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Back to the Forum Archives This essay will be a beginning discussion of winemaking equipment, consumables, and cost considerations. First, let's get clear on the difference between equipment and consumables. Most people know this, but a few may not be clear. Equipment is the paraphernalia and tools used in doing a job. These things, like jugs and thermostats, are used, but not used up in doing the job. They do have a finite life and when we do cost accounting we must prorate them over several jobs. We add a fractional amount of their cost to each job we do. A consumable, on the other hand, is used up in the process. In winemaking, the fruit we use is the major consumable. Their cost must be assigned directly to the job that consumes them. Given that, here is the list of equipment I purchase for winemaking with costs: Book on winemaking, 1 @ $10.95 That gives a total of $303.36. "Holy cow!" you say. That's going to be very expensive wine. Well, I don't think so. If you take a look at this stuff you will discover, for all practical purposes, it will never wear out. Capital equipment does not wear out near as fast as the bean counters want us to think it does. I'm 75 years old and I still use a few tools that my father bought when he was a young man. The point is, I can prorate this 303 bucks over as many bottles of wine as I will make for the rest of my life. Then, if my son or daughter want to pick up on winemaking, they will get another lifetime of use out of it. Alright, how much wine am I likely to make? It depends on how long I continue to enjoy doing this, but I am guessing I will make more than 1000 bottles. I consider that to be a low side estimate. Since I have written a book on math I could do long division, but I will cheat and use a shortcut. To divide 303.36 by 1000 I simply move the decimal place left by three places for the three zeros in 1000. That gives me a quotient of .30336. I can just round that up to 31 cents. That means I must add 31 cents to the cost of each bottle of wine I make. So the wine is not so expensive after all. Consumables plus prorated capital equipment equals cost. In the case of my Baco Noir wine, the main consumable, grapes, is free. All I will pay for is some wine yeast, some sterilizing stuff, some clarifiers, and some corks. The consumables, as I said, must be charged to the particular job. In the case of my Baco Noir wine, I used 3 packets of wine yeast at $0.50 each and some sodium metabisulfite for sterilizing tools and for controlling wild yeasts in the fermenting process. The total cost of consumables for this wine will be about $2.00. Since I expect this batch to make 25 bottles of wine, I get a cost of 8 cents per bottle. Now I must add the 31 cents for equipment to get a cost per bottle to give a grand total of 39 cents per bottle. I contend that I have met the second and third of my criteria for making wine. For the flavor, I must wait until the wine is bottled and aged a bit to be sure. My guess now is it will be darn good. Now, I did not quit with this wine from Baco Noir grapes. I decided to try something called a wine recipe kit. This is a kit made up by a company that specializes in that sort of thing. There are several companies and a plethora of kits to try. These kits have the advantage that much of the messy part of the process is already done. The grapes have been crushed and the juice extracted and balanced for specific gravity. I'll say more on specific gravity later. The other advantage is the large variety of grapes, hence types of wines, that are available. For my first kit, I chose a Chianti kit from the Vintner's Reserve line. It cost me $48.95 for the kit, but it will make 25 bottles of wine. I also used 4 gallons of distilled water and 5 Campden tablets. I'll add $4.05 to get a consumables cost of $53.00. This means I must divide $53.00 by 25 to get the per bottle cost. Whip out your trusty pocket calculator and you will get a per bottle cost of a bit less than $2.12 for consumables. Now add the prorated 31 cents to get $2.43 per bottle. If this is as good as I expect $2.43 will be one heck of a price. Finally, I am trying some apple wine in a very small amount. To begin, I bought a gallon of apple cider when it was in season. That cost about $7.00 so the cost of this wine will be about $2.50 per bottle. I can only hope it will be good. In a followup essay I will discuss the general steps in the
winemaking process. Then I can discuss the equipment and the
consumables used and how they fits into the general process.
Each of the items I listed does have a purpose.
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