I need to buy a Christmas gift for a guy who makes down-home wine from local fruits (starfruit, jaboticaba, cape gooseberry, whatever). I don’t think he uses any fancy methods or supplies - I’ve seen 5-gallon paint buckets with wine-in-progress, so I’m pretty sure he’s not using specialized jugs, gooseneck tubes, special yeast, etc.
I doubt he’d bother with a fancy wine-making kit, but is there anything specific (hopefully not more than $30) that I could get that he might enjoy using in his wine-making, without adding a lot of work to his method? I was thinking maybe a special wine-making yeast or something, but I don’t really know.
A case or two of empty wine bottles, available at your friendly neighborhood homebrewing/vintning store. You could also go the route of probably getting him a gift certificate at the store, if it’s his local store, too. If you’re sneaky, you could ask him how he learned about winemaking and see if he mentions what books he read, then ask the guys at the store what other books might be a good idea.
Oddly enough, some homebrewers are rather catholic in their choice of equipment, so what he’s using may be what he wants to use. Might be that the gift certificate would be your best bet. Also, you could include an IOU, half the price of a batch of wine in exchange for half the batch.
Good suggestions so far. As a former wine-maker I’d suggest:
A good bottle corker. Usually the ones that come with the kits are quite cheap. Not sure the cost of a good one though.
A glass carboy. For me carboys were always the limiting factor on how many batches I could have on the go at one time. For that I’d look in Craigslist or somewhere like that for a used one.
True this. For example, he may have his one and only favorite yeast and entertains no other, or he might be a yeast head that would LOVE getting yeast isolated from the thought to be extinct Pure Nacional variety of cacao rediscovered in the remote Marañón River Canyon in Peru.* Hard to say.
That said, your friend doesn’t seem overly finicky if he uses paint buckets to ferment in.
I second a gift certificate to the local homebrew supply store (or home depot) is probably your best bet. He can pick whatever he likes. I’m a homebrewer and certainly would appreciate getting a gift certificate to pick out something I want.
*I enjoy experimenting with different kinds of yeast, but once was enough for that Peruvian stuff
I’d consider one of the newer PET carboys(like a “Better Bottle”), if I was going to buy one these days. They’re considerably lighter, just as impervious to everything, and unbreakable.
Glass carboys, on the other hand, are heavy, breakable and very slippery when wet.
I make wine. Standard practice for home wine makers is to do the primary fermentation in food-grade plastic buckets. Your friend might truly be using paint buckets, but the food-grade ones look pretty much the same, so it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s cutting corners.
Amen to this. And as kayaker said, a floor corker is the way to go. A new one is probably $80-100, but I got a nice one off Craigslist for $40.
And various sizes, depending on his typical batch size. You want to minimize the headspace in your carboys (i.e., don’t have half-filled ones), so it’s nice to have a 3-gallon and a couple 1-gallons so everything fits nicely.
I was going to say, I’ve never used a cork soaker. Then I followed the link.
The suggestion of nice labels is also a good one. Forget the yeast idea, people don’t really use specialty yeasts. The cheap ones are the best.
@ bump - I agree wth the PET carboys, but the OP is on a tight budget. I was thinking a used glass one would be more in keeping with that.
My wife gave me a stand up corker, which was good, but I don’t think it was cheap.
@Troutman - as a former winemaker, I agree totally on the book idea, good idea. Find one with recipes for different types of wine like fruit wines, dandelion wine, mead etc. I found after a couple years I got really bored with the kits. I moved into buying actual grape juices then moved into fruits
Of course, as my apprentice a key part of her role was cork soaking…
