HOW-TO MAKE HOMEMADE WINE - A GUIDE FOR BEGINNERS
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"I May Never Buy Wine In A Store Again! Now I Enjoy,Delicious Homemade Wine! Talk About Saving Big Bucks!"
Luckily, the last six months has seen a crop of Home winemaking guides, which show exactly how to make homemade wine yourself - using low cost materials, and with no technical knowledge required.
Here is the best one I've found:
"Home Wine Making: Step By Step."
"Make Wine with the Confidence only Professional Knowledge Can Bring...AND Discover How to Make the Best Wine in the Shortest Amount of Time!!"
Homemade wine making is fast becoming very popular across the world. There are several reasons for this.
The biggest one is that the cost to transport that yummy nectar from where they grow, harvest, and ferment it is going up right along with the cost of fuel. There's no two ways around it - we are about to see bottles of wine double in cost.
The truth is, you can make high quality wine, award winning wine, at home, in a 5 gallon food bucket.Some preparation and materials are required. You have to at least have a hydrometer. You need at least the 5 gallon bucket. AND - you need some kind of near air tight secondary fermentation vessel. In the industry we call this a "carboy".
There are very inexpensive airlocks and some plastic tubing to round out the equipment.
Some chemicals may be required as well. Yeast is an obvious first one (not really a chemical but a dormant microbe). Citric acid, potassium sorbate, metabisulfate, campden tablets, pectin enzyme and a few others are pretty common.
The biggest secret in home wine making is: get the good stuff to start with.
There are actually vineyards that will sell small quantities of grapes or even crushed grapes and juices, fresh from the vineyard. Although these are hard to locate, they do exist. I have found at least one wine making guide that lists these sources.
Aside from the money savings (you can make wine for about 25 cents a bottle), there is the actual enjoyment of making something that you can drink! If your batch comes out really good, you will be calling all your neighbors and friends to come and give it a try.
Cheers and happy wine making!
Good Luck!
So - you have decided that you want to try your hand at making some wine.
This Lens will describe the basic steps and some of the pitfalls to avoid to make sure your first batch turns out good enough to drink.
First things first - how much do you want to make?I recommend at least 5 gallons. Why? Because beginning home wine makers just cannot wait to taste what they have made. In addition, 5 gallons is only 25 bottles. So you'll get the batch finished, and then you will try a bottle or 2 or 3. Then you'll wait a week and try a few more bottles. Sooner than later, it will all be gone before it has a chance to age and get really good.
If you just want to do something quick and simple, you could do a gallon in a plastic milk jug. The drawback is, once you have tasted it a few times - it's all gone and you'll have to start over.
With 5 gallons - you just might be tempted to let a few of the remaining bottles age. Believe it or not, the biggest mistake beginning winemakers make is not letting their wine age in the bottle. The difference in taste is, to put it mildly, AMAZING.
The next step is to decide which type of juice you want to ferment. Grape juice, cranberry juice, muscadine, and cherry are all good starter choices. The first 3 should produce a rather normal tasting wine while cherries usually will give you a sweeter wine. Of course, you can always add sugar to sweeten your wine after it is stabilized and has stopped fermenting.
The next step is to completely sterilize all of the containers and equipment you will be using. Some people use extremely hot water, others recommend using a sanitizer. I like the sanitizer because you do not have to scald yourself with the hot water. The sanitizing solution should be poured over everything and should make contact with all surfaces. Then you just rinse everything off with hot water.
Put your juice in your 5 gallon bucket - that's the next step. BUT - it's not time to put your yeast in yet.
We first want to sterilize our "must" or our juice. You can do this with 4 Campden Tablets. These are sulfite tablets that will get rid of any type of bacteria that could be present in the juice. Crush the tablets and then dissolve them in some warm water and then pour them in your juice or "must". Let this sit overnight while the sulfites do their work.
24 hours later, you are ready to sprinkle in or "pitch" your yeast.
(continued below...)
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Home Winemaking Glossary
Wine books are notorious for including all sorts of strange terms that aren't used in normal, every day language. What do these words mean? Here are the most common terms and their meanings:
Aging : Letting a wine sit for months to years, to allow its flavor to properly develop. Aging is often done in oak barrels or in glass bottles.
Alcohol : When yeast eats the natural sugars in the grapes, along with oxygen from the air, it creates as an end product alcohol and carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide bubbles out of the wine before it's bottled. This process is called fermentation.
Blending : Mixing together two different wines to create a blended wine which has flavors of both of the original wines. Classic Bordeaux, for example, is a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot.
Brix : Usually thought of as a 'sweetness scale', Brix measures the amount of sugar in the original grape juice.
Cap : The leftover grape skins and stems and such that float on top of the liquid during primary fermentation.
Capsule : Not used on many wine bottles in modern times, the capsule was a foil or lead covering for the cork, often used to keep rats or mice from chewing their way into the cork.
Carboy : Glass or plastic bottles used for home winemaking. These come in a large range of sizes, from 1 liter up through 20 liter and larger.
Chaptalize : To add sugar into a grape juice that does not naturally have enough sugar to make a decent wine.
Cold Stabilization :. In essence it is chilling a wine solely to precipitate out the natural potassium bitartrate crystals, to ease wine buyers' fears that it is unnatural.
Enology : The Science of Winemaking.
Extended Maceration : Letting the red grapes sit for a while before being pressed, so that they flavor and richness develops.
Filtering : Sending a wine through a filter cloth or paper, to remove any remaining sediment or impurities.
Fining : Adding a substance to a wine - often clay or egg whites - to collect together impurities and sediments in the wine. The wine is then racked, leaving behind the 'sludge'.
Hydrometer : A measuring device that tells you the specific gravity of a wine. This helps you determine the amount of alcohol in the wine.
Malolactic Fermentation : This is a secondary fermentation done to convert the malic acid in a wine to lactic acid, giving it a smoother flavor.
Methanol : Methanol is wood alcohol, and is poisonous. It is made normally from wood, coal or natural gas. This is NOT the kind of alcohol created in winemaking.
Must : The original grapes, stems, skins, and liquid that is used to create a wine.
Oxidation : Oxidation occurs when air comes into contact with a developing wine. Usually a fault in a wine, it causes the wine's flavor to change and the liquid to brown.
Pigeage : When you make a red-grape wine, the skins of the red grapes form a 'cap' on top of the wine while it ferments. This cap must be broken up and stirred back into the wine to give it a lot of contact. This breaking up is called pigeage.
Pomace : What is left behind when the must is pressed, and the juice is all removed. Pomace is often used for a traditional Italian drink, Grappa.
Primary Fermentation : The main fermentation that turns a vat of grape juice into a wine. This is where the yeast works on the sugars in the raw juice, converting those sugars to alcohol and carbon dioxide.
Racking : When you move a wine or developing wine from one container to another, leaving behind whatever sediment has collected at the bottom of the first container.
Stuck Fermentation : This is the term for a fermentation which simply won't begin, or which begins but then loses its wind partway through the process.
Sulfite : Sulfite is normally added to a wine to kill off the wild yeasts, so that a certain yeast can be added to the wine. Also, sulfites help a wine age.
Tannins : Tannins are natural substances found in grapes, and also in tea, chocolate, and other items. They help a wine age properly, but can also give some people headaches.
Yeast : Yeast is a one-celled organism that is found naturally on grapes, that turns the sugar in grape juice into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Some winemaking regions use solely the natural yeasts that come with the grapes. Others kill those off with sulfites, and then add in a special yeast that is known to work well with their grapes.
Start enjoying your own delicious, homemade wine...
The type of yeast you decide to use is really a question that is beyond the scope of this Lens. However...
I'll say that there are hundreds of different yeast strains for literally thousands of different uses.
For our first batch, we can just use the bakers yeast that you can easily find at the grocery store. Later, and after some research, you will probably want to use one of the specialized strains.Now - wait 7 days and watch. you will want to cover your bucket with a cloth towel or even put on a lid with an airlock in place. The wine will be perfectly safe during the fermentation stage because it will give off lots of Carbon Dioxide. The Co2 will protect your wine from the oxygen in the air.
Once the 7 days has passed, siphon off the wine from the bucket into another bucket or into a glass "carboy". These can be found online or at your local wineshop. When you are doing the siphoning, you will want to get as little of the gunk on the bottom of the bucket as possible. This gunk is called "lees" and is made up of dead yeast. Wine that sits on top of the dead yeast sometimes can develop an "off" flavor.
Once your wine has been transferred into what is called your "secondary fermenter", then you will want to put an airlock in place and just let it sit for about a month. There's a song about this part - "The Waiting is the Hardest Part". It's true. Every budding home winemaker just cannot wait to taste the stuff - but - don't do it. It surely won't hurt you but during this month it is still fermenting. The wine isn't finished yet. Be Patient.
After the month is up, you will want to transfer it back to your bucket, again making sure that you leave the gunk on the bottom. The process of transferring the wine from one vessel to another is called "racking". Why? That's something I am going to research for another article.
You are just about there. Theres only one thing left to do and that is to add a "stablizer" to your wine. A stabilizer inhibits yeast reproduction. In essence, it stops yeast from doing it's thing. Part of what happens during yeast growth and reproduction is that it releases Co2 gas. If that is happening after you bottle the wine, you will get popped corks or exploded bottles or both. So - put in the stabilizer, stir the wine well, and then return it to your Secondary Carboy fermentation vessel. Be sure and clean out the secondary and sterilize it before you do.
Now, all you have to do at this point is wait until the wine clears. Gravity is your friend here. Of course, it won't hurt a bit to bottle cloudy wine. But if you wait another month, it should be crystal clear. The clearing process is another subject that you can find a great deal of information on in other guides and books and I suggest you read up on this subject when you get a chance.
Bottling time! All you have to do is make sure your bottles are clean and sanitized and just siphon the wine into the bottles. Corking the bottles can be a little difficult and i highly recommend you get some king of corker. Again, these are available online or at your local wine shop.
Now - BE PATIENT and let the wine sit in the bottle for 6 to 9 months. The longer the wine ages, the better it will taste - I guarantee it.
Sulfites and Your Wine
Sulfites - What are They?
Do you need to Use Them? Why?Sulfites are a naturally occurring compound that nature uses to prevent microbial growth. They are found on grapes, onions, garlic, and on many other growing plants. No wine can ever be "sulfite free", since they come in with the grapes. So - you will have sulfites in your wine no matter what.
Why Add Sulfites to Wine?
Winemakers have been adding additional sulfites to wines for thousands of years. The Greeks and Romans used sulfur candles to sterilize their wine barrels and amphorae. Sulfur protects damage to the wine by oxygen, and helps prevent organisms from growing in
the wine. This allows the wine to "last longer" too, which lets it age and develop all of those complex flavors we all love and enjoy so much. If you didn't add sulfites, the wine would turn into vinegar in a matter of months.
Sources of Sulfites
There are basically 2 sources that you can get online or at a local wine/brew shop. One is potassium metabisulfate and the other is the easy one: Campden Tablets.
How Much Sulfite to Add?
Most wine recipes call for adding sulfites BEFORE you add the yeast. The idea is to completely sterilize your must and kill any
bacteria or other things that may have a chance to take hold and start growing during the fermentation process. Most recipes call for 1 campden tablet for each gallon of wine at each racking. I have tried this over and over and using this type of concentration, you will have wine that has a BAD sulfurous taste. This is one of the BIGGEST MISTAKES that home winemakers make. It usually results in pouring out the batch because it tastes so bad. The amount needed to actually protect the wine while staying below the TASTE threshold is a fine line. I use ½ campden tablet per gallon and have never had a problem so I recommend the same.
What to do if you use Too Much Sulfite
This is an easy fix that I discovered recently. Since the reason you put sulfites in wine is to protect the wine from growing things and oxidation (exposure to oxygen), then, it follows, that if you expose the wine to oxygen, some of the sulfites will evaporate. All you have to do is Rack the wine into another clean container but splash it all over the place while doing so. Let it sit for a few days and then rack it back, again, splashing the wine all over the place instead of "quietly" racking it. A few times back and forth, splashing as you go, should get rid of a lot of the sulfites and make your wine taste as good as ever!
Cheers!
"Home Wine Making: Step By Step."
"Make Wine with the Confidence only Professional Knowledge Can Bring...AND Discover How to Make the Best Wine in the Shortest Amount of Time!!"
by FBT
I am an insatiable Information Junkie, living the dream in Mystic Minnesota, USA.
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