explody & maintenance method such as:


https://www.amazon.com/Still-Spirits-Turbo-Air/dp/B00BWUJKHG/ref=sr_1_5?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1537031471&sr=1-5&keywords=still


Which I feel could be used to extract out some of the alchohol when it is mixed with cannabis, but it pulls a very low ABV. Thoughts?

https://www.amazon.com/Still-Spirits-Turbo-Air/dp/B00BWUJKHG this is cheaper option what is your opinion on it, one day I will get a $500+ one but right now I am starting so I can't justify spending $500 on something I am just figuring out.

Just run the vodka through one of these, you'll get your high proof. Seriously though, it should be fine at 30%.

Well, you COULD make dry honey wine, run it through an air still and then blend it with a strong sweet mead.

I want to get into wine making / brewing. At the moment I'm thinking about getting this but other than that I don't really know what to do.

I do this often with these- https://www.amazon.com/American-Oak-Infusion-Spirals-Medium/dp/B0064OBE74/ref=sr_1_2?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1503619110&sr=1-2&keywords=oak+spirals I use about a 3" piece in a 2-liter glass bottle. It only adds oak flavor, color, and maybe some other wood like characteristics i.e., cinnamon. I got my spirals and glass bottles from Midwest Supplies.

I have been doing a barrel aged negroni at my bar. Old Raj 110, Carpano, Campari. I use spiral staves they give a great oaky quality after about 3 weeks. Super Tasty!

Yes you can lol


https://www.amazon.com/Suteck-Moonshine-Spirits-Distiller-Stainless/dp/B01A4EVWYY/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=liquor+still&qid=1570686802&sr=8-3

Do your own aging with something like: http://www.amazon.com/American-Oak-Infusion-Spirals-Medium/dp/B0064OBE74

white dog isn't very good without the wood to clean it up. nice part about the spirals is you can do a years worth of aging in a matter of days.