They are two different hobbies wearing the same name. A 30-bottle wine kit is a large tub of grape concentrate that you dilute, ferment in a big bin and bottle by the case, aiming at something close to a supermarket wine. A hedgerow wine kit is a set of winemaking ingredients that you add to fruit you picked yourself, making one gallon at a time, aiming at something you cannot buy at all. Our Hedgerow Wine Making Kit is the second sort. Which one you actually want depends on whether the point is the wine or the making of it.
What is in a 30-bottle kit?
The ingredient is grape juice, concentrated so it can be sold in a tub, usually with sachets of yeast, finings and stabiliser alongside it. You empty the concentrate into a fermenting bin, top it up to volume with water, pitch the yeast and wait.
Thirty bottles is around 23 litres of finished wine, which tells you most of what you need to know about the equipment. You need a fermenting bin of that size and something to mature it in, floor space to keep both, and thirty clean bottles with corks or caps ready on the day you bottle. It is a serious piece of kitchen furniture for a few weeks.
What you get in return is scale and speed. These kits are formulated so that a batch is drinkable in a matter of weeks, and the results taste like wine in the way a shop bottle tastes like wine, because that is exactly what the concentrate was made from.
What is in a hedgerow wine kit?
No grape juice at all, and no fruit. What you get is everything the fruit cannot supply: wine yeast, yeast nutrient, pectolase, finings (a very fine bentonite clay, with nothing animal derived in it), citric acid, a stabiliser tablet, a steriliser (sodium metabisulphite) and the recipe table.
You add the fruit, the sugar and the water, and you add the vessels: a five litre food grade bucket with a lid for the first fermentation, a five litre demijohn or a second bucket with an airlock for the second, a siphon and some bottles. Reused screw top wine bottles do the job perfectly well.
The output is one gallon, about four and a half litres, which is six standard bottles, ready to drink in eight to twelve weeks. The recipe table covers a wide range, from blackberry and elderberry through to apple, plum, rhubarb and more.
How the two compare in practice
- Volume. Thirty bottles in one go against six. If you drink wine steadily and want a cellar, the big kit wins on sheer arithmetic. If you want to try five different fruits across an autumn, six bottles a time is the right size.
- Storage. A large fermenting bin plus a maturing vessel takes over a corner of a room. A five litre bucket and a demijohn fit in a cupboard.
- Time. Concentrate kits are built for speed. Country wine takes eight to twelve weeks, and often improves if you leave it longer than that.
- Ingredients. One comes in a tub. The other comes off a hedge, a tree in the garden or a punnet of frozen fruit from last summer.
- What it tastes of. A concentrate kit is trying to taste like a familiar style of wine. A country wine tastes of elderberry, or damson, or rhubarb, and there is no shop equivalent to compare it against.
Which one should a beginner start with?
If your goal is a reliable house wine and you already have the space, the big kit is the shorter path, because the recipe is essentially done for you and the variables are few.
If your goal is to learn winemaking, the smaller batch teaches you more per attempt. You handle the fruit, you take the decisions about acidity, you watch the first fermentation bubble through crushed berries for about three days before you strain them off, and if a batch disappoints you have lost a gallon rather than a cellar. The four stages are the same four stages that all winemaking uses: a first fermentation on the fruit, straining, a longer second fermentation, then bottling and maturing.
There is also the simple matter of what the making is for. Picking blackberries in September and pouring the result at Christmas is a different pleasure from opening a tub of concentrate, and most people know within a sentence which of the two appeals to them.
Can you do both?
Plenty of people do, and the equipment overlaps more than you would think. A five litre bucket and a demijohn are useful whatever you are fermenting, an airlock is an airlock, and a siphon will outlive both kits.
One habit worth carrying across in either direction: sterilise everything, every time. The steriliser in the hedgerow kit is sodium metabisulphite, the same chemical family as the campden tablets sold for large batches, and it is the least interesting part of the hobby and the one that most often decides whether a batch is any good.
The allergen line on our kit is contains sulphur dioxide and sulphites. Every ingredient is listed on the pack, and if you have an allergy question, email hello@sandyleaffarm.com before ordering. Wine kits are for adults aged 18 and over, and the finished wine is alcoholic.
Hedgerow wine kit FAQs
Does a hedgerow wine kit include the fruit?
No. It includes the winemaking ingredients and the recipe table, and you supply the fruit, sugar and water. That is the point: the fruit is whatever you have picked, grown or frozen.
How many bottles does a hedgerow wine kit batch make?
One gallon per batch, which is about four and a half litres, or six standard bottles. It is ready to drink eight to twelve weeks after you start, and country wines often improve with longer.
Do I need a demijohn for a 30-bottle kit as well?
No, those kits are fermented and matured in much larger vessels, usually a bin of around 23 litres. A five litre demijohn is the right size for a one gallon country wine.
Is country wine harder to make than a concentrate kit?
There are more steps, because you are preparing fruit rather than pouring juice, but none of them are difficult. Our hedgerow wine kit comes with a recipe table that gives the quantities for each fruit.
Can I use frozen fruit rather than waiting for the season?
Yes, and it is often cheaper. Defrost it thoroughly and let it come up to room temperature first, or the liquid will be too cold for the yeast to get going.
Fancy six bottles of something nobody else sells? Have a look at our wine making kits.
