Sep 10 2011

A Beginners Guide To Homemade Wine

Published by admin at 7:12 pm under wine making

Making your own wine is fun, and not as complicated as you might think. The most important thing to remember is sanitation. Soaking equipment in a diluted bleach solution will prevent a lot of disappointment later. Most of the items you will need can be purchased from a local brewing store or ordered online.

Homemade Wine Tips

1. Primary and Secondary Fermenters
These should be glass or plastic and hold at least 5 gallons. The secondary fermenter will need to accommodate a wine making air-lock.

2. Plastic Tubing
This should be several feet long.

3. Something To Stir With
A long handled spoon will do, but it needs to be quite a long handle.

4. Fermentation Bags
These are usually made of muslin or cheese cloth.

5. A Wine Hydrometer
This is is used to determine when the wine has finished fermenting.

6. Bottles, Corks, And A Corker
For best results use green or brown glass bottles. You will need a corker to cork your wine bottles.

7. Wine Yeast
This is not the same as bread yeast. Be sure to get wine yeast.

8. Campden Tablets
These prevent the growth of bacteria.

9. A Clean Working Space
You don’t need a lot of space, but it must be clean.

7 Steps to Homemade Wine Success

Once you have your space, equipment, ingredients, and have found a recipe you want to try, you’re ready to start making wine.

1. Prepare Your Produce.

Cut up larger fruits, chop up fruits like raisins, break the skin on smaller fruits, and bruise any other produce such as ginger root or the like. Remove any large pits. Be careful not to over-process such as in a blender or food processor. This can cause bitterness in the resulting wine.

2. Mix Your Ingredients

DO NOT ADD THE YEAST at this stage. Stir together in your primary fermenter all other ingredients. Any pulp should be collected in a fermentation bag and submerged in the mixture. Add water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. Crush 5 Campden Tablets and add to the mixture.

3. Cover And Wait

Cover your fermenter with a clean, thin cloth and allow to sit for 24 hours.

4. Add Your Yeast

Sprinkle your wine yeast over the surface of the juice, then cover the fermenter again, and leave for 5 to 7 days. The mixture should start to foam within 24 hours of adding your yeast.

5. Rack Your Wine

After 5 to 7 days lift out the fermentation bag and wring out any excess juice. Siphon the wine off of the sediment and into a secondary fermenter. Make sure to get as much of the liquid as you can. If necessary add water back up to 5 gallons.

6. Wait Again

Stopper your secondary fermenter with a wine making air-lock filled about half-way with water. This will allow the gasses produced during fermentation to escape while preventing any foreign material from getting in and spoiling your wine. Allow the juice to ferment for 4 to 6 weeks, or until it becomes translucent. You can verify that the fermentation is complete by using a wine hydrometer. A reading between 0.990 and 0.998 indicates that your wine has finished fermenting.

7. Bottle Your Wine

Siphon your wine off of the sediment. Crush 5 Campden Tablets and stir them into the wine. Siphon your wine into bottles, and cork the bottles.

Enjoy Your Homemade Wine

Home-made wine can be drunk anytime after bottling, but the longer you wait the better the wine will taste. Once your first batch is ready to drink, you can serve it with dinner when entertaining, give bottles as gifts to friends and family, or enjoy a bottle with that special person for a uniquely romantic occasion.

This article was written by Carol Majors who is a writer at depressionsymptoms.net