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WINEMAKING ARTICLE WANT TO LEARN MORE ABOUT WINEMAKING AT HOME |
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| 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
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?
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.
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