I would like to start making homemade wine, where do I begin?

Question

My husband and I would like to try to make our own wine. I've heard it isn't as difficult of a process as we might think. Does anyone out there have any tips for us? We'd like to know what equipment is needed, etc.

Thanks in advance for your answers.

Answer 1

You will need an equipment kit. The 1st link below is the one that my husband and I own. Also, pick out a wine kit and start with it. For example, my favorite wine is White Zinfandel, so I always make the Vintners Reserve White Zinfandel. Everything you need is included. However, I altered the recipe a little to raise the alcohol content. This is the BEST wine. I get about 30 bottles in a run and I can't seem to keep any....everyone LOVES this wine. It averages out at about $2 a bottle. As you get more experienced with the kits, you can start making your own from fresh fruit or juice. I recommend this book...... "First Steps in Winemaking" by C.J. Berry....everything you could ever want to make is in this book. Also the man that owns Asheville Brewers Supply is very helpful with answering any questions and helping you with what you need. This is how we get started and our wine is a hit!! If you have any questions or want to know how to alter the recipe, email me and I will be happy to help!

Answer 2

If you are going to do it, do it right.

http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdBySubCat.aspx?SubCat=11177&fd=1

This is a nice kit. You just need to add fruit, water and sugar.

It is really not that hard, the first time or so through the directions will be a bit tricky but after that it comes easy. I like to build a flow chart and follow it through the process. Short version is like this....

Sterilize equipment
Crush fuit, add ingredients
Wait 24 hours then add yeast
Wait three days
Pour the juice off the fruit and into a glass carboy, attach airlock
Wait about 1 month
Bottle
Enjoy

Answer 3

To make home made wine you can go in the Internet to buy a kit or you might get lucky if you go to a mega wine store it comes with every thing you need

Answer 4

google or yahoo "grape wine recipe" and several will pop up depending on how much you want to make be it a couple of bottles, just to get your hands wet, then move up..etc. Anyway this search is really helpful and you will see how surprisingly easy it is to make wine at the house or in the basement

Answer 5

Check in Brooklyn New York.Many years ago people were making home made wine in there.Also Astoria New York,since this place is Greek-Italian you can get some help.

Answer 6

You could google home winemaking on the Internet for some basic equipment needs. If you are in the US, what state? Lets say that you pick about a thousand pounds of grapes to make wine with. Remove all leaves, stems, sticks etc until you have a thousand pound of clean grapes. Do not wash them with anything. Grapes have everything needed to do the job, (sugar, yeast, and nutrients) but you will have to ask yourself what kind of wine do I want to make, and what kind of grapes do I have to work with. Check to see if they are table grapes or wine grapes, and lets proceed assuming that they are wine grapes. Lets also assume that they are hearty red grapes like Syrah, Merlot, Zinfandel or Cabernet Sauvignon. Call Napa Fermentations in the morning and order some active dry yeast, some nutrients, dry citric acid, potassium metabisulfite, tartaric acid, a hygrometer, a pH meter will be handy too, a punch down tool, a large sieve, some food grade buckets, and a few more that I will think of as I go along. Perform some tests and record your finding: Check the PH of the must and record, check the temperature, check the sugar content. The temperature and sugar content are going to change over the next week or two so be prepared to test it at least twice per day and record. Red Star, Pasteur Red is a good hearty yeast that will work well for the first time. You will need a large 4'w x 4'w x 2'h container with solid sides and bottom to hold the fermented juice in. This will be your primary fermenter. Crush all of the grapes that you find in the primary fermenter. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoon fulls of Potassium Meta-bisulfite over the must to knock out the wild yeast on the grapes. Pour the prescribed amount of nutrients that arrived from Napa Fermentations over the must. Hydrate the yeast according to the instructions. Scoop out about a gallon of the "must" and take to a warm location (kitchen). Get a thermometer and slowly heat the gallon of juice up to about 90F degrees. Slowly add the hydrated yeast and keep it in the operating temp range. In a few minutes you should hear a snap-crackle-pop sound coming from the must that has the yeast in it. This is good as the yeast is beginning to free molecules. Now the trick is to add the yeast-must mixture to the larger container without "letting the fire go out" or stopping the fermentation process. Of course, once the mixture gets going you may have a heat problem. Ideally you want to ferment the grapes at about 70-75 F degrees for about 10 days to 2 weeks, so be be prepared to punch down the mixture 3 or so times per day. Also record the temperature, and sugar content with the hygrometer that arrived from NF. Keep the mixture covered with a cheese cloth that allows air to escape, but keeps the pesty fruit flies away. Be sure to add nutrients to keep the fermentation alive. At least a week should go by before the fermentation stops. What was once very dense and difficult to punch down is now soupy. You are ready to for the press. Get a press to separate the juice from the skin and seeds. Consider saving the "free-run" juice in a separate container from the pressed juice as the pressed juice is harsher than free run. Put the juice into a settling tank. Over the next three days the heavy material will settle to the bottom, and you want to rack off the good clean juice away from the solids near the bottom. Use a clean clear hose with a clean stick. Attach the hose to the stick, but make the hose attachment 3 or 4 inches up from the end of the stick. You will put the stick and hose into the juice until the stick touches the bottom of the big container. By putting the hose 3-4 inches up the stick, the hose is out of the solids. Now siphon away the good juice into a second container. This is process is called "racking" You will rack the juice at 3days, 3weeks, and 3months. All of the the other time you will keep the juice sealed with a bung and fermentation lock. You will keep the juice topped off, and not let air get to the juice. Air is bad for wine!! Consider getting a small tank of carbon dioxide to spray into the containers when you rack from one container to another. The CO2 will act as a barrier or blanket to keep the air from coming into contact with your wine. This should keep you busy for about six months. Start looking for a source for new glass bottles, and a supply of corks. a Good price for new glass is $4 per case, corks are about a 20-25 cents each. The citric, tartaric, and meta will be used to keep everything the that the juice comes into contact with clean!! Get some rubber gloves, a mask, and eye protection.

Answer 7

You will need a clean "bucket" for the "mash" a demi-john & air lock for the fermentation and bottles to store.its very easy to make wine,but its even easier to make bad wine.make sure every thing is steralised,use sodium met a bi sulphate & citric acid & hot water to clean the equipment.keep it clean!!!!!

Answer 8

they have wine recipes at www.recipezaar.com. Start there. The site is FREE!

Answer 9

go buy a load of grapes and throw them in your bathtub and jump in and then put the juice in a bucket and leave it in your cubord for a few years

Answer 10

Recipe #1: Classic Pruno (by Hank Soboski)
This recipe is part of prison folklore to the extent it was described in detail in a famous poem called Recipe For Prison Pruno by prison poet Jarvis Masters. (See bottom of page.) Using nothing but the poem for reference, I proceeded.

What You’ll Need:
A Sealable Bag (Ziploc or a heavy-duty garbage bag with rubber bands)
10 Peeled Oranges
1 8oz Can of Fruit Cocktail
50 Sugar Cubes
6 Teaspoons of Ketchup
Tap Water

Day 1
I combined the oranges and fruit cocktail in a large Ziploc bag, sealed it tightly, then spent fifteen minutes squeezing and mashing it lovingly until it was the consistency of a pulpy paste. I added 16 ounces of tap water and resealed the bag.

I ran hot water over the bag for fifteen minutes, then wrapped it in three towels to insulate the heat and start the fermentation process. The bag ends up being the size, weight and temperature of a newborn infant and you may start having tender feelings for the cute little beast. This is normal. Especially when this realize when this baby grows up he’s going to get you drunk. I hid my baby in safe, dark place and let it sit undisturbed for forty-eight hours.

Day 3
I unwrapped the towels to discover my baby had ballooned up nicely. This, I surmised, was due to the gasses given off by the fermentation process. I opened the bag and it gave off a light scent of, well, rotting fruit. I added fifty cubes of sugar and six packets of Heinz Ketchup. After resealing the bag, I waited for the sugar cubes to dissolve, then kneaded the pulp a little to ensure a good mix. It struck me that I could have very well used uncubed sugar. I ran it under hot water for thirty minutes to make things pleasant for the bacteria, then rewrapped my baby in towels and put it back in a safe dark, place.

Day 4 and Day 5
I kept a close eye on my prodigy. The sugar accelerated the fermentation process and by Day Five it looked as if my baby was thinking about exploding into something I didn’t care to clean up. I opened a corner of the bag and let off a little gas.

Day 6 through Day 8
I reheated the bag in the sink for fifteen minutes every day, then rewrapped it in towels. I noticed a floating colony of mold that had taken up residence was growing very nicely. Was my baby sick? Was this normal? Was there no hotline I could call? I put it back in its safe place and hoped for the best.

Day 9
Gripped by a mixture of anticipation and dread, I unwrapped the bag and opened it. As a precaution, I had scented toilet paper stuffed up my nose, but the bouquet still came on like a rotten gauntlet across the snout. My baby had mutated into some form of Frankenstein creature with very bad personal hygiene. I quickly ladled out the large pieces of rotten fruit and the spectacularly successful mold colony, then strained the remainder through a tea strainer.

The Taste Test
I had to fight hundreds of thousands of years of human evolution and instinct to get down the first swallow. Even with my nose stuffed with toilet paper, my first instinct was to vomit out what my lizard brain told me was deadly poison.
But I remembered that I reacted the same way to my first taste of whiskey and carried on. I fended off the idea of mixing it—with drain cleaner, gasoline, anything.

I forced down a cup’s worth, expecting it to eventually get easier. It didn’t. Each new swallow was a fresh insult. I added ice in hopes it would mask the taste or at least kill some of the bacteria. Aside from tasting like moldy and rotted fruit, it tingled against my tongue as vast bacteria colonies rose up and counter-attacked.

When I’d fought and gagged my way through half the first pint, my stomach started rebelling. I could imagine what it was thinking: “Great God, we’re being poisoned! And, get a load of this ****, the ****** keeps sending more down! Are we committing suicide? Did I miss a ******* meeting?”
To put it bluntly, classic pruno tastes like a bottle of Thunderbird filtered through a dumpster full of rotted garbage. Also, a stray dog laps it up from the alley floor and vomits it into a dirty hubcap.

Did it get me drunk? A pint of pruno earned me a mild buzz. Not a “snifter of brandy on the balcony” buzz. But rather a wretched, stomach-churning, sour-mouthed buzz. The equivalent of back alley sex with a toothless crack whore. It’s sex, yes, but you feel more horrified than satisfied.
I’ve never felt a great deal of sympathy for our nation’s prisoners, but I do now