You must find good yeast from a herb shop or the like. You cannot use simple brewer's yeast, as it's not strong enough. A simple packet of, say, Champagne yeast, and ten or eleven cans of frozen grape or fruit concentrate, in a five gallon bucket will do fine. You can use your own fruit based juice, but then you will have to boil it slowly to get rid of bacteria first, and then later filter the pulp, and then add more sugar in order to make alcohol.
WIth wine yeast, they will die when the alcohol level is reached, and anything more than that just makes the wine sweeter, and less "Dry."
You must make a hole in the top of the sealable 5-gal. bucket and put in a small hose, and run that to a small glass can of water, which, while having a top, must be loose enough at the top to let out the gases. This water will go back up the hose some at nights when it is cooler, to not allow air, and bacteria back into your sealed receptical bucket.
The first fermentation is at least one month in warm weather from 50-70 F. When you stop seeing the bubbling, then you can go to the second step. Carefully siphon out the good stuff, letting the dead yeast on the bottom not get out to your new bucket, and throw it out, like the above. Add some more (Boiled) sugar, enough water to bring your mix to not too near the top, and do it again. You will have to experiment to find out the best mix.
It's drinkable at that point, but eventually you'll want to put it in bottles, and the best are used gallon wine bottles. You can leave the tops on loosely, until the fermentation is quite finished, but you must eventually seal them off. There will be, in all cases, dead yeast on the bottom, so pour carefully. It helps to put a bottle of this in the fridge for days, to let it clarify before you consume.
More explicit instructions can be found on internet search engines, and places you can buy such "Fermentation kits" from. It is fun to do it yourself, however. The trick is in the yeast, and you can actually get it from unpasterized wine or other products, that is to say, old wine, to get you started if you absolutely must.
But prepackaged wine yeast is much superior.
2007-01-06 16:19:40
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answer #1
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answered by ? 2
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Crush the grapes, add sulfites to kill wild yeasts and bacteria, add wine yeast, let it ferment, siphon the liquid off the solids after a week or two, let it sit for a while, siphon again, let it sit some more, siphon liquid off any remaining sediment, barrel age if desired, and bottle.
That's the simple english version. However, if you're actually going to do it, you'll need the complicated english version...and there are tons of books written on the subject for just that.
2007-01-06 14:29:02
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answer #2
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answered by Trid 6
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