How to Make Wine for the Beginner

Beginners are always welcome in the winemaking community.

If you've dismissed the urge to make wine because the amount of time, money and space required to do it properly seems overwhelming, check your kitchen pantry and you'll probably find that you have these essentials on hand: a food processor or blender, sugar and yeast. Your most critical decision will be the choice of grapes, apples, plums or another fruit.

Things You'll Need

• Large plastic tub(s) with lid
• Electric juicer, food processor or fruit press
• Glass fermentation container(s) or jug(s)
• Airlock
• Yeast
• Fruit
• Sugar
• Sterilizing solution or bleach
• Wine bottles
• Wine corks

Instructions

1. Estimate the amount of fruit you'll need by gathering enough produce to fill your fermentation container. Using this rule of thumb will keep you from having to add water to fill it, diluting the taste of the finished product. Wondering how to prep the fruit? Start with freshly ripened grapes, peaches, apples or other produce. Place it into plastic bags (top open) it in a cool area to soften further. Hasten the ripening by leaving the fruit out in a warm room until it's soft. Here's the litmus test: Once you can push the skin off the fruit with your fingers, it's time to make wine.

2. Pulverize the fruit using your blender, electric juicer or fruit press. If you like to get down and dirty, demolish your fruit by hand or don foot coverings and stomp your fruit until it's pulverized. Some home wine makers recommend boiling the fruit to make a liquid reduction, but you may not want to dilute the intensity of your early efforts, so go heavy on the fruit. If you do decide to add liquid, soak the fruit in a little water for a few days to produce a concentrated base.

3. Add sugar to sweeten the fruit blend and trigger fermentation. Sugar dissolves most efficiently when added to warm ingredients, so follow the lead of some wine makers and heat the fruit mix before you add the sugar. As a rule of thumb, use two lbs. of sugar per gallon of juice/pulp for your trial run. If you like to experiment, use several containers to produce multiple wine samplings and add different amounts of sugar to see which tastes best. Remember to mark the containers to keep track of the sugar content.

4. Sterilize the fermentation vessel(s) thoroughly using a commercial wine sterilization agent or a bleach solution or boil everything. Seasoned wine makers insist that the secret to good wine depends as much on sterile equipment as it does on fruit and the yeast.

5. Mix your yeast with warm water according to package directions. It will take about 15 minutes to activate. While it's doing it's that, sterilize any equipment that hasn't been cleaned. After it's activated, pour the yeast mixture and the fruit into the fermentation vessel. If you like your wine sweet, feel free to add more sugar at this point.

6. Maintain a room temperature of about 70 degrees to kick-start fermentation. Look for bubbling in the airlock; this indicates that the proper chemical action is taking place between the sugars and the yeast. If you don't see this signature bubbling after a day or so, you may have made a fixable common mistake by keeping the room too cool or subjecting the brew to drafts or cool air. Correct this and you should see bubbles just as soon as the mix feels the temperature change.

7. Exercise patience while your wine cures. It's OK to taste the wine as it matures, but follow this rule: Remove the airlock, lower a sterile turkey baster into the wine to retrieve a sample and then replace the airlock. You might find your brew reaching maximum perfection earlier than you had projected.

8. Remove the wine from its warm environment when the taste is right and it's time to bottle. Put the wine into cold storage for a week to allow it to settle or use paper filters to remove undesirable residue.

References

• Wineswire
• Grapebook
• Tips for beginners

Resources

• Help with Fruit Selection