Make Your Own Wine! How Strong You Gonna Make it?

It's in the Bible! Since hieroglyphics and time before written text even
existed. Actual proof that people have been drinking wine for thousands
of years. And believe it or not there is natural yeast on the outside of
grapes. This makes it so you can crush up naturally grown grapes that
were picked at the right time and keep the juice in the 70 degree area.
The juice will ferment on its own. The only weakness with that is that
there is many different kinds of yeast on grapes and only a fraction of
them help in the wine-making process. Normal baker's yeast would
definitely work but there are special kinds of yeast that are specifically
for extracting the right stuff out of the fruit juice. Developed for that
purpose. Making WINE!!!

Now what you wanna do is figure out when the grapes have the highest
amount of natural sugar that are being picked. Therefore you will not
need to add your own. Store bought grapes are low in natural sugars
because they are picked while unripe so that they don't rot on the way to
the grocery store. You will most likely wanna add sugar to this. If you
wanna use already made fruit juice make sure you get the natural juice
without any preservatives. Preservatives KILL THE YEAST, therefore
making your project extremely hard.

It is definitely possible to make wine fast but it WILL NOT
taste too great. You probably wouldn't even wanna drink the
stuff!
It doesn't pay off to rush things, you will be much better off
just taking things nice and slow! And remember to minimize
exposure to air as it's harmful to the wine if exposed for hours.
Being out for minutes is completely fine.

First thing's first! What you got to do is set up an ideal spot for you to
pursue your wine making. All you need is a corner of a room, really not
all that much space. Then what you wanna do is keep it organized, know
what you keep, and know what you have, and where it goes. This is
really important with making wine without making grey hairs!
Also before you do anything you'll need corks, bottles, and a corker!
Including chemicals, siphon tubing, and primary and secondary
fermentation vessels. Make sure to read your chosen recipe that you're
following to make sure you have everything before you start up.

Be sure to have everything set up before you start anything!
Stay CLEAN!!!
You wanna know what the best environment is for bacteria and all the
other nasty little microscopic bugs? The warm water and sugar mix that
you will be using to create your homemade wine! "Cleanliness is next to
Godliness" so KEEP IT CLEAN! Just clean and sanitize everything
you're working with and on. All surfaces should be cleaned and sanitized
along with everything else before you start.

Kill all the bacteria before, so they don't have a chance to grow
later!
You need fermentation vessels.
For a fermentation vessel you could use a
sanitized food grade storage container or a
milk jug. Or if you want you can use a gallon
wine jug. A wine jug would actually probably
be pretty ideal and you could easily find a
stopper to fit the top of it.

Ok, so lets start with the fruit juice, it can be any kind of fruit juice that
you want it to be. Any kind of juice with a high enough sugar content for
the yeast to feed on. Fermentation is actually yeast eating sugar and the
end result (yeast poop) is alcohol and carbon monoxide! Grab yourself a
good recipe and follow it by step for the best results. If you know about
specific gravity then you want it to measure out to about 1.1, but if you
don't that's totally fine. You can dissolve some sugar in heated water on
the stove if the sugar content is too low. Then to keep the temperature
on an average 75 degrees Fahrenheit you can throw some ice in the mix
to cool it down. You need to have enough sugar where the solution
tastes sweet but if it tastes too sweet, like a sickly sweet then you will
want to add some water and stir it up nice. Then for excellent results
with your wine you'll wanna add 1 Campden tablet per gallon of mixture
and put a towel or something to cover the top of the jug.
That way air can come in and out but no bugs or little insects
can make their way in!
This solution when you are done preparing it is called the "Must". This
lets the sulfur go kick bacteria and microbes back side and push the bad
stuff out into the air.

Once everything you have is ready and the Must has been sitting at
around 75 degrees for at least 24 hours, you're set to throw in the pitch,
the yeast. Around 24 hours afterwards you will start to see the beginning
process of fermentation. You will recognize it by the mixture starting to
bubble and fizz kind of like a soda.This is called the 1st stage
fermentation, or "Primary Fermentation". Nearly all of the alcohol is
created during this time of about 5 to 10 days. After about 24 hours of
beautiful yeast poop fizzing you will want to
stir the mixture or if its in a jug you'll wanna
shake it up to agitate the yeast and to spread
the sugar around evenly making the yeast
hop into action once again. More fermentation
will happen better and faster if you do this.
Then if you want a higher alcohol content then
let it sit like this for about 5 days and make
some sugar water to add once again into the Must. Only about a cup is
enough. You will see life reappearing in the mix by the bubbles getting
strong again after you do this. Then on the 8th day is when you wanna
put an air lock on the mix so the carbon dioxide can get out but the air
can't get in.

Okay, racking is just putting the mixture from the "Primary Vessel" into
the second one. This process is mostly to get rid of all the dead yeast
(lees) that's on the bottom of the 1st vessel, or container. The time you
will wanna do this is around the 10th day because this is the day that the
bubbling should have deceased for about 4 days already, this is the best
time to transfer the mixture. The second container should be about the
same size as the first one as you are working with about the same
amount of liquid as you were before. If you lost a little feel free to add
some water to put it back where it was before. After it is in the secondary
you will want to put an airlock on it. After this you can do nothing except
wait for the next step!

You will want to let that sit for
about a month with the air lock
still on it. This gives the remaining
live yeast a chance to feed on the bit of sugar that is left. Also the wine
will probably be a little cloudy and the sitting makes the stuff settle on
the bottom so you can eventually pour the wine out into another
container to separate it from the solids. If it's still cloudy after a month
you should let it sit for another week or until the cloudiness goes to the
bottom. Then separate it from the wine. The best thing you can do for
your wine is have a good recipe and go by what the recipe says.

Okay, the purpose of stabilizing the wine is simple. You might think that
your wine is clear and ready to bottle right? Absolutely not. Even though
you cannot see it, there are still microbes and yeast feeding and creating
carbon dioxide. This makes it so if you were to bottle it the carbon
dioxide will have no where to go and could possibly end up in your bottle
exploding! I know it sounds like fun but really it's not, especially when it's
cleanup time. If you wanted to explode something you could just bottle
dry ice and water and make a run for it because it would be like a ghettorigged
grenade, especially in a glass bottle. Please do not do this at
home or at anywhere guys someone would most likely not run fast
enough and get seriously hurt. Anyway, so what you wanna do is add
about a 1/2 a teaspoon of potassium sorbate per gallon. What this does
is it a stops reproduction of yeast and makes
it extremely hard for them to feed or even
survive in your wine mixture. You can easily
find this and just about anything else you
need to make your wine at a wine shop or
online. Once you've added this you will wanna
wait for about 3 full days before it's done its
job and you can bottle your wine.

There are a whole lot of ways to get yourself some empty wine bottles
and new corks.
If you have actually read up to this point you will know by now
you can get just about anything online.
Or if you have used bottles you can soak them in hot soapy water and
then scrub them until the labels and label glue all comes off. It's actually
quite easy but keeping everything sanitized and as clean as humanly
possible is a must! Ha ha get it... Anyway, if you are using corks then the
only tool you will actually have to buy is a corker since the corks are
larger then the opening in the bottle. This is also cheap if you get a hand
corker online. You will also need a siphon tube to pour the wine from the
container into the bottles. When you transfer the wine into the bottles
take care to tilt the bottle while doing it until it gets fuller because you
want to keep the wine as calm as possible without shaking it too much
and adding any air to it. If you are corking a whole lot of bottles at once,
you will probably want to forget about the hand corker as it is a lot of
work and stick with the more expensive ones.

The amount of things you can
do to improve the taste, texture,
and overall quality of your wine
are literally in the hundreds. If
you are following a specific
recipe then in the recipe it will
most likely say something about what you can or need to add in the wine
before or after it has fermented. This E-book isn't the expert version but
it is definitely a wonderful beginners guide to the basics of setting up,
and creating your own unique wine. I hope you all have a wonderful time
experimenting creating wine on your own and if anyone has any
questions about anything in wine making or just wanna comment and
say whats up, just email my email address as seen on the bottom.
You can make champagne, brandy, and
a lot of different kinds just by following
the recipe with it!