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Greetings to the group and happy Monday :( I am currently making the Showcase Barbera, my first time making this particular kit. I racked it into clearing on Jan 15 and expected to see some evidence of clearing by now (roughly 2 weeks), however it still appears opaque - I check for clearing...

Good morning to all. I currently have a Showcase Viognier in the clearing stage - I have made this wine before (Jan 2011 IIRC), and do not recall having clearing problems. That first batch has all been consumed, and the natives are yelling for more (wife and her girlfriends. At the time I...

After racking my Limited Release CC Pinot Noir into a fresh carboy (for clearing), I accidentally used too small a cork. In the process of inserting the bubble lock the cork squeezed through the neck, right into the carboy full of wine. Dang! I then racked the wine out into a fresh carboy, along...

Good morning to the forum. I have been using CC wine kits, mostly Showcase, for going on a year now, and have been overall very happy with the results. Now I am considering the Dessert Wine kits. (The Orange Muscat and Classic Port look interesting.) Can anyone comment on these kits? Are...

Good morning to all, a few questions re the CC Limited kits... (Some of these issues may be addressed somewhere in this forum, but I have not stumbled across it.) 1 - what is the process for ordering these? Do they have to be pre-ordered? In which case, do I place the order with my local...

Good morning to all... in the last year I have made several of the Showcase reds. As a result of their large crushed grape packs, these kits are a bit much for your standard 23L "Biere et Vin" bucket. So, for these kits I purchased a 12gallon bucket down at the LHBS (food grade, intended for the...

Hi to all, I am wondering who has done this kit before (I assume Mike has, he gave me the labels :) I started this kit on 7/23 at 1.062SG. Put it into secondary on 7/30 at 0.998. On 8/5 I found the SG at 0.984 - I was so surprised I checked it 3 times, and got the same result. So... I...

Hi to all, Just curious about this: I got into using CC wine kits in August 2010, and initially made a Classique Merlot, and a Classique Pinot Noir - these were $60 cheapies and pretty much all my LHBS had on the shelf. Those wines are now coming on 9-10 months, and are more or less drinkable...

Hi again to all... can anyone comment on the Premium series kits? These seem something of a wildcard in the CC range. They are priced around the same as the Sterlings, maybe a bit higher, possibly due to the 16 litre format. However, the CC catalog has little to say about each of the wines...

Happy Monday to all :{ This weekend i bottled both my Showcase Chardonnay and Rosso Forti kits. I normally use the CellarCraft-supplied labels, i think they look good. But when time came to label the Rosso, *bingo*, no labels. I can not guarantee that I did not misplace them, but i doubt it...

I posted this on a previous thread, hoping for some feedback. I got one informed comment, but then that thread lost its way, so will post again. Here goes: "Yesterday, being Mum's day, I opened two bottles of CC Classique reds I had bottled in Aug 2010 ("Global Cuvee Merlot"), Sept 2010...

Hi again to the Cellar Craft forum... Yesterday I started my Showcase Rosso Forti kit. Following the instructions, I did everything up to but *not* including adding the yeast. At that point i remembered that most CC instructions warn you about checking the temp after adding the juice and...

Hi to all... I just saw a posting over on the WE forum, suggesting *not* to reverse direction if degassing with a drill-mounted stirrer. I have the type of stirrer that has two hinged paddles at the bottom, which rotate out at 90degrees to the shaft, as soon as the stirrer starts to rotate. I...

I have seen numerous references to "wine kit taste", on this forum and elsewhere, some suggesting that it is a permanent feature of wine made from a kit, which will always distinguish it from a non-kit wine. So... what is it? I have made 5 red wine kits, all in the last 7 months, and have...

What is the forum's consensus on what bottles to use for wine? I can get new bottles from the local supplier, but decided not to. Two reasons: 1 - they cost $15/dozen. At 30-31 bottles per kit, this gets expen$ive. 2 - frankly, they seem kinda lightweight. Like they might break if they...

Yeah, I'm back with another dumb question. Sorry... I currently have 3 Showcase wines in production, and am thinking about bottling. Unlike the Sterling and lower-level CC kits, the Showcase kits come with labels - quite nice actually. Problem is, it is not obvious to me how to attach these -...

Advice needed re sealing the carboy. With my first kit I used a synthetic cork with a hole, with the bubble-lock inserted in it. However this tended to pop out of the carboy. So then I opted for the flexible pop-over seal (a plastic orange dealy) with the bubble-lock inserted, as seen in the...

Hi to all I have just transferred my CC Yakima Chardonnay from primary to secondary fermentation. This is my 7th CC kit, and all of them indicate to make the transition when the SG is below 1.000. In fact mine have varied between .994 and .998, depending on when I have time to do it. But I...

Well this is a very informative forum, so here's another one for ya... I recently did the CC Viognier kit, which was my first attempt at a white wine kit. It behaved nothing like the reds I have done (all CC's). When I did the racking at the end of primary fermentation I had to add over 1...

As an ex-pat Aussie living in the Pacific NW of the US, I have always held Canadians in high regard. They can't swim worth a hoot, but they can whip our a--ses at ice hockey. That said, I see it as a sign of enlightment that the major producers of wine ingredient kits seem to be located in...