Ok thanks for the reply's.This is definitely the feed back i was looking for .Now maybe you can help with a couple questions i had ,and some reasoning (maybe erroneously i had). First with the carboys i was planning on using one plastic bucket as a primary and the second as a secondary fermenter,i found these actually cheaper than the carboys and i am not planning on having a lot of different wines in secondary at once.I will freeze my excess fruit for now.Plus i am kind of on a budget as far as spending right now.Second on the potassium metabisulphite powder i had considered it but the website said it starts to break down as soon as it contacts air and i wasn't sure if i could store it very long and keep it viable plus can i use it as a sanitizer? I am admittedly trying to cut a few corners such as buying separate sanitizer,bottle tree,sulphiter,and i forgot to include an add on kit that includes 12 bottles i believe 30 corks and a hand corker which i had included in my budget. I did include the auto siphon because it just seems like a pain trying to get a good flow going by sucking on the tube lololol.Can i possibly use the auto siphon and tubing to actually fill my bottles?
Plastic works for primary fermentation, but not for long-term storage like whats needed during the degassing, clearing, and bulk aging of the wine. Granted you can bulk age in bottles perfectly fine, but this still doesnt get you through degassing & clearing which can take anywhere from 6 weeks (with lower-grade kits, skeeter pee, etc) to 12 months or longer (for meads/melomels, etc) - you need glass carboys to keep your wine safe during this period.. Cutting corners in winemaking is alright most of the time, but your glass isnt a corner to cut
K-meta powder will lose its effectiveness over time, but the cooler (and stable) temp you keep it (not frozen) and the less air contact time it has, both help it stretch.. Even in poorer conditions, it'll still usually last a year ... And yes, it works nicely as a santizer, just doesnt work so hot as a heavy-duty gritter-getter, which is why i mentioned Oxy-Clean earlier
Freezing your fruit is always a plus, as the water within the fruit expands into ice, it rips little holes in the fruit & once thawed again, the juice more-readily leaks out of the fruit
If you havent already bought the kit with the hand corker in it, save your moolah - the corks are usually low grade, and the hand corker gives a lot of people problems; portuguese floor corkers are 60 bucks and will last so long, that you forgot how much you paid for it..
You'll find the autosiphon is a bit fast for bottling, even if it were to fit into the bottle neck. "Bottling buckets" - plastic bucket with a spout on the bottom, are cheap & easy to attach a small diameter (cant remember right now) hosing & "bottling wand" ($1.50?), which fits in the bottles and has a spring-loaded stopper at the bottom that you press on the bottom of the bottle to let the wine into the bottle, lift up when the bottles full and when you remove the bottling wand, the wine level is right where it needs to be, for corking.
