If you want to know how to make homemade wine then look no further as I look at wine making for beginners.
Although conventionally wine is made from fermented grape juice it is actually possible for you produce an alcoholic drink of the same strength as wine with any number of different ingredients. That is what I will be concentrating on in this article.
Delicious wines are within your reach for only a fraction of the cost of store bought bottles and you can produce something that you would happily serve to your friends and family once you learn the tricks of how to make homemade wine.
Wine is made by yeast acting on the sugar from the fruit. It produces alcohol and carbon dioxide in the process and the flavour of the wine depends on the ingredients used.
I usually make my wines in gallon containers called demijohns. That is more to do with the scale of my wine making and storage space than anything else but it is possible to use larger containers and quantities. After all that does mean that you are likelier to store some of it rather than drinking it all.
You then want to decide what to use to flavour your wine. If you do actually have access to proper grape juice then you are into the real thing but otherwise look up some recipes on-line about how to make homemade wine and see what you fancy. We grow our own fruit and vegetables so what is seasonal is what goes into the recipe.
Fruit and vegetables do not have the same sugar content as pure grape juice so you will almost certainly have to add some sugar.
It is essential to keep everything very clean. If the wrong bugs or wild yeast get into your wine then the batch could be ruined. There are various different ways of sterilizing equipment but that is beyond the scope of this article.
Prepare your fruit, extract the juice, and whichever recipe you are using put the liquid into your fermenting bucket. Now comes the first wait!
Cover your container and wait for 7 days. There should be a fairly vigorous fermentation, then once this is over it is time to move the wine on to glass containers (demijohn/carboys) Leave behind as much of the waste as you can by siphoning and/or filtering and seal with an airlock.
This is when patience is needed. A good month is best.
After this wait you will need to transfer the liquid to another similar container, again leaving as much of the waste behind as possible. This will help to clear the wine. Fermentation may still be going on though at a much slower pace than originally.
It may be necessary to repeat this several times until the wine is clear enough to bottle. This is helped by adding a stabilizer to stop the yeast working.
Be sure all the vessels are re-sterilized at each stage.
It is worth the wait. Given time to clear it will look and taste much better.
When you are happy with the appearance then the last but one stage is here. Time to bottle.
Make sure again that the bottles are sterile, siphon the wine in and seal them. Corks are still the usual method when you make homemade wine but other methods are on the up.
