Bent Grape Kit Question

Hello all, we are somewhat new to making home wine, have made two kits so far with success though. We purchased a Vineco Bent Grape Strawberry Delight/Lemon Kiss kit from our local wine supply store. It was an old stock kit that was on clearance so we figured why not. They gave us a fresh yeast pack to replace the aged one in the kit. The first thing we noticed was the colour was quite different - like a dark apple juice colour. The instructions for step one was to see if it had a starting SG of 1.040-1.050 and ours was 1.060. Today was day 8 and we racked it into a carboy and it had an SG of 1.000. Has anyone else had any experience with this kit? Does it have an odd colour or is this normal? Thank You, Tim

I have no experience, but this is about the color I would expect from something called Strawberry Delight/Lemon Kiss!

Ya its kind of a strange kit, just before bottling you split it in half and then add the two different flavour packs (lemon and strawberry) so it makes 15 bottles of each. It was on clearance for $25 so figured why not!

Often that "dark apple juice color" comes from oxidized white grape juice/concentrate. You should have had a date code sticker on the box somewhere to tell you how old the kit actually was. If it smelled OK when you opened it, it is probably fine.

Most white wine looks about like that until it clears.

Looks fine. No worries. You made a good choice getting fresh yeast.

Thanks for the help everyone, curious to see how this one turns out

It's day 21 and still waiting for the SG to drop below 0.995 like the day 14 instructions said. It has slowly dropped from 0.998 on day 14 to 0.996 today (day 21). It seems strange to me that when I take a sample from the carboy with the thief that I can see really small bubbles almost like it carbonated in the thief. Any suggestions are welcome, thanks.

Wine does indeed get carbonated during fermentation. CO2 is a product of the yeast metabolism.

To get rid of the gas, you can either actively degas, or you can bide your time and let it degas slowly by itself (like a soda going flat). To actively degas, you can stir vigorously with a long spoon. There is a danger of producing a "wine volcano" as the gas is released from the wine if you perform this step in the carboy pictured above. You can siphon this to your primary bucket, stir there, and then transfer back.

As for the SG, there is nothing magical about the 0.995 level. It is possible your batch will never reach that figure. If it were mine, I would give it another week or so and then call it done, and move on to the next step.