"Mark Garwatoski" > wrote in message .com>...
> That seems like a short amount of time. I'm used to letting Mead sit in
> secondary for 6-12months to clear and then bottle.
> Do the select kits come with oak cubes? Why would you add them to the
> primary instead of the secondary, shorter contact time?

Bear in mind that kits are designed to produce reasonably drinkable
results in a short period of time. The better ones (like the Brew
King Selection series) will definitely benefit from some months of
aging (carboy and bottle) but should be pretty drinkable within 3 or 4
months. Meads and other non-grape fruit wines seem to take a good
deal longer to clear and reach drinkability. I don't know why, that's
just the way they are, at least in my experience.

Yes, most of the better red kits come with some sort of oak (usually
sawdust, for the kits I've made). There may be some slight difference
in adding oak during the primary fermentation, rather than later; my
guess is that with the sawdust they usually include, you're going to
get full extraction from the oak pretty fast. Using it in primary
(and discarding when you rack into a carboy) makes life a little
simpler. I don't think it would harm anything if you wanted to add it
later, or keep it when you rack to the carboy . But if your intention
is to follow the directions for your first kit, I'd just follow the
directions for the oak.

About the only area where I'd deviate from the directions is in timing
- as long as your carboy is topped up and under airlock, there is no
real urgency to doing things according to the timetable in the
instructions; I'd probably take 3 months or more before bottling,
rather than the 6 weeks the instructions cover.

Enjoy --


Doug