Acetic bacteria and wild yeasts are the two most common reasons people encounter problems when they are learning how to make wine from home. Acetic bacteria can wreck your carefully-prepared wine and convert it into vinegar for you, because acetic bacteria changes alcohol into acetic acid. Wild yeasts (plus spores of fungi) will make your wine taste sour or just flat if they get into your wine blend and survive.

Homemade wine that is based on fresh fruit ingredients (like those you harvest from your backyard, or buy from fruit stands and even supermarkets) will most likely be vulnerable to acetic bacteria and wild yeast invasion. The water you use for wine making may also be a carrier of the acetic bacteria, the wild yeasts and fungal spores - thus, this will taint your wine blend or "must".

How to Make Homemade Wine that is not tainted

To keep your homemade wine free of any possible causes of spoilage, you have to maintain a very clean, even a clinically clean, wine making environment. That is why everything used in the wine making process that will touch the wine somehow has to be sanitized and sterilized. Even the water you use has to be boiled to kill off organisms that may wreck your wine. You have to wash your hands well to keep them very clean too. The very fruit that will produce juice for your wine has to be sterilized as well.

All wine making equipment to be used has to be washed and sterilized very well, for further precautions. Even the spoons you use to measure out ingredients like sugar should have been boiled or at least disinfected well. As you can see, when it comes to wine, this is really a battle against organisms like acetic bacteria, wild yeasts and fungus which love your wine just as much as you do. Think of it in these terms - it's either you or them.
When the wine is fermenting, do keep it protected from the air by sealing it tightly in its fermentation container.

How to Avoid Acetic Bacteria

It is pretty difficult to screen out acetic bacteria from the wine making process because acetic bacteria are all over the place - even in the air we breathe. To eliminate any acetic bacteria on your wine making surfaces, like containers and your hands, wash and sterilize everything well.

How to Avoid Yeasts and Fungi

It is equally difficult to bar wild yeasts and fungal spores from making their presence known in your wine making world because, like acetic bacteria, they can be found in the very air around us.

Use a Wine Carboy plus Bung Corker

If you acquire a wine carboy with a corresponding bung corker, you will learn how to make homemade wine under the most superior organism-free conditions. This wine carboy system is considered the best fermentation system that will prevent acetic bacteria, wild yeasts and fungal spores from being able to enter and contaminate your wine. You might better know the bung corker as a "fermentation lock" instead. The entire wine carboy plus bung corker system may cost you less than $30.

The point to using a wine carboy with a fermentation lock or bung corker is to absolutely stop outside air from being able to get in contact with your fermenting wine. The organisms floating around in our air are what will contaminate your wine and make it turn out badly. Your fermentation lock may feature a liquid inlet which allows gas from your fermenting wine to escape yet will bar outside air from venturing into your fermentation system - some might opt to use a sterilizing agent for their fermentation lock liquid. A simple type of sterilizing agent could be sterilized water mixed with a Campden tablet.

The Advantages of Using a Fermentation Lock

One good thing about using a fermentation lock on your wine carboy is that you get to view when the fermentation of the wine inside the wine carboy has stopped. You will observe that in the fermentation period, wine will produce bubbles that will go through the fermentation lock to escape. You can actually even hear these bubbles escaping out of the container. When you observe that only one or few bubbles are being produced by your fermenting wine, do twist around the wine carboy or shake it so that the remaining yeast particles will be triggered into final fermentation. You may have to then wait for an additional day for this final fermentation to progress then after shaking the wine carboy.
For the fermentation lock to be of optimal use to you, both the wine carboy and the bung stopper have to be completely air-tight. A wine carboy and bung stopper that are not completely air-tight will probably not let outside air in when fermentation is in full swing because gases within the container will exert pressure on outside air - however, as the fermentation comes to a halt, outside air will have a chance to enter, along with the harmful organisms. That is when problems start for you.

Other Ways to Avoid Problems with Acetic Bacteria and Wild Yeasts

Be cautious about where you get your wine making supplies because some wine making retailers practice better hygiene than others. Take the cork you will use to cap your wine bottles with, for example - you may not realize it but the cork bark-based cork you use might be tainted with harmful organisms like fungus already (even if the cork has not yet been used for capping any bottles) simply because of how the cork was stored. Synthetic corks may have to be washed too before being used to cap wine bottles, for the same reason.

If you buy your wine making supplies in bulk, like when you buy glass wine bottles and cork in huge volumes, it becomes very important to screen each bottle and cork for any existing damage or imperfections (like rough edges at the mouth of your wine bottle, or cracked cork) that may allow harmful organisms to enter your wine bottle during the storage process as well.

For more free articles and a free e-course go the the author's website http://www.howtomakehomemadewine.info.

By Randy T. Slabey
RTS Leasing LLC
How to Make Homemade Wine

Copyright 2008 RTS Leasing LLC">