Disclaimer:
I aint one of them Vintners. This here’s about how to make good wine as cheap as possible and without all of the fancy schmancy tools that folks’ll tell you that you gotta have. If yer lookin’ for a Vintner’s Guide to Premium Vintage Wine yer Google search has failed you and you should try again. Also, reckon I don’t know it all. I’ve only got one batch done so far but it turned out some awful good. I’ve talked to a lot of old folks that’ve been doing it this way for years and I wanted to share what I had learnt form’em.
Getting started
As I’ve said, you don’t need all of that fancy stuff to make wine. Folks was making good wine for 5000 years or so before anybody thought about inventing a hydrometer to measure specific gravity. Now, I reckon if you want to make the same wine repeatedly so’s that it tastes exactly the same every time you might need that stuff but, on the other hand, maybe you don’t. It don’t matter though ’cause most of us are really only looking to turn that bumper crop of fruit into something other than preserves. This year it might be blueberries, next year it might be strawberries, or peaches or watermelons or or figs… whatever we have extra of. Heck, if you aint got extra fruit you can even make the stuff outta flowers…. I aint kiddin! You can! Ever heared of Dandelion wine? You think that’s made outta grapes? Nope.
I decided that I don’t need all of that high dollar stuff and I aint gonna buy it. Still, you gotta have SOMETHING to make wine in. I personally got me a 5 gallon glass jug for makin’ wine. You can use whatever you have handy. The jug that I got came from a wine making store and costs about $30.00. You can use an old water cooler bottle or even a bucket from Home Depot or somethin’. I mean, really, folks used to make this stuff in clay pots. Don’t get overexcited about how you aint got a new fangled carboy fer the fermentin’. So, that’s what you need… something that’ll hold a few gallons of juice. The return that you get will be a little less than what you start with but not much So, figure on losing a bit but for the most part if you want a gallon of wine you want a gallon jug… call it a 1:1 ratio… the scientific notation oughta be somethin like (1 = (1-li’lbit)). Ok, ok, sorry ’bout that… I didn’t mean to get all technical. Now whatever you use has gotta be sealable but we also need a way to vent gas out of it… we’ll talk about that in a while, for now just remember to get the lid when you get the bucket.
All right, so we have us a container. We’re gonna call that the fermenter just to be high minded about it all. Other things you’ll need is a siphon hose, preferably one that aint been used for stealing gas out of mama’s car. I use two dollars worth of rubber hose from the Home Depot store but you can use an old piece of water hose if you want. You’re also gonna need some yeast and a buncha sugar. The yeast can be anything from specialized wine making yeast to bread yeast. Heck you can even use wild yeast but that’s a little harder. Look, I’m gonna be straight with you. The wine making yeast is better for what you want but honestly yeast is yeast. If you want to use a packet of mama’s Fleishmann’s yeast that’ll work well for you. Just get ready for her to be mad the next time she goes to make some biscuits.
You’re also gonna need somethin to ferment. It really don’t matter what…. strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, figs, watermelons… whatever you got. Just don’t steal it. You can get in trouble over that kind of stuff. That said, stolen fruits make the best wines… Whatever you get you’re gonna need a lot of it. I mean more than your granny can eat in a sitting. Like 10 lbs or so. Since I made strawberry wine, I’ll go with that recipe here but I’ll tell yah what I did to get started. I went down to the grocery store, found the fruit they had on sale that day and bought 10 lbs of it. That happened to be strawberries so that’s what we’re using.
Figure on using about half the weight of fruit in sugar. Just so you don’t gotta do math, that’s 5 lbs of sugar for 10 lbs of fruit. Little more won’t hurt, little less probably will.
Keepin’ it clean
Now, I reckon the most important thing you gotta do is keep everything clean. The big thing that can go wrong with wine making is to get a little distracted and swerve into the vinegar making lane. A little bit of nastiness and you’ll end up with vinegar faster’n your sister’ll fall for a GI. So, how to avoid it? Clean your stuff. Now, real wine makers… err ‘scuse me… vintners have all kinds of high dollar cleaners for this purpose. Don’t worry about that stuff. Just pass by the laundry room and grab a bottle of Clorox and go to work cleaning your stuff. Clean everything… fermenter, hose, jugs, funnels, everything. If your wine is gonna touch it, get some bleach on it first. It don’t take much… just a tablespoon or so in a gallon of water and go to work on it. If it’s clean you’ll be fine. If it aint, you’ll make some fine, fine vinegar.
Stompin grapes
Look, we just went through cleanin’ everythin’. Don’t go stickin’ yer nasty feet in it. Take the strawberries and hull them… that means get yer pocket knife out (clean it!) and lop off the green bit at the top. Rinse it off and toss’er in the bucket. Repeat that until you’re done with all 10 lbs. If you’re using a bottle or a jug like I do you might have to cut it up a little more to get it in. That’s fine. In fact, it’s better, if you’re using a bucket you can give the strawberry a good squeeze to mash it up a little before you throw it in. You don’t want strawberry soup but the more you break it up the better. Once you get that done, add enough water to get the batch up to 3 or 4 gallons. The more water you add the weaker your wine will be but you’ll need at least 2 gallons or so. Add in about 5 lbs of sugar. Stir it good so all the sugar is dissolved and not just sittin’ the bottom. For not so sweet stuff, add a little more sugar, for really sweet stuff add a little less. Once the sugar is dissolved add in about two tablespoons of lemon juice and stir it good. That’s it.
Let’er sit
Once you get everything in your bucket… I mean, fermenter… just let it sit overnight. Now, everything you’ll ever read about wine making will tell you to add 2 or 3 crushed campden tablets. You can get these at the wine making store or you can go without them. I use them myself sometimes if I’m being particular about a batch but as long as you’ve kept everything clean you should be ok. Anywho, let’er sit overnight. Don’t need to be long and you can probably even skip this step but I like to let things “rest” over night and since I’m writin’ this just do it. Besides, you’re gonna be tired after all that washin’ and hullin’ and choppin’ and such. Take a break.
Gettin’ the bugs goin’
Next day take yer yeast and add it to some warm water. For anything less that 5 gallons or so just use one packet or a tablespoon or so. No need to be particular about getting it exactly right. It works pretty much the same way as makin’ bread. Water about 75 or 80 degrees, stir the yeast in and let’er sit until it starts making bubbles. Once you’ve got bubbles goin’ in the yeast just dump’er in your fermenting fruit and stir it good. If you’re using a bottle or jug just cap it and give’er a good shakin. Leave the top off and cover your fermenter with something. Cheesecloth works great or a towel… whatever you got. You just wanna keep the flies out of it. You’ll want to leave it like this for a while. Just walk by every day or so and give it a good stirrin’ (or shakin’) to keep things going.
Keeping it going
Yeasties need air to get going but after a while the air starts to work against them and you have to get it all out. I waited 10 days for this (mostly because I was on vacation at the time and didn’t get back. How long you wait before taking the air out is science. Most recipes will tell you how many days you need to wait or the Specific Gravity of the wine… since we don’t do SG measurements, here’s the trick. When your wine starts to smell like really strong beer it’s good to go and can be airlocked. Now, the yeast are really working and putting off a lot of gas. You can’t just seal up your fermenter and leave it because the dang thing will eventually explode from the pressure of the gas the yeast are putting off. That can be kinda cool to watch but is really counter productive in the wine makin’ process. So, here’s the trick: you gotta make an airlock. The idea behind an airlock is simple, it allows gas (from the yeast) to escape but doesn’t let air back in. You can buy an airlock that’ll work fine at the wine makin’ store for cheap… less than a dollar… or you can make your own. To make your own you just punch a hole in the fermenter, figure out a way to attach a hose to it and then stick the other end in a glass of water. How you go about attaching the tube to the lid of your fermenter is up to you but 30 minutes in the Home Depot store and you should be able to figure something out. Whatever you come up with has to be airtight. If you’ve got it right you should start seeing bubbles coming out of the tube in the glass after a while. As long as it’s making bubbles it’s makin’ wine… just leave it alone. You can take a quick peek every once in a while but mostly you want to keep the air out of it so leave the lid on it.
Cleanin it up
After another week or so the strawberries will start to bleach out and get kinda white. It’s time to get rid of them. When you’re ready to do that, get yourself another container… shoulda bought two of them buckets… and clean it with bleach like before. Rinse it out good and then use your hose to siphon the juice out of your fermenter. Don’t worry too much about getting little bits of strawberry right now… you just want to get as much of the juice out as you can. Once you have all of the juice siphoned out just throw the strawberries away. While yer at it you might notice that things are really cloudy… that’s ok, we’re gonna fix that. You can either wash out your fermenter bucket and pour your juice back in or just continue the fermenting in your new bucket. Either way works. Whatever you do, get the airlock back on it as quick as possible. From here on out you want to avoid moving, shaking or stirring the fermenter. The idea is to let all of the cloudy stuff settle out. It should get back to fermenting and making bubbles pretty quick. Let it go for another two weeks or so without moving it and then repeat the siphoning process. This time filter it through some cheese cloth (or one of mama’s dish rags) to catch all of the strawberry bits that you missed last time. You’ll notice a lot of white stuff on the bottom, that’s the dead yeast that’s making your wine cloudy and settling out. When you siphon it you want to avoid sucking that stuff up. It’s ok if you get a bit of it but you want to leave most of it on the bottom of the bucket/fermenter. From here on out you can start tasting your wine to see how it’s going. If it tastes really sweet let it keep working. If it takes like it’s got too much alcohol in it just water it down a bit. Here’s the trick though, while the yeast are working any sugar you add to it will get converted to alcohol. So don’t go addin sugar to it to make a sweeter wine cause that’ll keep getting converted until you’ve got something that’ll knock yer prom date completely out. Just let’er keep going until all of the fermentation stops. You can tell because it’ll stop makin’ bubbles in your airlock. Once all fermentation has stopped then you can add more sugar to the mix and make it sweeter. Do this one cup of sugar at a time. Add a cup, stir it in good, wait a few days to see if fermentation (bubbles) starts up again. If it does, let it finish again, wait a few extra days and then try adding another cup of sugar. When you can add sugar to the wine without restarting the fermentation it’s done and you can add as much sugar as you want to get it as sweet as you want. Let it sit for another week or two until things start to clear up again… siphon the wine off of the dead yeast and keep going. 3 or 4 weeks at a time until it’s as clear as you want it. Pretty much any time after a month or so you can sneak a little nip here and there. It won’t be as pretty as a store bought wine until everything settles out but it’ll be as good as it gets.
Bottling
You can get wine bottles and corks at the wine makin’ store, but you don’t need’em. Wine will keep just fine in pretty much any container as long as it’s air tight. I use one gallon glass jugs but you can use anything. My uncle uses left over 2 litter coke bottles to store his. Works fine, tastes fine. No need to get snazzy with it, anything with a screw on cap will work.
Aging
Once you’ve got’er all bottled up the easy part is over and the hard part begins… waitin… Now, here’s the thing about agin’ wine. It WILL get better the longer you wait… up to a year or three… BUT unless your gonna enter this stuff in the county fair contest why would yah? It’ll be plenty good right out of the bottle and if you’re the one drinkin’ it AND you like it… why the hell wait? My wine ages in the bottle while it’s waiting to get drunk. If I take a nip and think it’s good for drinkin’ it gets drunk…or I do… but the point is, aging wine is for making the wine good enough to drink not for the sake of aging it. If you like it drink it. If you think it needs more time, wait. Simple, like that.
Is it dangerous?
Nope, not a bit. There aint much that you can do to wine that’ll cause it to make you sick. Now, granted it goes to vinegar and you drink it you’ll spend some time heaving but that’s to be expected and it won’t hurt you… much. In general though, if you can force it down, it won’t hurt you.
What about vinegar?
If it goes to vinegar then you’ve made vinegar. There aint no gettin it back. Just throw it out and start over. That’s one of the things that all of that scientific fancy stuff is trying to avoid. Still, as long as you don’t care about losing a batch every now and again it’s no big deal. If you keep things clean like I told yah then you won’t have this problem anyway. Just step around it, clean things better next time and make another batch.
Just pickin’
I reckon I’m pretty hard on them Vintner fellers here. That’s because some of them are pretty hard on folks who don’t wanna follow the high dollar path. They speak of vintages and years while we speak of “damn, that’s good!” That’s ok. What they do is really cool. They put a lot of work into getting wine just so and making sure that it comes out that way every time. They get the most bang for the buck… and they use cool tools to make it happen. I’m good with that, it’s a hobby or a job for most of ’em and it’s important to ’em. That bein’ said, it’s not a crime to do it the old fashioned way. To get good wine out of left over fruit and to enjoy it out of a dixie cup instead of a wine glass. They’re makin’ one thing, we’re makin another. That’s all there is too it.
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I started my first batch of watermelon wine 2 nights ago, first crushing the melon and straining the juice into a 5 gallon jug, did like you said and let er sit overnight. The next day added yeast and crushed campden tablets then put on a balloon for the airlock. So today I come in from work and the balloon is bigger than a basketball, lying on the floor and full of pink foam/slime. I know its slime because I take the balloon off for fear of it bursting and spraying my house with nastiness…LOL So… I had left a good 3-4″ of space at the top of the jug for expansion when this started, but the foam/slime rose right above it and into the balloon. I used 2 large black diamond watermelons which yielded me 2 gallons of juice. Is this normal… or what went wrong?
see below
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Thanks for your comment.
Blog liked, but a lot of unnecessary comments.
Followed the instructions on this page and tried my hand at Watermelon wine. I let’er sit overnight, then added the yeasties. Boy, within four hours the brew was really cookin’, putting out more gas than a fat guy aftr a bean supper. Anyhow, I capped it and got my airlock going. It cooked for about 5-6 days and finally settled down to where it was hardly putting out any gas. I siphoned off the wine, dumped the watermelon pulp in my composer, and got my wine airlocked again to cook until ALL activity ceased, then capped the 5 gallon water jug with an airtight lid. Yesterday, I stopped by, popped off the lid, and took a smell. Whew!!! that stuff was ripe. Smelled sour, and not good enough to even drink. Gonna toss it and try my hand at peach wine. Not sure what I did wrong, but if you can think of anything somebody let me know. Thanks.
That’s strange that it smelled sour. At that stage there should have been enough alcohol in the mix to keep it from being sour. It CAN go to vinegar pretty easy about then but not sour. Strange stuff. I’ve never had that happen but I did have a batch of watermelon go to vinegar so… maybe it’s just hard. 😉
If it’s really humid where you live you might pick up some campden tablets and try using those. They’re designed to kill the bad yeast off and leave the good yest alone (mostly). Just add one crushed campden tablet for every gallon of mix every time you do something major to it. So add them when you add the fruit, let it sit overnight then add the yeast. When you siphon it off into your secondary fermentation add a couple more crushed tablets.
Have another read on what I said about keeping things clean. That’s about the only thing that CAN go wrong. Bleach EVERYthing… siphon hoses, funnels, bottles (even new ones), any tools that you use… everything. It doesn’t take much. Also, when you siphon wine off of the fruit if you’re going to put it back into the same bottle wash it with bleached water (about 1TSP per gallon) and then rinse it with clear water until you have most of the bleach out. Don’t put it back into the bottle without washing it.
Drop me an email at jinksto@gmail.com or post here if you have any questions.
I’m makin some kumquat wine cant wait to see how it turns out
We threw out two batches of watermelon because they soured! We used the campden tablets and went by the book… If anyone can tell us what we did wrong, do tell! That is some rotten smellin stuff!!
made watermelon wine myself and it smelled sour and tasted awful. Watermelon wine must be harder to make than others gotta try something different next time
definitely harder than others. Try something easier first. Mead works great. Or Strawberry… or peach…
Well ive made two AWESOME BATCHES of wine one was watermelon/plum and the last one was red&yellow watermelon,cantalope,blue berries,and red cherries i use 8 pounds of sugar.10-12 pounds of fruit yeast of any kind.4 gallons of water in a 5 gallon bucket…let it sit for 31/2 weeks and you know what too do after this ! !
Watermelon is one of the harder wines to make because of this. The only thing that I can offer is to get the alcohol content as quickly as you can. The alcohol keeps things from souring but watermelon sous quickly. You can also try keeping it cooler to help. If you can make room in the frig that’s ideal but it slows fermentation down. It’s a delicate balance.
im trying a batch of fig hope this works, ill try to keep yall posted on how it goes.
Yeah, please do. I’d love to try a batch of fig if this darn fig tree would ever get it together.
Baking powder is for biscuits. Not yeast. Otherwise, I’m going to print this out and NOT try watermelon wine! Just gonna keep this info handy for when I’ve got some extra fruit of other type.
My sis-in-law made dandelion/lemon juice/rhubarb wine, pretty much to the specifications above (jar, sugar, flowers/fruit/juice, water, bread yeast, and a balloon on top). No measurements, just guessing at it.
GOOD STUFF! And just FYI, it tasted like fruity beer after the initial fermentation slowed. It had definite kick.
Instead of pitching the vinegar (if it were to get to that stage), why not make a fancy-pants Vinaigrette for your salad?
Hmmm, did I say baking powder somewhere? I don’t see it… You’re certainly correct, baking powder has no use… Only yeast :). The intention was to say that any yeast will do.
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Your reference was to “biscuits”. Rolls require yeast, biscuits require baking powder. It was just an “off the wall” comment regarding purloining someone’s yeast.
Ah! Right… nice catch. 🙂
do you have recipe for eldberry wine
I do but I don’t recall where I found it and I’ve not tested it:
Ingredients:
3lb elderberries
3lb sugar
1 lemon
1lb raisins
Yeast
Directions:
Put berries in a sanitized fermenter.
Add one gallon of boiling water
Crush berries.
Add raisins.
Cover and leave for 3 days.
Strain through cheesecloth
Add sugar and stir until dissolved.
Squeeze the lemon and add all the juice.
Start and add yeast.
Cover for 3 days, strain again.
Airlock and leave until bubbling stops (3-5 months).
Rack and bottle.
Age to taste 3-12 months.
If you try it, let us know how it turns out!
I tried elderberry once and adding yeast was the biggest mistake. Elderberries, like grapes, have yeast on their skins. I ended up with a pretty good marinade and a lousy wine. That sucker bubbled forever.
im trying some watermelon wine everything is going good. only thing im wondering about is all the color went to the bottom?Any reason why?
The color comes from the particulates of melon in the wine. As those settle out the wine will become paler. In the end it should have a very light or no color.
Glad to know its not messing up!! the bubbles are fast. should i wait till they slow before i siphon to another carboy? All the other wine i have made (Blueberry, pear) i never siphoned. just let it go till it quit bubbling. turned out really good. thought i might try to clear it up this time.
I would. The fruit is the part that “sours” so if you can get the wine off of it without disturbing too much it might make things a little more stable for you. Just make sure that everything you use for racking it is CLEAN.
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I love this site !I’m sitting here at work cracking up ( I know, work ) but really I have to try this, my box of wine is up to $19.00! Can I just use grape juice from the store as long as all it has in it is grape juice? Thanks
I’m glad you like it. 🙂
You can absolutely use grape juice from the store. A quick google search should net you tons of recipes for that.
Just translate what the recipes say with what I’ve said and you should be fine!
Enjoy and let me know how it turns out!
I make wine by the gallon and have only used fruit juices. I have made grape, black cherry, apple from apple cider and my last 2 were blueberry pomegranate and cran-grape. I put the juice in jug keeping about a cup to melt 3 cups of sugar heating only to dissolve sugar then adding to remaining juice in jug. Then I heat about 1/4 cup water to around 100 degrees and add 1 teaspoon of Fleischmann’s RapidRise yeast stirring and when it starts working or small bubbles I add it to the jug. Jug should not be fuller than about 3 inches from the top. I put the airlock on at this time and about an hour later it starts working. When the airlock bubble slows 2 weeks later I take out a cup of wine and add another cup of sugar to this cup and when dissolved I add it back to the jug. When the bubbles stop total time about 28 days I simple gently pour wine into another jug until dead yeast start mixing in and I leave that in jug and let it settle again and then I keep sipping until nothing but yeast is in bottom and discard. I like to wait if I can about 3 months to drink the good one but sometimes I just have to keep sipping. I keep all mine in frig. and I have some 18 months old and it is great.
Awesome! Thanks for sharing this. I love simple methods.
After reading your most entertaining instructions, I have started 6 gals of watermelon wine. I have made watermelon wine before and produced some nutty flavored pleasant wine which was not super clear. This tme I will be racking it so, for no other reason, it will be more clear. I wlll be adding raisins as a nutrient and, while keeping fingers crossed, will produce a not-too-embarassing wine. Thanks for your help. I will update this as my project progresses.
Please do update.
I am making notes so that I can relate the whole process up to bottling time.
At noon on June 7th I dumped the pulp of 2 seedless watermelons, 10 lb. of sugar, 2 tbsp lemon juice and 2 gals of purified water into my primary 7 1/2 gallon fermenter (bucket). I let it rest overnight for 10 hours and on June 8th I added 2 pkts wine yeast (started) and one small box of raisins as a nutrient for the yeast. 12 hours later I put on the airlock. 7am on June 9th I removed the pulp and racked from the fermenter to a clean 6 gallon carboy. Bubbling nicely! At 1:30pm added 1 more cup of sugar.
June 21 at noon added 5 campden tabs, 1 cup sugar and 2 qts water when bubbles were about 15 seconds apart and now waiting or new or no activity.
June 27 at noon racked to new clean carboy and replaced airlock.
July 1 noon racked to new carboy – getting much clearer and fairly potent.
July 9 at 6pm soaked corks for 1 hour and used auto-siphon (I love this thing) racking cane to fill 16-750ml and 3-1.5L bottles. It’s all at 16% and have been sipping some. I want to thank you for the many tips I took from this blog. I hope others will have better fortune with their watermelon wine. I made watermelon rind pickles and now have watermelon pulp in the freezer for my next batch of wine. Need more bottles first.
Fantastic! Thanks for the update. I”m glad you found this useful. 🙂
First time wine maker.Trying my hand at Mustang grape wine. Followed a recipe that called for 1 gallon juice after cooked and stained, 1 gallon sugar, 1 gallon water, a piece of bread crust sprinkled with yeast. Cover with dish cloth, ferment 3 days,srain, wash crock put back in to ferment 4 days stirring everyday skimming foam, strain again, ferment 4 more days strain the wine and bottle!?!? Total of 11 days. I haven’t bottled yet because it’s still really sweet. Is there anything I can do to cut the sweetness? If I let it sit longer? Will it hurt to leave it in the carboy capped?
Iwould like to know if anyone has made blueberry/watermelon wine. I was planning on using a rolling pin lightly over the blueberries first. Any suggestions? Otherwise, I will probably handle it the same as I did the watermelon wine.
My last batch of watermelon wine turned out perfect. I made nearly 50 gallon. The problem that a lot of you’ll are having, concerning spoiling and/or going bad could be because you are stirring the pulp and juice instead of taking a wooden spoon and pushing down the cap below the juice once or twice a day. This keeps any of the pulp from sitting on top to long. The spoiling will start on top. When you stir, there will always be a little bit that wont go down in the juice. To much contact with the oxygen in the air will start the process of going bad. When you get it right, Watermelon wine will make a rabbit hug a hound.
I hope this helps.
Excellent advice! Thanks for sharing!
Strained…. Should’ve put on my glasses! Also, carboy is 2/3 full should I top it off? With more juice from the grapes? Or water? Or should I go ahead and bottle it and maybe with age it will be less sweet? It’s also still pretty cloudy.
Don’t top it off this late int he process. I’d be very careful about bottling something that hasn’t finished fermenting yet. If the wine is still pushing bubbles putting it in bottles won’t stop that. It’ll just cause your bottles to explode.
Sweetness comes from sugar. If it’s too sweet that means the yeast haven’t finished converting sugar into alcohol. I’d say put an airlock on it and wait for the gas to stop.
Wine is about 4 weeks old. I haven’t seen any bubbles in the airlock since I put it on a week ago. I can taste the alcohol but it’s still really sweet and kind of thick. ( my daughter said she felt like she should have a piece of toast with it lol) its not THAT thick maybe about like a liqueur. I have read a few articles that say to re-pitch the yeast if it’s too sweet. So I added wine yeast yesterday. What they don’t say is should I put the airlock back on at this point or let it get air? Doesn’t yeast need air?
Strained…. Should’ve put on my glasses! Also, carboy is 2/3 full should I top it off? With more juice from the grapes? Or water? Or should I go ahead and bottle it and maybe with age it will be less sweet? It’s also still pretty cloudy.
seems you should have poked a few small holes in the balloon before placing it on. That lets the gas escape slowly and doesn’t allow air to get in.
So the slime/foam is normal?
We are trying this recipe with Muscadine grapes. We used 10 lbs grapes and 5 lbs sugar. Should I add a can of 100 percent grape juice or frozen concentrate to add color. I’m afraid It will not have the muscadine flavor.
You shouldn’t need the additional grape juice. However, if the recipe calls for it you can add either concentrate or juice.
We are trying this recipe with Muscadine grapes. We used 10 lbs grapes and 5 lbs sugar. Should I add a can of 100 percent grape juice or frozen concentrate to add color. I’m afraid It will not have the muscadine flavor.
sorry didn’t mean to post twice.
Should I add more yeast?
I love this. I starting my first batch of blackberry and a batch of Plum. Since both were very plentiful this yr. I’ll let ya know how it does. I do things simple here where I live and it is time for wine! So here I go I’m divin in!
That rocks! Let us know how it turns out!
LOL… this thread got mentioned as “scary stuff” by a Wine lover. That makes me giggle a little:
http://www.westcoastwine.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=376215&gonew=1
10 days into my first batch of apple wine. The specific gravity is .990 and is sharp/bitter to taste. The batch is very cloudy and has very little fermentation going on, not bubbling much at all. I added 2 cups of sugar and put my airlock back on. Any ideas on what’s going on and how i can correct this ?
We don’t use hydrometers around her but .99 is pretty good. Personally, I’d leave the lock on it and let it sit for few weeks in a cool place. The cloudiness will fall out of it eventually and you can rack it off. Much of the taste is coming from the cloudiness.
Wait it out.
We started a batch of blackberry wine in September. It turned out great. We took the redneck part a little further and sealed it in mason jars. Dang this stuff is good. Planted strawberries in the greenhouse house yesterday. I guess you know what we will be doing with them.
That’s awesome! Just make sure that they fermentation has stopped completely to avoid exploding mason jars! 🙂 Let us know how the strawberry turns out.
Hey! This is 2013, and I’m late as usual, but I’m here and So What?. I started makin’ wine back in the early ’70’s after I got out of Uncle Sam’s Jamboree and found a haven in a leaky ol’ trailer way back of beyond and worked on a farm with an old gent for $1.00 an hour and found. Me and my cat. I bottled my stuff in 2 liter jugs and went with what yeast beasties happened to drop in. Most was decent but now and agin I got some nasty stuff. I since moved to the city because of various reasons. The old man died and his kin didn’t want me around bein’ the major reason and Mom needed some cheap labor to remodel her kitchen was another’n – free room and board works good for me – she got her money’s worth but I digress. Since then I tried makin’ wine like I did back in the boonies BUT most of it was nastified. I think that was because the yeast beasties that live in the city are not as nice as the country types, just like most people. I spent money ($.99 a pack) for honest-to-goodness wine yeast which works pretty good. I was told that Lalvin EC-1118 was good by some folks on the ‘net and they were right. I’m drinkin’ some of my Mixed Goodies right now and I’d better stop at two pint Mason jars or I’ll be lookin’ for trouble.
I’m late gettin’ here, like I said but I’m here and I’m ready to pour my 3rd pint of Mixed Stuff (watch out for yer daughters) but I mean well. I’m contemplating some mater wine after my cherry maters ripen. Should make a neat sauce for a pizza, huh? Or a chaser; whatever.
Oh, yeah, afore I get lost, call me Snert (but not late for breakfast) and I live in south central Indiana and I like cats, home-grown guitar music, hand-rolled goodies and bitchin’ ’bout the gov’ment while sittin’ on the back porch watchin’ the sun go down drinkin my own stuff with Furbutt purrin’ in my lap.
I’d post my Email so’s anybody who’d want to could holler at me but I ain’t sure I can do that here. If the guy that runs this don’t block me, here ya go >>>nala_kcirtap@yahoo.com<<< gimme a yell, I double-dog dare you – I WILL answer but I can't promise I'll be polite, just honest.
Thanks for sharin’.
I used 4lbs rhubarb-2lbs strawberrys=1lb cherrys-1 cup raisens-3 oranges and 2 lemons for my wine.Added 3 gallons boiling water let sit for 4 days and strained.Then added 5 lbs sugar and 4 crushed campden tablets and 2 pks of wine yeast.Let sit and stired for 6 days.sealed and added air lock.24 hours later no bubbles.Cleaned everything that touched my wine. What can I do?
I used 4lbs rhubarb-2lbs strawberrys=1lb cherrys-1 cup raisens-3 oranges and 2 lemons for my wine.Added 3 gallons boiling water let sit for 4 days and strained.Then added 5 lbs sugar and 4 crushed campden tablets and 2 pks of wine yeast.Let sit and stired for 6 days.sealed and added air lock.24 hours later no bubbles.Cleaned everything that touched my wine. What can I do?
Did it ever bubble? Are you sure that your airlock is sealed? If it’s not any CO2 created by fermentation will escape around the airlock rather than through it.
The most likely cause of problems is a bad yeast, a bad yeast start or adding campden and yeast at the same time… which it soundslike you did. Just start another batch of yeast as defined on the yeast packaging and add it in.
If your wine was in a warmer area six days might have been enough time for the yeast to consume all of the sugar… have a taste and see if it’s still sweet? If it’s not, add another pound of sugar and see what happens.
Well, what a cool little site to share homemade ‘redneck’ wine makin’ experiences. haha. I’ve been making ‘redneck’ wine for years and never new it had a name. Here’s my method. I got a couple of those large plastic containers with the big plastic screw on lids, like you might get jalepenos in, for example – I think they’re close to a gallon. I first boil a little water in a pan and pour a bit in, screw on the lid, and give it a real good shaking so the boiling water contacts all the surfaces, then, dump the water out – be careful not to burn yourself. I then take Welch’s frozen concord 100% frozen grape juice, and dump one in, followed by 3 of the Welches containers full of tap water, straight out of the faucet, – I don’t give anything a chance to touch anything else and cross contaminate, repeat with a second frozen Welches and 3 water fills from it’s container, then I follow up with what I guess to be about 2 cups of sugar, maybe a little bit less. I don’t measure, I just eyeball it and pour it right out of the bag – again, eliminating the opportunity for contamination. I then proof some yeast in a coffee cup. First I treat the coffee cup and a teaspoon with a little boiling water. Then, I turn on the hot water spigot, and just before the hot water from the water tank gets to it, right when it’s just warm to the feel to your wrist, fill your coffee cup about 2/3rds full. Add about 1/2 packet of yeast, I just use the Fleishman’s available in any grocery store, sometimes I add the whole packet, but I’ve found 1/2 packet usually will do the trick – to your warm water in your sterilized coffee cup and stir and splash with your sterilized spoon, give it a minute to get kind of frothy looking, and dump it into your container with the grape juice and sugar concoction. Screw the lid on, but then loosen it about 1/3 turn so that the gas can escape once fermintation starts. Put in up in a dark cabinet and leave it alone for at least 3 days, you can check on it, and it should be very active those first three days. After about the 5th day you can actually carefully pour out a small sample and taste it, it should be well on it’s way. Let it do it’s thing and after about 2 weeks it will be drinkable. About that time I sometimes ‘kick it’ with a little sugar, add the sugar slowly !!! You could end up with a volcano!!! By the second month it’s usually pretty good and my friends and I are usually ‘sampling’ it to the point that it never sees a third month and then I gotta do it all over again !!! Anyway, no hydrometers or fancy equipment. As stated previously, the paramount things are 1) sanitation. 2) Sanitation. 3) Sanitation – and it’s hard to go wrong. Also, better a little less sugar than too much, you can always ‘kick it’ later, and I usually do. Also, I have found it works best in the summer months when my house is about 78 degrees, and I think the ‘dark’ cabinet is important too.
Now the real reason I ended up here is because I am trying something new. My local store threw out a bunch of long stemmed ‘sweet cherries’ still in the plastic zip lock like baggies in the back the other day – yes I was dumpster diving, and for the heck of it I grabbed a few, took them home , rinsed them in a collander put them in the fridge and munched on them for a couple of days. Suddenly I wondered if there was such a thing as ‘cherry wine’ and indeed there is. I spent about an hour de-stemming, squashing and de-pitting the cherries by hand. I then poured near boiling water over the cleaned cherries in the collander, and put that, and the liquid from underneath in my fermenting gallon jug and did my usual thing with the sugar and yeast. Never tried this before, but I tasted the cherry-sugar conconction before I added the yeast…….mmmmm….mmm, tasty!! I’m sure it would have made a great frozen smoothie. Anyway, I’ll let it cook and see how it goes and report back later.
Look forward to your update!
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Added More yeast still no bubbles.Seems all sugar is gone.I now have added 4 pks of yeast to my 4 gals.Been 2 wks.
throw out- or can I add more sugar and then more yeast?
Try adding 2 cups of sugar and see if that kicks things back into action. A stuck fermentation isn’t always a reason to discard everything. Does it taste sweet?
I actually start tasting mine starting on about day 3, by day 5 it should actually begin to resemble wine, a good deal of the sweetness will be gone, it will have a strong alcohol smell, and if you swish a little around in your mouth and get it between your cheeks and gums you’ll get that pleasant and familiar tingling sensation, breath in and out through your nose at the same time and it should be pleasant experience, but you’ll know you’ve still got a ways to go. If something has gone horribly wrong you’ll also have a pretty good idea about that time too, for example, if you’ve made vinegar, there’s nothing you can do except use it to clean your toilet and leason learned, sanitize everything for the next batch. Don’t be afraid to taste it though before you start just dumping in more yeast and sugar. You’ll ruin it with too much sugar, I try to err on the side of not enough sugar and then if the fermentation has stopped sooner than you expect, taste it, if it is very dry tasting, add a little sugar at a time and watch for a reaction, and then give it some more time.
My grape batches, as I’ve mentioned, are coming along fine and I’ve been taking little samples, something seemed ‘strange’ with my first time cherry batch and it’s been a full week now and I’ll give it another taste tonight before I figure out how to proceed.
Hey, I am using 10 lbs of muscadine grapes. Do I need to crush these or just leave whole with the hulls on? Thanks
yes, crush the mascadines. You can use a potato masher to do it… 🙂
Good luck, and let us know how it comes out!
Did you ever see “I Love Lucy”? Not to be brash but, yes, you do have to crush the grapes.
Why, haven’t you seen the old “I Love Lucy’ episode where they go to Italy (or maybe it’s France?) and a movie producer wants Lucy for a bit part in a movie about wine making? So, on her own Lucy decides to ‘research’ wine making and goes out to the country side to a winery and is soon barefoot in a huge wooden tub with other local girls stomping on the grapes in preparation for the wine making.
So yes, you crush the grapes! Wash your feet first though!!!!!!
Ellen: LOL I didn’t see your posting before I made mine, great minds think alike, eh?
UPDATE:
My grape wine turned out quite good, which was not surprising, it’s really hard to go wrong with Welch’s 100% grape juice, sugar, yeast and sanitized containers, and actually got drank by myself and friends the other evening, and it’s all gone! Oh well, I prefer to let it age and get better, but sometimes, that’s just the way it goes and it barely makes it to the one month mark before it gets drunk, or drank.
My cherry wine adventure didn’t work out, I knew something was wrong by day 3 when i tasted it, but I gave it a full 3 weeks anyway, the end result was something that tasted like dirty socks soaked in turpentine and dirty baby diapers. In other words, it was horrid, so down the drain it went, it was only a gallon – so, apparently, simply pouring the near boiling water over the cherries was not adequate.
So, a couple days ago I found about maybe 15 pounds or more of pears all in a large bag tossed behind the grocery store dumpster. The pears were nice and ripe, but too ripe to stay on the grocers shelves for selling, so they were tossed and on a whim I grabbed them and brought them home. I did a little googling on making pear wine, and part of what is said is that surplus pears, and pears fallen off the tree, and quite ripe pears are perfect for making pear wine. Free pears behind the grocery store, the price is certainly right!
With my disasterous, albeit valid learning experience from my cherry wine attempt, I approached making pear wine a little different. This time I rinsed them off and put them in a large pot, probably about a 3 or 4 gallon size, I think it might be stainless steel, but it’s a nice large clean pot with 2 large handles, and with clean hands, squashed all the pears into a pulp, pulling out stems and seeds and a good deal of the skin here and there. I then filled it to near the top with water and mixed it all real good. Then I put the pot in my (gas) oven and set it to 205 degrees F for 2 hours, the idea was to kill all the bacteria and wild yeasts, but not boil it, and left it in the oven even after the oven shut off, so it stayed good and hot for hours – but never boiled, and let it sit in there overnight, covered with a clean towel.
The next day I got 3 of my plastic containers with wide mouth screw on lids, washed and rinsed them well, and then swished around boiling water in them to sanitize them, and then stirred my pear concoction from the pot in the oven, now well cooled to room temp, and poured those into my plastic containers, and put them in the dark cabinet, with lids slightly loose.
I waited 2 days, checking on them, and shaking them from time to time, there is absolutely NOTHING going on, no reactions, no fermentation, no nothing, so apparently the 205 degree oven adventure must have killed any and all wilds yeasts and bacterias.
So today, I added yeast and sugar to each container, shook well, and returned them to the dark cabinet. We’ll see how it goes.
I am worried that I added to much sugar or didn’t measure correctly to the wine I started about 3 days ago. Is there anything I can do or is it too late? Thanks
That depends on how badly you messed it up. 🙂 How much sugar did you use? How much liquid?
Is it bubbling and foaming and fizzing? Only day 3? It’s okay to take off the top, shake it up, and with a STERILE spoon, take a taste…… it should taste like it’s ‘working’. and ‘getting there’. Give it a little more time.
Ok thanks! I will let ya know. Hope I’m not pestering you to death lol
Tastes great so far
Awesome!
Last posted on July 29th.I have 5lbs rubarb-2lbs cherries-2lbs strawberries-3 oranges-2 lemons and 1 cu of raisins.
added 5lbs sugar and to packets of yeast.Sarted to smell like beer added air lock no bubbles.Waited a week added 2lbs sugar – 1 can fruit punch and yeast which was working.Waited again stiring every day.Put air lock back on and still no bubbles.Wait could not taste the sugar at all.Didn’t taste bad though.So i added another 5 lbs of sugar stiring everyday to make sure it was disolved and added another can of fruit punch and then 2 pks of yeast when it started to work.Waited 4 days and added air lock and still no bubbles.I know my airlock don’t leak.Any ideas
try locking it immediately. I’ve come to believe that leaving it unlocked for a few days causes more problems than it’s worth.
I must say I really admire your writing style…somehow you manage to make every post funny, informative, sarcastic, insightful, and just plain AWESOME, all at the same time.Thanks for making me appreciate the little things in life even more. Keep up the good work!
Your information has been so helpful, Thanks, we have had very good luck with our wines. We use fruit nectar we have canned from fruit leftover at farmers market.
A quart of nectar a few cups of sugar little orange juice and yeast. Wa La, in a couple of months a fine dry fruit wine Thanks for all the great, fun to read information!!
I’m glad you found the site useful! 🙂
Bottled my wine up this past weekend. I am so pleased with it! Thank you very much for making it much less intimidating. I am now one of them there vintners I suppose!
This is excellent! Thanks for sharing and don’t forget to share your wine with friend. It really does taste better when you shares it.