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I pretty much followed those instructions. The only deviatation was I used juice concentrate instead of grape juice, a variety of flavors (mostly some blend). I used an old water bottle from the water fountain at work and some tubing from an old Camelbak to make a water lock, all bleached and rinsed. This morning I eagerly rushed to check on it and was please to see a bubble pop once every 3-5 seconds. I’m going to wait until the bubbling stops then rack it like Wiki says. If there is no more bubbling, I’m bottling.
It seems too easy, I can’t wait to see how it turns out. If it’s decent, I’ll be overjoyed. 5 gallons of booze for $17!
My grandmother made wine when I was a kid. When she died, Mom decided to make wine on her own. We didn’t have grapes, but we did have a lot of blackberries and plums. So she sets this off for a few weeks, then decides it didn’t ferment enough (still too sweet) and added more yeast and set it off again.
We ended up with blackberry-plum brandy. And I have been looking for this deep rich flavor since I was 12 years old.
Don’t be surprised if you need to rack to a third fermenter after another month. If you’re going to be bottling into standard wine bottles, you need to be really, really sure fermentation’s done before you bottle.
Unless you like messes in your basement involving wine & broken glass, of course.
Ok, this is the kind of stuff I need. Doesn’t putting the mess in the refrigerator stop the whole process? Like, if I taste it and it isn’t too sweet and is “alcohol-y” enough, can’t I just put the brakes on the thing?
I remember being at the babysitter’s house and she send us out to pick dandelion flowers by the grocery sack. The basement had 5 gallon jugs with big inflated balloons. My grandpa’s homemade wine was better than most the stuff for sale.
I’ve made hundreds of gallons of home-made wine. What you are making will be plonk. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t expect subtle flavors or anything.
If you really want to get into it, there are winemaking supply stores that will sell you varietal must.
For the all-time cheap booze award, make mead. Get bulk honey from a supplier, mix with water (or better yet, apple juice) and add champagne yeast. Wait too long. Bottle and drink.
This is the kind of process that will give you fast cheap booze. It’s going to be really rough and might taste like rocket fuel but it will get you drunk.
If that’s your only goal you’re good, but if you ever want to take a little more time and get a **lot **more quality out of your efforts go check out this place…good people.
I’ve done beer–it’s always turned out quite nicely. Cider I did once–it was not too hot, but I didn’t go all out on the juice. I’ve never done wine. I was at the homebrew shop for champagne yeast for soda to amuse the kids and looked at prices on wine stuff–sheesh, I think I’ll stick to beer.
Mead is on my list, though. I definitely want to make some sometime.
From my cider experience, I’m betting your wine won’t be too thrilling. But then, it might surprise you. And if you’re not too picky about flavors, maybe you could bottle in 2l plastic soda bottles. That way, if they get tight you can just loosen the caps a bit.
The soda we made does seem to be still fermenting, even in the fridge. It’s slow, but the bottles are definitely tighter the next morning. I’ve been wondering what might happen if I left some in the fridge for, say, a month. But I’m not sure I’m brave enough to try it.
WoooHooo! My ten minutes of fame! I wrote that article. I’m in Saudi and this is the way we do it here. A few things I should have put in the article. We use Rauch grape juice here as it comes in a heavy green bottle with a snap-top arrangement like an old Grolsch beer bottle. The bottles and tops are heavy enough that they won’t explode on you. This shouldn’t be a problem as long as the fermentation is finished.
As Silenus says, this is plonk. OTOH, (John F) it does NOT taste like rocket fuel.
There are a lot of games you can play with this, using diffierent types of grape juices and yeasts.
You can occasionally kick off the fermentation a second time by adding some additional sugar-water after the third week. OTOH, if you get too much sugar, the finished product will taste something like port, very sweet, with a high alcohol content.
I use champaigne yeast when I can get it (rarely) but bakers yeast works well enough. The good thing about the champaigne yeast is that it generates more alcohol before it dies and it tends to sink to the bottom faster, resulting in a higher-proof, clearer wine.
As an oh-by-the-way, you can usually recycle the yeast at least a couple of times. Save the mung in the bottom of your fermenter and use it to seed your next batch of wine.
You can also clear the wine (usually) by adding half an egg-white mixed with a cup of water to the fermenter after fermentation is complete. Only use half the egg-white, more is NOT better. S
A couple of warnings. I’m not sure about using those other fruit juices. I’ve tried that a few times and the result can be strange. Not necessarily bad, just odd. I have added a couple of bottles of sour cherry to a batch of wine and that turned out well enough that I’ll do it again.
The other thing is the use of bleach. I’ve used it but had a hell of a time getting the smell out afterwards. This whole process isn’t that picky as far as sterility goes. I’ve never had a batch go bad due to bacterial contamination.
Regards
I’ve made something like 'shine a few times. In Saudi it is known as “Sid” and usually goes for about $100/liter. The shine here is between 175 - 185 proof. A real moonshiner from Arkansas was at my house once and I gave him some. His comment was; “This seems more like something that was stolen from a lab.”
Anyway, making shine like they make it here is a beast of a job. The basic ferment is pure sugar and water. Fermenting other things generates other alcohols, some of which might not be good for you if concentrated by distillation.
Most of the manufacturers here use stainless-steel reflux stills instead of the old “worm” type. In general, after the ferment is finished, you have to distill it a minimum of 3 times, four is better.
If you want to do this, take a look on the 'net for something called “The Blue Flame.” This was a magazine issued by ARAMCO about 30 years ago that showed how to distill without either poisoning yourself or blowing up your house.
Hey, the man that wrote “the book” on hobo wine! Cool.
In my poking around reading up on this, it seemed that the 2 things most stressed were having a clean environment (bacteria free as possible) starting out, and that air not be allowed back into the system. Hence, the bleach and airlock. I rinsed everything until I couldn’t smell bleach anymore. We’ll see.
It was bubbling pretty good this morning before I left for work, a good plop about every second! I don’t think I’ll have the patience to wait 3 weeks, I’ll be anxious to test it after 2. What could go wrong? A low alcohol content? Too sweet?
Great news. Good to hear that your wine is going well.
Like I say, I’ve never had a batch go bad because of bacterial contamination but I’m certainly not going to argue against cleanliness. As far as checking the wine after two weeks, go ahead. I always siphon out a bit during the ferment to see if it’s going to be OK. As you say, the alcohol content will be low and the wine will be a bit sweet but it should give you some idea of what it’ll taste like.
On another topic. I wrote a little blurb about distilling and after I posted, I noticed that I hadn’t mentioned that distilling is seriously illegal in the US. Of course, it’s illegal over here as well but nobody pays much mind to it.
