Making homemade wine is a rewarding experience. Not only can the finished product be enjoyed by you and your friends, but it also allows you to express your creativity in creating new flavors and styles of drink. Wine-making can be an expensive hobby though. In this article, I’ll discuss how to make Homemade wine without breaking the bank on equipment.
Equipment
Part of the major expense in home winemaking is the equipment. You can end up with quite an outlay in upfront expense and if you are just starting your homemade wine journey there are cheaper options to get started with. For instance, glass fermenters are very expensive because they are glass and heavy to ship. You can get by cheaper by using food-grade buckets for your fermenting vessels. They are lighter, cheaper, and easier to manipulate. You will need at least two of these. Much of the other equipment we will use is inexpensive and you may already have it in your kitchen.
Additional equipment you will need is as follows:
- Cheesecloth or flour cloth towels(not terry cloth)
- Fine mesh strainer-size that will sit on top of your bucket if possible
- Larger colander-style strainer
- 5-gallon food-grade buckets 3
- Tubing
- Potato masher or fermenting mallet to crush fruit, or you can use your hands
- Gloves- some fruit stains and some can be irritating to the skin.
- Large bowl or pot to hold fruit while you crush it. No aluminum.
- Fnnels
- Wine siphon
- Repurposed 5-gallon water cooler jugs to make a carboy out of or plastic carboy bought online. My preference would be a real glass carboy but they are pricey.
- Bottles to store your wine in. Mason jars work fine. You can repurpose old wine bottles. I like flip-top bottles. I already have these from fermenting. They are not cheap though so shop around.
- Yeast- they make wine yeast but you can use bread yeast
Getting Your Fruit Ready
You can make wine out of any fruit. I want to give watermelon a try! To prep your fruit, clean outside with a 1:3 vinegar and water solution setting the soak for 20 minutes. Remove seeds and stems in fruit that it is possible to do so in, as they often have chemicals you don’t want in wine for instance apple seeds have a compound that turns into cyanide in the human gut. Grape seeds are usually not removed as you will strain them out. However you don’t want to use a sharp implement for crushing your fruit, it could nick the seeds. For fruit like peaches with large seeds you can easily remove you can use your food processor to do the mashing but not with grapes, blueberries, blackberries, or elderberries.
Sanitizing Your Equipment
Wash your equipment with hot soapy water before beginning to remove any noticeable soiling. With bottles, you can use a teaspoon of rice and fill the bottle about one-third and shake vigorously. Be sure to strain out rice and not put down your sink. To sterilize equipment you can use a solution of one tablespoon of bleach to one gallon of potable water. The bleach should be scent-free and not a no-splash brand that has thickeners. Simply submerge your equipment in the bleach solution and then allow it to air dry on a clean surface. A bottle rack is nice for your bottles but not absolutely needed. There are other products you can buy such as Campden tablets which are potassium metabisulfite. If you have allergies to sulfites you may not want to use this.
Making the Must and Starting Your Wine
Now that you have cleaned your equipment and your fruit time to make the must. Add the amount of fruit your recipe calls for to your fermenting vessel and start crushing using your hands(cleaned well), a potato masher, or a mallet. You can use a sanitized food processor for those fruits like peaches or apples with easily removed seeds. A fruit press is another option but it’s not cheap. Your goal is to release as much of the juice as possible. Once you are done dump it all into your fermentation bucket. This will be your primary fermentation. Now take 10 pounds of sugar and dissolve it in water. Use as little water as possible. Just cover the sugar with a couple of inches of water. It will probably take about two gallons. Don’t skimp on the sugar. Decrease the water if you need to to make it all fit. You want to keep your yeast-to-sugar ratio correct. This will rise just like bread dough so make sure your bucket is big enough! Once the sugar is dissolved, let it cool a bit and pour it into your fermentation bucket with your must. Don’t add the yeast until it has cooled to 100-105 degrees or it will kill it. Proof the yeast by taking a few cups of your must now cool to 100- to 105 degrees and sprinkle yeats granules on top and let sit for 15 minutes then stir and let sit for 15 minutes. Then add to your fermentation bucket. Cover with your flour sack towel, plastic wrap with a few fine holes for gas release or loosely place your lid on top. You may need to secure your towels if used with a large rubber band. Now let sit for 7 days stirring daily. You should begin to see bubbling by the end of the second day.
Natural Additives
You do not have to add anything to your must but some people like to add chemical yeast supporters to the mast. Here are some natural additives that can achieve the same outcome.
- Raisins to add flavor and feed yeast
- Citrus juice to add citric acid
- Strong black tea to add tannins
Second Fermentation
This is messy so protect surfaces with old towels or newspapers. Gather and sterilize your second and third buckets and your homemade or store-bought carboy. Strain the gloppy mess into your clean bucket using first a colander then a finer mesh drainer lined with a flour cloth towel or double cheesecloth. This may take a bit so be sure you have a strainer that can sit over your bucket for this step. If you have a fruit press this can shorten the time considerably but these are not cheap. If you are into beekeeping your honey press would also work. You could also start out with a fermentation or fruit press bag and avoid this step completely as the juice with already have drained from the bag. Once you have strained your juice, use a funnel to pour it into your carboy. The new wine must be protected from air so if you are repurposing a 5-gallon drinking jug you will need to make an airlock. This is where your tubing comes in. Cut a hole in the cap of your jug, insert the tubing( make sure it’s long enough), and then tape it all up with duct tape. The end of the tube will go into a second jar of water creating the airlock. You must have some type of airlock or your carboy will explode! Don’t just screw a lid on at this point. Now you want to place your carboy of wine somewhere it can sit for a month undisturbed. You don’t want to jostle your wine at this stage. A month is an arbitrary number it can take five weeks or in warmer conditions three. You should be noting bubbling in your airlock as the fermentation process continues. It may be subtle but it should be there. As the process completes the bubbling will stop and the wine should clear. You will see “lees” at the bottom of the vessel. This is a layer of sediment.
Bottling Your Wine
Your wine is ready to bottle when the bubbling has stopped. Now it’s time to sanitize your bottles and siphon.
Some people choose to add another step called racking. You would use this if you were not sure fermentation was complete or if you wanted to add flavoring such as more sugar to sweeten the wine or oak chips. In racking you use your carboy with its airlock. In bottling, you fill to the neck of the bottle allowing only minimal head space and put tight caps on the bottles. To rack put your siphon hose into the wine above the “lees” In the bottom and siphon into your carboy. Whether you rack or bottle you don’t want to leave much head space. This would expose the wine to air and oxidize it potentially ruining it. You may need to adjust your vessel size or use “spacers” which are glass balls meant to displace fluid to the level you need it to be. These can be bought at wine-making supply houses. If you choose to rack your wine you let it sit in a cool dark place for a few weeks or months until you are ready to bottle it. If you have chosen to bottle your wine it is ready for storage in a cool dark place until you are ready to enjoy it. The best temperature for storage is 50-55 degrees. Above 70 degrees is too warm. If you have a basement thats the perfect place. If not you might want to think about a wine refrigerator. You can just store in a nice dark cool closet where it’s unlikely to experience temperature fluctuations from say heaters, stoves, or washing machines. Very cool temperatures can cause crystals to form. These are not dangerous.
Aging Your Wine
Aging wine is a matter of taste. Wine can be aged for as little as one month. Three to six months for the type of berry wines generally made at home is enough. Darker wines like elderberry may need as long as a year.
Adjusting Your Recipe
You may want to adjust your recipe if 5 gallons seems like a lot of wine. You can do this but you must keep the ratio of fruit, sugar, and water the same and never use less than one package of yeast.
Conclusion
Making wine at home can be a rewarding and enjoyable process. It can give you the opportunity to be creative and a way to use all the extra fruit you may have from your fruit trees. Your wine can be given as gifts or enjoyed by your family. With the right supplies, ingredients and some basic steps, you can make your delicious homemade wine in no time. Check out my article on Dandelion wine here. Happy Brewing!