So Where's The Wine Makers?

[Critterhunter]

Got into that a few years back and love it. Very cheap once the hardware/carboys are bought, which ain't much cost anyway if you get those used. South of $100 for two carboys and all the hardware I needed, and making the wine is cheap and easy. There are recipes for fast stuff too. I have been making a pear wine (pear wine is called a perry) that only takes about three weeks to settle and clear out for bottling or so. Very good stuff, and a friend took a bottle to an amateur wine tasting contest and won with it...twice. Couldn't believe that because we didn't know what we were doing and still learning. Neighbor has a couple big pear trees so the fruit was free.

Also, look up Skeeter Pee, which is a Real Lemon juice wine a guy invented. Very high in alchohol and it's settled out and ready to bottle in under 2 weeks or so. Fantastic stuff. Best hard lemon aid you ever drank, and dirt cheap to make. 2 small bottles of Real Lemon juice makes 5 gallons of wine. We don't use the prior wine slurry of yeast to get it going like he says. Just start your yeast in a bottle of juice with no preservatives. Once it's going dump it into the brewing bucket with the Real Lemon Juice concentrate and away you go. We also found that by using various starter juices (a gallon or so to start the yeast) it'll impact a distinct unique second flavor to the wine. Experimenting with that has come up with some great second flavors in it.

So I'd like to hear if any of you make wine and what recipes you like or any tricks you have. My only tip right now is to over do your fruit for any recipe. It'll make it so if you have to add water to the wine it won't wash out the flavor when topping the carboy off after a racking. Also, over do your sugar, so the wine will have plenty of alcohol no matter how much water you add. Who wants low alcohol content anyway? Just drink less...

 

[skookum]

Hi,
I have been making wine and brewing beer for about 30 years now.
Here some pics from making apple juice for apple wine/cider

The shredder mill is made by Voran (Austria)
The press itself is made by Speidel (Germany) and called a Hydropress. It works with tap pressure and is a dream to use.
I can make about 100 litres an hour with it.
Cheers
skookum

 

[skookum]

Hi,
I can only recommend the plastic carboys shown above.
They have a large lid which you can mount an air lock to.
They are easy to clean because you can actually extend your whole arm into them and they can not break.
I use a new toilet brush to scrub them from the inside after fermentation is complete.
They have a threaded outlet in the bottom so you can attach a drain valve (1/2 " or 3/4 "-your choice)
I have sold all my glass carboys, since they are a pain in the butt to clean, they are extremely hard to handle when filled and are prone to breakage.
The large carboy holds 110litres, the smaller one beside it holds 60 litres when fully filled. When fermenting I only fill 2/3.
The most important utensil in wine making is a pressure washer - since cleanlyness is 99% of making unspoiled wine.
I sterilize with using idophore at 25 ppm (parts per million)
Use a good wine yeast when making a starter - do not scrimp here as the yeast has one of the greatest impacts in regards to flavour.
I will add more pics of making beer.

Feel free to ask any questions that you may have

Cheers
skookum

 

[skookum]

More tips on wine making:
Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT use the so called Turbo yeast when making wine.
It will leave your wine with a flavour of stale piss.
Turbo yeast was actually developed for the production/distilling of gasohol - here flavour does not count.
And there is NO way, that you can produce wine of any quality, ready to drink within 2 weeks.
These are only sales gimmiks and will cause you to ruin good fruit.
Beware of anybody telling you that with his yeast you can produce an alcohol content of over 16% and higher.
Do not add lots of sugar or water to your wine. Flavour will suffer.
If you have no patience or want high alcohol content - go out and buy a bottle of vodka.
Put your carboys in a place that has very little temperature changes - the cooler the better(naturally not to the point of freezing).
It will take longer to ferment but will leave you with better flavour.
If you have the means, add honey insted of sugar.
If you do add sugar or honey, disolve it in a small amount of warm water and let cool before adding - it will mix better with your fermenting wine instead of settling at the bottom.
Always wash your fruit, especially if you pick them off the ground - dirt contains a lot of bacteria which will stress your yeast giving off-flavours.
It may even spoil your whole batch.
Check your air locks frequently and change the water in them.
Do not rack after 2 weeks - let your fruit fully ferment which takes around 6 weeks - then rack and let clear. Do not add water to top off your carboy - get a smaller carboy if you have too much head space.
Avoid excessive oxygen contact with your fermented wine - when siphoning from fermentor to clear, avoid splashing or excessive bubbles.
I could write a whole book on this subject - the best advice I can give is to watch or talk to an experienced wine maker.
Cheers
skookum

 

[Critterhunter]

How soon you finish racking and are able to bottle depends on what kind of wine recipe you are using. Pear wine clears rather fast for one, without us even using a clearing agent. We didn't use turbo yeast but rather a champagne yeast and were able to get very high alcohol content without killing the flavor by adding a bit more sugar.

Despite it clearing fast and being bottled in about three weeks, and despite the high alchohol content, our wine we had given to a friend won to amateur wine tasting contests. Couldn't believe it, as these were literally the first two batches of wine we ever did and didn't have a clue as to what we were doing for the most part.

As for other fast recipes, look up Skeeter Pee. Very cheap to make and very high in alcohol content. The guy who developed it wanted specifically something fast to bottle and cheap. Cost is two small bottles of Real Lemon Juice, sugar, and the almost free once you buy it small amounts of wine making additives. I guarantee you if you try this stuff you'll think it's the best hard lemon aid you ever drank. Stuff like Mike's Hard Lemon aid I believe are actually malt liquors with lemon flavor added to them. To me that's not a real hard lemon aide. You can bottle in about two weeks.

All depends on the kind of wine and the recipe as to how fast it can be bottled. Yep, there are tons of fantastic wines that take time to age and bottle, but not at the exclusions of other faster types that have their own very good taste too. If you rush a slow wine into bottling it'll suffer, and conversely there is such a thing as bottling a fast wine too slow. All depends on what the recipe was intended for.

There are different levels of what people consider sacrilegious in wine making. Some feel the only true wine is one made from grapes and aged for great lengths of time, and consider anything used other than grapes is a breach of the wine making code. Truth is that from what I've read wine in America was much more diverse back in the day before large vineyards of grapes took hold, and then it started to be made from that to the exclusion of all others in the commercial aspect.

PS- The pear recipe we used is a very old and ancient one from the Greeks if I remember right. It's a very mellow, smooth, and subtle taste. Very light on the taste buds. After the first batch we experimented by adding a couple of gallons of a different flavor juice to the fermation bucket along with the pears. It added a nice secondary flavor to the wine.

While it's best to rack to smaller carboys without the need to add water, the truth is it's pretty hard to find odd smaller carboys less than 5 gallons at an affordable price. Lacking that ability, the best defense against a watered down wine is to over-do your fruit and alcohol content. It may not be the perfect solution, but despite about 1/3rd of a gallon of water having to be added to the final racking to take up the air space, the wine turned out fantastic with still a strong flavor and a good punch to it, without tasting harsh or washed out.

One other tip for potential wine makers- We tried doing the fruit in the mesh bags for one batch, and also tried putting the fruit in without being contained in a bag for the second. We found that not using a bag was far less hassle in the long run. If you put the right amount of the additive into the wine that helps to break down the fruit there will be little left in the way of solids once it's done with the fermation process. I guess though it depends on the kind of fruit being used as to if using a bag has it's advantages.

Splashing when racking- It can have it's benefits. If the wrong gases build up in the wine as it's in the racking process, splashing the wine via letting it spray out of the racking hose into the next carboy can help to release this gas that might otherwise ruin the flavor. We went ahead and did that with ours, just because we were worried about any potential in that respect. Some people even use a egg whisp to "fluff" the wine to release these gases. Most times you'd never want to expose the wine to oxygen that way, but especially if you are seeing tiny gas bubbles when the wine is disturbed it needs this done to release the gases or they could spoil the flavor.

Final thought- Wine making is very much an art, and many are particular about how they go about things, so in no way am I saying our way is the best or only. It's whatever works for you, what your shooting for, and what you've had the best luck and success with. Heck, I even know one guy who insists on shaking his carboys between rackings. To me that makes zero sense, since one of the very reasons for racking is to remove solids and fine particulars, but he swears it brings out more flavor for him, so who am I to argue with his methods if they seem to work for him.

 

[skookum]

Hi,
When you see tiny bubbles escaping the wine when racking, this is CO

 

[Steve O]

Very interesting guys. What ' how to ' book on wine making and beer making would you recommend?

 

[skookum]

Hi,
Brewing:

How to brew - John J. Palmer
Brewing Classic Styles - Jamil Zainasheff
Yeast - Chris White (from Whites Yeast Laboratories)

Videos:
Basic Brewing

Radio and apps:
www.thebrewingnetwork.com/ Sunday Session(talk show) and Brew Strong(more technical)

Greetings
skookum

 

[mudpuppy]

Good gawd almighty what an interesting thread!
Mud

 

[Steve O]

Thank You skook!!

 

[skookum]

Hi,
You

 

[skookum]

Alcohol Warnings
A little humor off the net ...

Due to increasing products liability, alcoholic beverages manufacturers have accepted the Medical Association's suggestion that the following Warning labels be placed immediately on all bottles.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you are whispering when you are not.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol is a major factor in dancing like a wanker.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may cause you to tell the same boring story over and over again until your friends want to smash your face in.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that people are really dying for you to telephone them at 4 in the morning.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may leave you wondering what the hell happened to your clothes.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you can logically converse with other members of the opposite sex without spitting.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may make you think you possess mystical Kung-Fu powers.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol is the leading cause of inexplicable rug burns on the forehead.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead to traffic signs and cones appearing in your home.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe you are invisible.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may lead you to believe that people are laughing with you.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may cause an influx in the time-space continuum, whereby small (and sometimes large) gaps of time may seem to literally disappear.

Warning: Consumption of alcohol may actually cause pregnancy.


Copied off the homedestillers forum

 

[hydrodog]

I had a over abundance of watermelons last year and juiced up 25 large ones and ended up with 13 gallons of juice. Did the initial fermentation in buckets and then tranfered to carboys,added some wild grape juice and some concord juice from the neighbors vines. Let it ferment until it slowed way down and racked it into clean carboys,topped it off with some reserve juice that I froze and let the fermentation work again,racked a second time and it is still sitting in the basement.I plan on giving it a taste at the end of march and possibly bottle it and let it age until next fall. I am still drinking hard cider that I made in the fall of 2011, one batch was mixed with cherry juice, one with black currant, and one plain. The black currant is the best. When bottling my hard cider I use Grolsch pints and always pitch a little corn sugar in the bottling bucket to give it a little fizz. Our michigan apple crop failed last year and bummed me out because hard cider is so good. Good luck on all your endeavors,and remember that time improves most wines.

 

[John in Nawth Carolina]

I'm about ready to start a gallon of white grape wine.

Water
2 cans frozen white grape wine juice
4 cups sugar
Rapid yeast

Simple. results can be very yummy.

 

[bula]

I do not make wine but just started brewing my own beer. Dirnking the first batch & just bottled a hefe today.

 

[Critterhunter]

Yes, wine making can be more of an art than a science to many. Everybody has their own "thing" and beliefs to do even the same recipe 100 different ways from person to person. The problem with the guy shaking the carboys is he's doing it constantly when there is still tons of debri in there that needs to be removed or the dead yeast will start to ruin the flavor with too long to getting the sediments out on a timely basis. He's a friend of a friend who was making wine with him, and my friend now refuses to do wine together with him for that reason. It just drove him up the wall. So he called me and said would I be willing to lend him a hand in his next batch of skeeter pee here and I said sure thing since I know a few bottles will get kicked back to me.

Far better, since the wine has been ready to rack on numerous occasions when my friend went over there and his friend shook the living daylights out of the carboy, to just rack it as it should be done with the sediments sitting quietely at the bottom, and if worried of the bad gases being present then raise the racking hose near the top of the carboy you are racking the wine into so that it spills and splatters out into the new one. That's what we did with ours when we were worried about gases hurting the flavor. The trick is to balance not exposing it to too much oxygen with just the right amount of splashing when it's felt it's needed.

I've said it before but I'll say it again, you guys who want a faster wine, or more to the point a hard lemonaid, need to google up Skeeter Pee. It's able to be bottled in roughly a few weeks to a month, depending on how you go about it and if you use a clearing agent or such. This stuff is potent though, so watch how much you partake in for any given night. I've had my moments with it.

The original recipe calls for using a prior yeast slurry from any other wine you just made where the yeast is still active and alive from the brewing bucket, but we've found that you don't have to do that. It was intended to have a robust already going yeast to start it's self fine in the harsher lemon juice, but you can just start it in a gallon or so of any other juice you prefer as a secondary flavor. Various juice types as a starting point for the yeast will in part a really nice second flavor, which can really push the like and unique factor of the Skeeter Pea to even higher levels. I wish off hand I could remember which juice it was (using Juicy Juice from the grocery store) that gave it the best taste of them all to me, but I'll see if my friend has that info to share. Using a yeast slurry from a prior other wine project also will impart a secondary flavor. Just dump the whole bottom of the brewing bucket in there, or at least the "better" portion of it if there are any bad things left behind such as seeds.

For our pear wines, or perry I should say, we did in fact remove the seeds. We didn't juice the pears, but rather just cut them into sections about the size of a quarter or so in size. Maybe a bit bigger, in terms of how "round" each portion was like a ball in that respect. We of course got rid of the stems too and the bottom of the pears. Not hard to do. Just need a decent knife and it's quick work to get them ready. With that done, and the proper amount of additive to break down the fruit, we didn't even have skins left when the bucket was done brewing, and we had left the skins on. No mesh bag needed. When the brewing was done in the bucket there was nothing left to see for the most part. Yes, "fermation" bucket, but it's easier to type "brewing" faster...

I don't know about you guys, but there is something magic about seeing that breather going mad with bubbles in the brewing bucket when the yeast is in it's prime and all things are happening. Just puts a smile on your face knowing you are making tons of bottles of wine for just about nothing, especially if you got the fruit for free. And, of course knowing you are going to have some rather outstanding wine to drink, which would cost you a pretty penny in the stores. Doesn't usually give bad hangovers either since it's not been pumped with tons of stuff to keep the wine going bad by the thousands of gallons when they are making it on a commercial scale. Not all wine makers do that of course, but many. That's what gives you the headaches and the hangovers from it. Otherwise I think a good homemade wine treats me much better than even beers the next morning.