Hey, how is everyone doing today? You drinking your milk and eating your vitamins?
Whatever. I don’t really care about your lives. Let’s look at how the Mini Wine Paks are doing. I’m much more interested in them.
Nothing much new has happened with the wine, except that it’s definitely gotten lighter in colour.
Oi, let’s check in on the Mini Wine Paks, ya scags.
I don’t know, they’re still fizzing along and stuff. I think that the liquid level is lower do to the yeast converting the grape juice into gas.
Blah.
It’s the third day of my Mini Wine Paks fermenting. Let’s have ourselves a little look-see, shall we? SHALL WE?
The bags seem to be bubbling just as much as yesterday. Everything seems to be progressing splendidly. Well, except for one problem…
The merlot bag sprung a small hole where the pouch attaches to the cap, even though the cap was loosened to allow gas to escape. I used a bit of duct tape to cover the hole. Everything should be fine as long as it’s only gas escaping and no air getting in… I think.
I’m going to end up with a metric crap-tonne of red wine vinegar, aren’t I? Bleh.
It’s day two of the magical Mini Wine Pak experiment! Let’s see what going on with the fermentation pouches.
Well, this looks pretty much the same as yesterday. The chardonnay might be slightly lighter in colour, but I’m not sure. The pouches are bubbling quite a bit and there is a fair amount of foam forming on top of the liquid.
Is it supposed to be this foamy? Is that yeast floating on top of the foam? Is this turning into poison? I DON’T KNOW!
So I was wasting some time on Amazon, when I came upon these Mini Wine Pak dealies that promise to make you some delicious wine, at home, in just 10 days and for less money than you’d pay for wine instore (in Canada at least. Bleh Sin taxes can eat a butt.). And I was like, “Hey! I’m a stingy alcoholic. This is perfect for me!”, so I bought the merlot and chardonnay winemaking kits.
Fun Fact: since grape juice and yeast are technically grocery items, I wasn’t charged any tax for this stuff and they didn’t verify my age either!
The boxes arrived in a couple of days. They weren’t refrigerated or anything, because the contents are pasteurized and shelf-stable, I suppose.
Everything in the boxed seemed a bit jumbled-up. I think that mailman that hates me has been throwing my boxes around again. Everything was still intact, though, so whatever.
The things inside the box were: a dispensing pouch, a fermenting pouch, grape juice concentrate, yeast wine starter, sulphite sorbate wine stopper, keiselsol clearing wine and chitosan clearing wine. Everything has a big letter that corresponds to the step-by-step instructions.
It’s amazing that you need such small amounts of yeast and chemicals are required in the winemaking process. Each of these pouches is only about 4 centimetres wide and almost flat.
The instructions are easy to follow, but the guy on them is making Dreamworks Face, so I dislike them.
The first step call for filling up the fermenting pouch halfway with water, but there is no halfway line on the bag, so you have to eyeball it. I’m bad at guesstimating and having to do so causes me anxiety.
Then you have to add the grape juice concentrate to the water. I couldn’t for the life of me get the stupid stopper on the grape juice pouch out, so I had to cut a hole in the corner in order to pour it out.
Once you have your grape juice added, you fill the pouch to the line with more water, then add the yeast wine starter, close the pouch’s cap tightly and shake the pouch vigorously. After that, you open the cap a bit, so that gas can escape during the fermentation process.
The yeast activates immediately and starts to foam-up.
Here are my pouches of merlot and chardonnay fermenting side-by-side. They don’t look very appetizing at the moment.