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Making Wine

Making wine is a pretty interesting and fun thing to do. Whether I am using fresh fruit, dried fruit, herbs, or juice; wine making has always been a rewarding hobby for me. I will try to give you as much information as possible for making wine. The same different types of sugars for making beer can be used to make wine (honey, molasses, brown sugar, maple syrup as well as white table sugar) and your end results will vary greatly.

Procedure:

Since you are going to be using basically water and fruit, it is very important that you are going to be using good water. Boiling 3 gallons of water for 15 minutes and allowing it to cool should do the trick. If you have a water filter that will work just as well, the main thing that you are wanting to achieve is water that is free from minerals and bad odors.

Prepare the fruit or herbs according to the recipe (the method employed depends on the wine). Be sure to remove any stems and remove all pits from fruits.

• Pressing - This is good for juice extraction.

• Extractors / Juicers - These are perfect for extracting juice but they can be expensive to purchase.

• Boiling - This method is used for extracting the flavor of roots and some herbs. This method is NOT ideal for most fruits since boiling releases pectin. Pectin is used for making jelly not wine.

• Soaking - This is usually the main method used for fruit, most herbs and petals.

Boil the sugar with one to two quarts of the water, and let it cool. Stir the mixture to ensure that the sugar completely dissolved.

Sanitize everything. Cleanliness in winemaking is just as important in beer making.

Winemaking starts with inspecting the fruit and herbs. Make sure the fruit is ripe and the herbs are as fresh as you can get them. The fruit should taste sweet, ripe and slightly tart and the herbs should be very aromatic.

The fruit also must be clean, sound and relatively free of insects and other vineyard debris. Discard any fruit that look rotten or otherwise suspicious. Also, it's very important that all the stems are removed, since they will make your wine bitter.

While the sugar water mixture is still a warm, pour it into the primary fermentor. Add your extracted fruit juice, fruit pulp (if any) and the boiled (cool) water. The fluid level should be at or close to the 5 gallon mark. If you are using a hydrometer you should test the sugar content and make any necessary adjustments. Stirs in any additives like pectic enzymes, acid blends and yeast nutrients to your must. Add sulfites (campden) to the must according to the condition of the fruit. Put the piece of plastic wrap over the top of the fermentor, secure the lid on the fermentor and attach fermentation lock. Store the fermentor in a room out of the light and NOT in the bathroom or kitchen (too much bacteria exists in the rooms). Wait 24 hours for the campden to kill any wild yeast and bacteria. Open the fermentor and add wine yeast into the must. Re-attach the lid in the fermentor and ensure fermentation is filled half way with water.

Put the fermentor in a warm (75 degrees F.), preferably dark place for one week to ferment. Be sure to stir the must once a day until the fermentation begins. The temperature should be in the range of about 60-75 degrees F. After a day of two, you should see a bit of foam at the top of the must.

After a week of fermentation, remove any pulp and re-attach the fermentor lid. The fermentation will be very active for several weeks, then settle down to a steady fermentation. The yeast will be busy multiplying and converting the sugar and producing alcohol.

After a few months, you will be able to see sediment at the bottom of the fermentor, and hazy wine above. You will need to rack the wine from the lees (dead yeast and sediment). To do this, sanitize your bottling bucked and the racking tubes.

Place the fermentor on a table, moving it carefully so as not to disturb the lees. Place the bottling bucket directly on the floor below. Carefully insert the racking cane into the wine to a few inches down into the wine. Begin to siphon the wine into the bottling bucket. If you are using your mouth to start the siphon, be sure to rinse your mouth out with vodka or germ killing mouth wash.

Avoid any vigorous splashing while you rack your wine. Proceed to siphon until the lees starts to enter the tube, STOP siphoning when you start siphoning lees (the whole point is to remove as much lees as possible).

Clean and sterilize your primary fermentor. Once the fermentor is sterile, siphon the wine from the bottling bucket back into the primary fermentor. Once again, re-attach the lid with the air lock. If you get a taste of the wine, it might taste pretty unrefined, but you need not worry. Aging will take care of that problem.

The last three steps might have to be repeated after fermentation is complete and no signs of fermentation are visible. You will be able to tell if the wine has finished fermenting by tapping the fermentor to see if any bubbles rise to the top. If bubbles rise, it's still fermenting. You may also notice a little more sediment at the bottom of the fermentor. If you have a hydrometer check the gravity and ensure that it reads 1.000, this will ensure that fermentation is complete.

When the wine is finished fermenting, you might need to wait an additional 1 to 3 months for the wine to clear. Racking the wine will once or twice can aid in the clearing process. When the wine is clear you can bottle it and store it in cool place until you are ready to serve.

Always stash a few bottles away and try them in a few years. A few years?!? That's right, out of sight out of mind. In a few years try a bottle and you'll be happy you hid a few bottles or you might kick yourself for not hiding more.

If you notice any problems, or have any suggestion on how I can further improve this site, please feel free to send me an e-mail [12 November 2006].