How To Get Started In Home Wine Making
(A
Point in the Right Direction)
If you’ve been toying with the idea of trying your hand at wine making,
delay no longer. Go right
ahead! By doing so you will be joining
thousands of happy people
who have already discovered this
intriguing and rewarding
hobby. Home wine making is a pastime that
truly brings its own rewards.
Wine making at home is an easy process.
In reality, all you are doing
is putting together fruit or concentrate
and a few other wine making
ingredients into a container and allowing
Mother Nature to do what
comes natural.
Your real contribution
to the wine making process is making sure that
Mother Nature is given
a fair opportunity to do her part. That is, to
put together the right
wine making ingredients in the proper portions
and to make sure those
wine making ingredients are in an environ-
ment suitable for fermentation.
HOME WINE MAKING INGREDIENTS
GETTING THE RIGHT MIX
There are many, many home wine making recipes available that guide
you to the right ingredients
and their correct amounts. And they’re no
different than following
a cookbook recipe.
Books are a good source of home wine
making recipes and general
wine making information. There are many
books
that offer an endless array of home wine
making recipes and instruct-
ions for making wine from fruits like
apple, blackberry or strawberry as
well as any kind of grape you can imagine,
wild or domestic.
The wilder grapes like Muscadine or Scuppernong
make excellent
wines as do the more domesticated varieties
such as Cabernet or
Chardonnay. If you have trouble finding
a home wine making recipe
to suite your taste, contact us and tell
us what kind of home wine
making recipe you are looking for and
we’ll see how we can help you.
COMMONLY USED HOME WINE MAKING INGREDIENTS
Other than the fruit or concentrated juices discussed earlier, there
is
a core group of wine making ingredients
that is usually called for in
most all fruit and concentrate wine recipes.
They are: campden
tablets, yeast, yeast nutrient, acid
blend, and tannin. Each of these
wine making ingredients play a specific
and distinctly different role in
the home wine making process.
Campden tablets are added to fresh
wine making juices as a steril-
izer. It kills all the wild molds and
bacteria that may be lingering in a
fresh juice, then evaporates into the
air over a 24 hour period. It is
also used in finished homemade wines
just before bottling as a flavor
and color retainer.
YEAST is what makes the alcohol
during the wine making process. It
eats the sugars that are in the juice
and turns them into carbonated
gas and alcohol; this is called fermentation.
YEAST NUTRIENT is added during
the wine making process to help
invigorate the wine yeast. This makes
the fermentation more active
and thorough. Without the addition of
wine making nutrients some
wine fermentations would become sluggish.
ACID BLEND is simply a blend of
the three primary acids found in most
wine making fruits: tartaric, malic and
citric. It is added as a supple-
ment to juices that may be naturally
too low in acid. One example of
this would be apple wine.
TANNIN is added to during the
wine making process for two different
reasons. The first is that it gives the
resulting wine a fuller flavor or
more “zest”. And, secondly it aids in
the clarification and aging quality
of the wine.
In addition to this core group of home
wine making ingredients, if you
are making wine with fresh fruits, the
recipe will usually also call for
the addition of pectic enzyme . This
is a liquid that will help to break
down the fruit’s fiber and allow the
juices and natural color to be
release from the pulp.
YEAST ENERGIZER may also be called for
in place of yeast nutrient when
using fresh produce. This is a stronger
form of wine making nutrient
that works well with produces that are
naturally nutrient deficient.
A couple of examples of this type of
wine would be rhubarb and
dandelion.
If you are making your wine from fresh
fruit other than grapes such
as blackberry, plum or cherry, the home
wine making recipe will also
call for sugar and water. Wine making
fruits such as these are simply
to strong to use their juice at full
strength. Their flavor would be over-
whelming and the acidity level in these
particular juices would make
them too sharp or sour tasting. So, it
is normal to cut them with the
sugar and water. For example you might
find a home wine making
recipe that calls for 3 lbs. of raspberries
and 2 pounds of sugar per
each gallon of water.
Most wine making grapes do not need to
be cut with sugar and water.
Full strength is fine. However, wilder
varieties and shorter season
grapes are quite often an exception.
These grapes will usually need
a little water and sugar added. Not so
much because of the strength
of the flavor as much as to reduce these
types of juices’ excessive
level of acidity.
This is just a general overview of the
wine making ingredients you will
be dealing with in various situations.
There are home wine making
recipes available that may call for other
ingredients or that may omit
some ingredients that we have suggested.
This does not necessarily
mean that these particular wine making
recipes are not valid, but you
may want to do a little research before
investing your time and energy
in such a home wine making recipe.
WHAT WINE MAKING EQUIPMENT WILL I NEED?
There are a few basic pieces of wine making equipment you will need
to start your venture into wine making.
We’ll start with the most obvious.
PRIMARY FERMENTATION CONTAINER It
can be made of glass or food-
grade plastics. It should be slightly
larger in volume than the size of
the wine making batches you intend make.
This is to allow for the
foaming that will occur during the fermentation
process. If you think
you’ll be making 5 gallons at a time,
a 6 gallon size container will be
appropriate for the beginning wine making
process. It should also
provide a large top surface area for
the liquid, no slender openings.
SECONDARY FERMENTATION CONTAINER A
secondary container is recom-
mended as well when making wine, but
it is not completely necessary.
There are certain containers that are
suitable for both primary and
secondary fermentations. The main requirement
for the secondary
container is that you need to be able
to attach an air-lock to it. An air-
lock is simply a small water trap that
allows the fermenting gases to
escape with out letting bugs and other
little nasties back in. In the
case of our 6 gallon poly-fermenter,
it can act as both a primary and
secondary fermenter during the wine making
process.
SIPHONING EQUIPMENT Depending
on the type of containers you
choose, you may need some limber vinyl
hose and rigid tubing for
siphoning wine from one container to
the next. In the case of our 6
gal. Poly-fermenter and Tuff-Tanks, a
piece of vinyl hose can be
placed over its faucet to drain the container.
HYDROMETER This instrument is
highly recommended. It allows you
to track your homemade wine’s progress
during the fermentation.
It also allows you to determine the wine’s
alcohol content by compar-
ing two readings, one taken before fermentation
and one taken after
fermentation.
Beyond these items there are other pieces
of home wine making
equipment you may want to consider
that can make the process a
little easier depending upon your particular
situation, such as: bottle
brushes, bottle rinsers, bottle drainers,stirring
spoons,thermometers,
funnels,hose clamps, pulp bags, etc.
You may want to also consider what you
will use for wine bottles.
Used bottles will work fine as long as
they are washed and then
sanitized with a cleaner such as Cleanpro
SDH or B-Brite , or you can
use new wine bottles.
The type of closure you are going to
use on the bottle should be con-
sidered as well. If you are using standard
fifth size (750 ml) wine
bottles that are designed for corks,
you can use, mushroom corks.
These corks can be pushed in the bottle
by hand. Or you may want
to go with a cork inserter and straight
corks for a more professional look.
This is a general overview of the wine
making process, but it covers
much of what you need to know to get
started. Feel free to contact us
if you have any questions.
We also offer a special service for those first time wine makers.
I f you will call me I will personally for a small fee step
you through each and every step of making your first batch
of homemade wine I will also include one of my best recipes with this service.
You can contact me at 727-545-1058. Lets have fun and make some wine, Gary
Neikirk
e-mail( gneikirk@tampabay.rr.com) |