Anyone have a simple, cheap, wine recipe?

Answer 1

Take one gallon of hot water in a bucket with a lid , add 3lbs of white sugar, 1lb of white rice, two large handfulls of sultanas, a cup of strong tea and , when cool, add one satchet of whine yeast, stir daily for one week. Strain into a demi-john, fit an air lock and leave till it stops working (about 6 weeks), syphon into bottles being carful not to disturb the sediment, cork and wait 6 months. strip paint no probs.

Answer 2

Nope, I just go to Trader Joes and buy their Charles Shaw brand. $2-3 bux a bottle depending on where you live.

Answer 3

For this recipe, no need to mix.

Answer 4

Below is a cheap and funny wine recipe you can see photos at
http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/cat_steve_dont_eat_it.php

Steve, Don't Eat It! Vol. 8
Prison Wine

I'm simply not cut out for jail. Where I really shine is watching Tivo on a couch. As soon as you need me to survive a sharpened-spoon attack, (or even a regular spoon attack)-- I'm just not your guy.

Nevertheless, if I do ever end up in the big house, there's a chance I'll make it out alive as the prison brewmeister. I know this for I have read the 1994 book "You Are Going To Prison" by Jim Hogshire. (Well, I actually only skimmed through the book, so I'll probably be dead in a day and a half.)

The following book excerpt contains the prison wine recipe...

"Prison hooch can be made in your cell toilet (as long as you don't mind using other people's toilets or finding some other solution), or more often, in plastic trash bags. The recipe is simple: make a strong bag by double or triple-bagging some plastic trash bags and knotting the bottoms. Into this, pour warm water, some fruit or fruit juice, raisins or tomatoes, yeast, and as much sugar as you can get ahold of (or powdered drink mix). Now tie off the top of the bag, letting a tube of some kind protrude so the thing won't explode while it gives off carbon dioxide. Now hide the bag somewhere and wait at least three days. A week is enough.

One of the problems you have right away with making wine in prison is the difficulty getting yeast. It's a strictly forbidden item and you might not be able to get any. In this case you can improvise the by using slices of bread, preferably moldy (but not dry) and preferably inside a sock for easier straining.

If you choose to brew your wine in your cell, you'll need to hide it behind your bunk and do what you can to hide the smell. Burning cinnamon as incense is one way. Spraying deodorant around is another. Normal wine takes at least a month if not six weeks to make at all properly -- but in hell, this is all you get."



With that, I give you the longest, scrolliest, bandwidth destroyingest Steve, Don't Eat It to date. Phooey on you sobriety! I'm makin' some hooch!




I gave serious thought to whether the straining sock should be clean or not. I came to the conclusion that it shouldn't. In the spirit of Steve, Don't Eat It, I need to take it to the extreme! Plus, I was already wearing dirty socks and my clean ones were in the bedroom, like 20 feet away.




Here are all the ingredients necessary. I thought it would be nice to make both red and white prison wine to match well with whatever dishes the prison chef might prepare. I'm sure Martha Stewart did the same if/when she brewed this stuff in her cell toilet. But she probably used a clean sock, being as she's fancy.




Getting slightly moldy bread proved to be more difficult than I expected. I bought the cheapest white bread I could find and waited for it to go green. I swear to God it stayed good for a month.

Whenever I WANT bread in my house, it's moldy. Now that I actually needed it to happen, it wouldn't. Luckily, I discovered an old green hot dog bun in a bag on top of the fridge and put that in with the bread to teach it the ways of the mold. In this way, the green bun was Yoda. It worked perfectly. And it didn't even sound suspiciously like Grover.




It was finally time to begin the brewing process. I reflected on the artisans around the world who've dedicated their lives to the craft of winemaking, as I lovingly shoved moldy bread in my socks.

I decided to break up the two wine recipes thusly...




The Red Prison Wine (pictured above) would be made with red grape juice, tomatoes, raisins, sugar, the dirty sock filled with moldy bread, and one packet of yeast. (I thought it would be interesting to add yeast to one batch and not the other, and compare the results.)

As stated in the book, yeast is definitely contraband, but for the sake of this culinary experiment we'll just assume I gave the prison baker a hand-job.

But then the guy wouldn't give me the yeast! SO I STABBED HIM WITH A PEN IN THE EYE AND TOOK IT! And I was all, "DON'T **** WITH STEVE!"

Yes. This is what we should assume.




As for the White Prison Wine, it would contain: White grape juice and the moldy bread sock. No extra yeast added. For the requisite sugar, I went with some powdered drink mix, a few packets of ketchup and a handful of Tigger fruit snacks.

Hmm... I can't put my finger on why, but I could swear these ingredients almost look at home in this garbage bag. It must be the lighting.

(Incidentally, I realized I forgot to take a picture of this one with the grape juice, but then I remembered that's okay because... in Hell, this is all you get!)

I knotted up the bags, poked a straw in the top as the recipe called for and tucked them away in our bathroom for safe keeping. If you're wondering why I didn't actually make this stuff in my toilet-- give me a break. I'm all too aware of my previous creations in that toilet. Just be glad I'm drinking moldy sock juice at all for you *******.

Within a day or two, the bathroom had taken on a strong sour smell. That "bar at 4 AM" smell. Everytime my wife went in there she complained about it. Everytime I went in there I just had the urge to pick up a skank.

7 long days later it was time to crack open the bags and see what we had...




I started with the red, and it somehow smelled amazingly good! Like fresh, sweet grapes. You know, there's an old expression that says In wine, there is truth. In this case, I could also make out some chunks and what appeared to be a severed foot.




Then there was the "white" wine. This one's aroma was slightly more earthy. Do you know that smell of grass right after it's cut? That's nice. I was just making chit-chat, because this smelled like rotten eggs tucked into the anus of a dead cat.

I really don't understand what could have gone wrong! I used moldy bread and socks, EXACTLY LIKE THE RECIPE SAID!




I purchased two large decanters, carefully transferred my fruity after-birth into them, and brought it to my friends Anthony and Steve for a group tasting. I didn't strain the red, just in case anybody wanted Prison Sangria.




First we sampled the red prison wine. It was sour, but certainly not terrible. And the good news was it was definitely wine... like... ish. It was surprisingly dry. All the sugar was gone. Then again, if you were sugar, would you have stayed in that shitty-*** garbage bag?

We were all pleasantly surprised.

Regarding Red Prison Wine

Anthony: "I would drink this in prison."

Steve: "I would drink this in high school!"



It was time for the white. Wine tasters refer to a wine's aroma as its "nose." This wine's nose was a rectum. If this wasn't wine, I had somehow stumbled upon the recipe for Prison Stink Bombs. Forget about drinking it, I was afraid of getting it on me.

Through some miracle, it actually tasted nothing like it smelled. In fact, there was very little flavor other than sour, watery alcohol. It's hard to believe this started out as a bag of fruit snacks and grape juice. Yet somehow these ingredients went from sweet and child-like to harsh and alcoholic quicker than Lindsay Lohan.

Now that I think about it, prison inmates frequently turn to religion. I'm not very religious, but maybe I should be. Sure, Jesus made wine from water, but I did it with a dirty sock and fruit snacks! You tell me what the bigger miracle is. And I'm not even the son of God...or am I?

Out of curiousity, I purchased a device from a brewing supply house that allowed me to measure the wine's alcohol content. The red came in at 10.5% alcohol. The white was a whopping 14% alcohol! All of this led me to a simple conclusion: I miss old Lindsay Lohan, with the big boobies.




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------





WARNING: Don't try this yourself. Brewing alcohol in unsterile conditions is an obvious health risk. Stay safe, and leave the food stupidity to me. Thanks. (That goes for you too, Lohan.)


All episodes of Steve, Don't Eat It! can be found here.


Purchase "You Are Going To Prison" here.

Answer 5

If you thought Wine-making was tough, and would like to give it a try, come along for the ride and take your chances.

First the disclaimer! I am an idiot and only speak from experience, not from a scientific understanding of the "Art" of making wine. Follow my experience at your own risk !

I suggest you read the whole page before you invite your friends over. After reading it all, you may ignore what you wish.

When you've had a couple of successes (think positive), you may decide to re-read one of those "real" books on making wine. This time it may all make a little more sense and not seem as daunting.

I don't try to copy a certain beverage and pretend it tastes just like Pinot Noir or Chateau Briand. My aim is an interesting beverage that can be preserved without refrigeration until it's been consumed. Every bucket, even from the same berry bush, tastes a little different, which keeps things interesting.

Line

The basic steps to making a drinkable alcoholic beverage:

The easy way:

Buy a 5 gallon / 23 liter bucket of grape juice. ($25.- to $50.-)
Do not open.
Leave it in a spot between 70°F / 20°C and 80°F / 30°C for a month or two.
The warmer the faster she goes.

Open it without shaking it.

Siphon off the contents, into gallon jugs with screw-lids or 2 liter coke bottles, leaving most of the sediment on the bottom of the bucket.

Drink the stuff.

Optionally you can siphon the bucket into another almost airtight container and let it sit for another month or three before "bottling". This is especially a good idea if the juice is still murky.

This process is best suited for soonest enjoyment.
If you really gotta get fancy and just have to "bottle" with real corks, make sure you store the bottles in a place cooler than 60°F / 15°C or you may find the corks everywhere except in the bottles when next you thirst for a cool glass.

Applicable hints: Those plastic buckets can be harder to open than Fort Knox unless you have a special tool. If you cut a hole in the lid with a knife, it's hard to see what you're doing when you're siphoning, but it works, without shaking up all the sediment. Of course you ruin the lid but maybe you know a supermarket or a restaurant where you can get an endless supply of those buckets. Duct tape or packing tape may also make the lid of some use again.

Tie the siphoning tube to a long wooden stick, with two or three rubber-bands, an inch or two off the end of the stick. That way you can shove the stick to the bottom, leaving the siphon tube high enough not to suck up a lot of sediment.

Take those books on wine-making and wine-appreciation, that you bought a few years back, and use them to block up one side of the bucket a couple of inches and stick the siphoning hose in the deep part of the bucket.

Line

The I-did-it-all-by-myself way:

Get the 5 Gallon / 23 liter plastic bucket from your above experiment.

Find 15-20 pounds of something resembling fruit or vegetables.

Remove stems & seeds if possible. If not possible, crush or mash the fruit without damaging the seeds. Seeds do not help the wine and often contain stuff like cyanide or was it arsenic which might be good for your skin but neither help in the taste department. Squishing with your fingers works well, or a potato masher. A continuous juicer also works. If you can remove the stems and seeds you can use a blender to mush the stuff, with a bit of water to keep from burning out the motor.

Dump the ugly mess, called "must", into the plastic bucket.

Simmer around 10 pounds of sugar in water until it's a nice clear syrup and stir it into the fruit. Add some water to almost fill the bucket and mix it all up. Leave 4-6 inches of space for the foam and "cap" to rise under the lid, or you might have a mess on the floor.

Take a cup or two of your must, with enough water, that it's not too thick, make it nice and warm, not hot, pour in an envelope of wine yeast and stir it up. Keep it warm, perhaps in a bucket of hot water, until you need it. I like to do this when I start to mush or juice the fruit, then, by the time I am finished, there's a healthy slug of foaming yeast to give the bucket a running start.

Once a day, for a week or so, stir up the mess with a stick, to break up the "cap".

When the ugly bubbling has slowed down, use sives, collanders or rags to strain the ugly mess. Try to squeeze as much juice as you can out of the pulp before you trash it. This is the worst part of the process. Don't expect clear juice. The stuff should settle to the bottom eventually. Best strainer I've found so far is panty hose. You can put one leg in the other and have a fine, strong mesh that you can hang over a bucket, fill with gallons of goop, and later squeeze

Pour this murky liquid into a new container, add enough water to almost fill the bucket again and put a lid on it. Anything tight enough to keep flies out, is fine. As long as your juice is bubbling, you don't have to worry about bad bacteria, as the bubbles are CO2 which lies like a blanket over the liquid, protecting it. A sheet of plastic wrapped over the bucket is good. If that's really tight, just put a pinhole or two in the sheet, so pressure doesn't build up.

Let it sit undisturbed for a month. A dark and warm place is good. Siphon off the contents leaving the sediment on the bottom, and drink or bottle it. If you're in no rush, siphon it into another large container (this is called "racking") and let it sit for another month or 3. It should get better and gather potency with age.

Line

To make 23 liters or 5 gallons of wine
A guide to the quantities of fruit to destroy and the quantities of chemicals with which you may interfere in the natural process.
I ignore everything except the fruit quantity and sugar columns.

Fruit
.

Apple
Apricot
Blackberry
Black Currant
Blueberry
Chokecherry
Crabapple
Elderberry
Gooseberry
Huckleberry
Peach
Purple Plum
Sour Cherry
Rasperry
Red Currant
Yellow Plum
Quantity
kg

16
8
8
7
5
6
12
8
9
7
8
6
6.5
5
7
6 Sugar
kg

3.5
6
6.5
6
6.5
6
4.5
6.5
5.5
6.5
5.5
6
6
6.5
5.5
6.5 Acid
ml

65
45
25
10
35
20
25
45
5
40
45
50
25
20
35
60 Yeast
Nutrient ml

25
30
25
25
35
25
25
25
30
25
30
35
25
30
25
30 Pectic
Enzyme ml

-
20
20
20
20
20
-
20
25
25
20
20
20
20
20
20 Tannin
ml

10
4
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
5
2
5
2
-
-
5 Yeast
Variety

Chablis
Steinburg
Bordeaux
Burgundy
Bordeaux
Burgundy
Sauterne
Burgundy
Steinburg
Bordeaux
Steinburg
Chablis
Burgundy
Steinburg
Steinburg
Steinburg

If you're metrically challenged, just think:
a quart = a liter, 2 pounds = 1 kilo,
give or take a pinch, imperial or US, who cares, it won't matter.

Line

Some thoughts on:

Water - Boiled water is recommended but not always necessary. If your water is safe to drink, tapwater should be fine except for the chlorine. Chlorine, however, evaporates quickly. Take hot water with a shower-nozzle or out of an aerating tap of some kind and let it sit for little while.

Containers - 4 or 5 gallon buckets are a good size. They can be carried and are large enough to make the job worthwhile. 4 or 5 gallon plastic water-cooler jugs work fine for the secondary fermentation. Of course you could always buy a real glass carboy.

Plastic soft-drink containers with screw-lids work well for storing the final product. They are "free" in just about any size you might prefer. One word of caution: never screw the lids down tight, just leave them loose. I never stop the fermentation with chemicals and the stuff can quietly keep bubbling for a year. This protects it better than a cork but if pressure builds up, you may have a fountain of foam when you open them.

Labels - Glue-stiks are perfect for sticking any kind of labels on your containers.

Ingredients - Berries are about the easiest fruit to handle with almost guaranteed results. So far, my favourite is blackberry wine that is always first beverage-choice by friends. It has a surprisingly high alcohol content and never lasted long. Every year I do several hundred liters, along with another experiment or two.

Extra Ingredients - The only reason to use wine yeast is to ensure that a good yeast gets first crack at fermentation. Without it, it's pot-luck if the natural fruit yeast or a bad one from the air, gets things going. Different types of yeast create differing amounts of alcohol in different temperature ranges but all are in the same ball park. One of these days I'll try to educate myself on the finer points of yeast. 2002 I did 150 Liters of blackberry wine using bread yeast and can't tell any difference between it and the rest, where I used wine yeast.

Occasionally I've used yeast nutrient when I had trouble getting some yeast started. Otherwise I haven't used any chemicals in years.

Sanitation - Sterilizing everything is usually recommended but seems pointless when you consider all the stuff that comes with most fruit (dirt, worms, bugs, pigeon plop . . . ). The yeast will actually digest most of the impurities and convert them to good stuff. Personally, I just wash and rinse things with really hot water only. Dirty containers I keep closed until I wash them, so that they don't dry hard, making washing difficult. Clean containers I keep open so that they stay dry. I rinse everything before each use.
Good Luck
Hi, I enjoyed your website (especially the wine making section).
Thought I would share a recipe for quick small batch of wine.

3 cans of concentrated grape juice
1 pack of bread yeast
1/2 cup of sugar
six cans of water (using the grape juice cans)
a baloon
gallon
put grape juice in jug
put six cans of room temp water in jug
add 1/2 cup of sugar
shake shake shake
add rapid rise yeast package (or if using reg yeast, put in a small cup with a teaspoon of sugar and a half cup of water... let it sit for about 10 minutes or foamy and then dump in jug
put 5 holes in baloon with pin
place baloon over jug and place jug in a warm dark spot for about 2 weeks.

makes a decent fast small amount of wine