Anybody makin' their own homemade wine? :D

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PopPopT

PopPopT

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The topic came up on another thread and it was suggested maybe it should have it's own.

Anybody makin' their own homemade wine? Or other happy tonics beverages for medicinal purposes?? ;) ;)

I know some people make quite the process out of it while others add a little plain ol' yeast and a little sugar to some cheap fruit juice, and a few weeks (or months, or years) later, wine!

Thought maybe it's something that might be interesting to read about, what you may like or what you may be doing at home.

:)
 
I made wine in the past. The trick is to make a bubbler to allow the gasses out but no air in. You can buy these simple units for a few bucks or you can make your own. Starting out I taped a beer bottle, half+ full of water on the side of my 5 gallon bucket with a tight lid. I put a fitting through the lid with a clear rubber tube run well into the water. It would bubble away allowing me to track how much my wine was working. Sorry, I don't have a recipe anymore.

I made fireweed wine once that was pretty good but picking that much fireweed was a PITA. The huckleberry wine I did a few times so I must have liked it.
 
i used to buy wine kits and make a couple cases every year. got them from homebrew shops or online, used to run around $50-60 and it was actually pretty good. this reminds me i still got cases of old wine bottles and stoppers in the basement. i wonder if i got a old wine kit sitting down there too, lol. i really liked the chardonnay, cabernet. my brother used to buy beer kits and make batches of that and bottle and really liked it.

just checked amazon, theres some on sale now for about $45, it was fun to do and you can get 5-6 gallons opf wine out of it. i might get a couple , if the worlds going to poop we still need wine and chocolate, right?
 
Heck yeah! I've made countless batches of wine (homemade and from kits) and mead. I just bottled a couple cases of cabernet merlot and I've got a pinot grigio kit on deck which I'll get started this week.

The best mead I've made is using 5lb of buckwheat, 5lb of wildflower and 5lb of plain 'ol clover honey. Top that off with spring water and EC-1118 yeast and it comes out really well.

Homemade wine has been wild grape (essentially Sangria) and blueberry. Both came out quite well. Kits, though, are inexpensive, they produce very drinkable wine, and the yield is good.

A buddy and I are looking to plant a mini vinyard at his farm. We'll do several varietals. Looking at a reasonable press, so I'm open to recommendations.

I've had good luck with Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, but again, I welcome recommendations for other/better/hardier yeasts.

EDIT: It's essential to have the proper fermentation bucket, carboy, airlock, siphon and sanitation equipment. None of this is expensive and it makes all the difference. You DO NOT want oxidized wine. That's what they call "vinegar". :)
 
My dad made wine once, when I was a teenager. I think we ended up using it to clean corrosion off of car parts.

I have a friend who makes lots of wine. Or half-makes it. There are businesses here that have customers come in to work with basic wine stock. Lots of different stocks to start out with, made from different grapes (and I assume, different processes). They host tasting parties of various samples of wines made from these stocks. The customers find something that is close to their preference and then tell the business "I'd like this a tad sweeter" (or more tart, etc.) The customers then alter the basic wine stocks under the direction of the business to achieve their goal. Then they go away for several months as the wine ages. The customers come back and bottle their wine, add labels (many make custom labels on their computers), and then go home to enjoy it with substantial savings over buying ready to go wine in a liquor store. I have had several drinks of my friends wines over the years and they have always been quite good. When using this business, you do have to make a minimum purchase. Maybe a case or two (a dozen or two dozen bottles maybe).

I am not sure this business is still going on at the moment, with covid restrictions and all. It may be defunct,or in hibernation.
 
Caribou said:
The trick is to make a bubbler to allow the gasses out but no air in.
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This reminds me of something that happened years ago, not with making wine, but with some fresh apple cider.

There is a place in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Kauffman's) that makes some of the best apple cider I've ever had. The stuff is rich. But it has absolutely no preservatives in it whatsoever. Just apples, that's it. It's delicious, but it doesn't stay "fresh" very long at all and fermentation proceeds quickly, even if unopened.

I think it was back sometime in the very early 2000's. My wife and I had visited PA and bought a few extra gallons of cider to take home with us, back to Louisiana. We kept it in the cooler on the trip home and in the fridge once we got there. But we bought more than we probably should have and if we were gonna keep it around, should have put the extra in the freezer. Oops.

Over the course of the first week, what were drinking got a bit of a "whang" to it, still good stuff. But after that, the rest of it, another 2 gallons if I recall, started to make the plastic gallon jugs it was bottled in bulge. So, I figured, it wasn't good anymore and decided it needed to go down the drain. :(

To my surprise, and I should have known better, when I removed the little zip thingy that goes around the top of the lid, there was an explosion out of the top of that jug putting fermented apple cider all over that part of the kitchen with a serious concentration of it dripping from the ceiling. LOL!! No one was hurt, but it was quite the mess to clean up. (I don't remember how I dealt with the second jug, but there was extreme caution involved.)

Knowing what I know now, perhaps I threw away the "good stuff". My dad always used to like it best when it got a little "whang" going. ;)

Anyway, brought back a memory and figured maybe someone else might get a chuckle, too. :)
 
Meerkat said:
We knew an old man in Woolsey, Ga. who made muscadine wine,now that stuff would light you up!
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Our current bottle (we don't drink any bottle all in one sitting unless we have company and we're all having some) is a bottle of muscadine wine. It's good. I think my wife likes it better than I do. We tend to like a "sweet wine" better than a "dry wine". We still have one bottle left, from a place over in North Carolina, I believe, Hinnant Winery, one called "Gimme Some Sugar" that is next after this one. I like the name. :) Hey, we're not talkin' expensive stuff here, I think it was like $6.
 
PopPopT said:
Our current bottle (we don't drink any bottle all in one sitting unless we have company and we're all having some) is a bottle of muscadine wine. It's good. I think my wife likes it better than I do. We tend to like a "sweet wine" better than a "dry wine". We still have one bottle left, from a place over in North Carolina, I believe, Hinnant Winery, one called "Gimme Some Sugar" that is next after this one. I like the name. :) Hey, we're not talkin' expensive stuff here, I think it was like $6.
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I don't like dry wine either, of course the sweeter the wine the less alcohol but thats ok too.
 
Terri9630 said:
I prefer to use my grapes to make jelly. I get fewer headaches and no one sneaks it out of the frig.
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When I planted my grape vines a few years ago, jelly is also what I had in mind. And then they turned out to not be the concord grapes I thought I planted, but some kind of a white grape. Still good, but I'm not crazy about white grape jelly, we made some. Might be better for wine than jelly. I need to plant some more grapes, and hope I actually get a good "jelly grape" this time.
 
PopPopT said:
When I planted my grape vines a few years ago, jelly is also what I had in mind. And then they turned out to not be the concord grapes I thought I planted, but some kind of a white grape. Still good, but I'm not crazy about white grape jelly, we made some. Might be better for wine than jelly. I need to plant some more grapes, and hope I actually get a good "jelly grape" this time.
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I planted concord grapes last summer, hoping they survive winter.
 
Bacpacker said:
I'd like to try Mead sometime. I've had it a few times and it is tasty
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Supposedly its the first alcoholic beverage that humans invented and one of the easiest to make. I know I've never had any go bad on me.

I should break some out. I haven't actually opened a bottle since last spring.
 
I used to make a fair amount of wines. Had a 10 x 12 room with large sink, big counter, several large crocks and plenty of shelving. Had a friend who was the green grocer for a large chain grocery store. He would give me a call now and again, I went and loaded the pickup full of excess produce. What I couldn’t get to in time went right into compost. I would hit the pick your own strawberry places right before they mowed them down and fill up 5 gallon pails. Knew where all the wild apple orchards and dandelion fields were. Made more than my share of corn wine also.

It isn't all that difficult really. Follow the basic principles and you will get a drinkable product most of the time. Keep equipment scrubbed and clean, it will help a lot. I cleaned with baking soda only. Have a dedicated space for doing your batches. Doesn’t have to be a lot of room, but there is equipment involved and it is nice to have it all in a handy spot. Gravity is your friend, water flows downhill. Don’t put that 30 gallon crock right on the floor. Be prepared for disasters. There are spills so have things you can stop a flow of liquid with. Have more bottles handy than you think you will need, they could come in handy. Get an extra length of siphon hose when you pick up your first one. That first one will be the wrong length.

Best tip I can pass along is to keep a good journal of each batch when you first start out. Date and record what you put in (amounts), update it anytime you check it also. In the crocks (primary fermentation) stick a finger in regular. Every day you should poke it a bit to smell and taste it. I had a nice white oak stick I could stir with. What you start out with will determine what you end up with, remember what it smells, tastes and looks like. After a few batches you will know right by the smell, taste and look of it in primary fermentation if you have to dicker with it before going to secondary fermentation (the air-locked bottles). For wine, if it smells and tastes nasty in primary, rethink going any further, it won’t get any better. For corn, if it smells like vomit it is just good and sour, give it some time to work, it will be great.

Berries and fruits will vary in sugar content year to year by a little. You are safe to start with a little less sugar in primary as you can always add a bit more as it is working. You can control the sweetness or dryness this way. Don’t be afraid to experiment once you get the basics down. If you get a good batch, try and replicate it. Ain’t that easy, is it 😉 It is much easier if you kept that journal and kept a finger and nose in it as it was working.
 
Woody said:
Knew where all the wild apple orchards and dandelion fields were. Made more than my share of corn wine also.
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Awesome! Thank you for sharing!

Just curious, did you have one or two or three that were just your absolute favorites, ones that the flavors just made ya go "Wow!"? Ones that you would make over and over again just because you liked them that much?

The way some people talk, you could just about make wine out of dish water if you wanted to, not that I wanna try it. But the options are huge. No doubt "fruits" are most of what wine happens with, though I've had ideas that even something like watermelon might be kind fun. Had never even considered corn.
 
Mead, honey wine, is good but not until it is aged at least three years. The first batch I made was terrible but after aging a while it got better. The oldest recipe I am aware of comes from Sumer in the 4th century BCE. They also had beer and a wine made from figs.
 
Aerindel said:
I've made a fair amount of mead. I have a few gallons that I've aged for almost eight years now that are pretty tasty.
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That's what my ancestors used to make, in fact the vikings used to dry out human skulls and drink mead from them with the saying Skull pidah, sorry that's not how it's spelled, but it sounds about like that. We used to make a lot of wild blackberry wine, we'd put the berries in a large stock pot, bring to a boil and mash them with a potato masher, then my wife would put the mash in a jelly strainer bag just inside a wide mouth 1 gallon ex pickle jar, she clipped the bag in place with new clothes line clips and as the bag drained the juices we'd keep pulling the bag up, this made some really good concentrated juice. The way we killed any stray yeast, yeah it's everywhere, including on the skins of the berries, was to use a lot of boiled water to rinse everything with, we tried to keep away from sulfur dioxide which is a common yeast killer. We used specialty yeasts as they give a better outcome to the wine, I don't remember the type but local wine suppliers could probably tell you. One other thing we came across was how to make "reduction jelly", one time a gallon of juice jelled and that got me to studying about how to make reduction jelly, found out the if you pick a small amount of unripe berries which are high in pectin, threw the boiling process it will turn into jelly, we still have some excellent blackberry jelly my wife canned in 1987. Yeah, it's been a while but that's because we just haven't had the huge crops of wild blackberries that we had back then.
 
We made beer using a kit. Learned that using a retractable hose on the chiller used to cool the wart is ok but take the coil out of the pot BEFORE you shut off the water.

Followed the instructions and the results were very good ... or so I was told. It was good enough for my guests that it was gone before I sampled it.

Beer, wine, mead, vodka, and whiskey are on our post retirement to-do list. @ThePrincess is planning to keep bees and has her eye on a wine press.

Ben
 
FWIW... I just mixed up my first simple batch yesterday. It's "workin'" in it's little dark, warm, hidey hole, on a shelf near the water heater, for the next month or so. :) So we'll see. :) Nothin' special. Just started with some grape juice. Figure if we hate it, not much lost. LOL!!
 
I do wine a gallon at a time when the mood hits. Use frozen juice concentrate and some added suger (I like a sweet wine). Lalvin EC-1118 yeast and a couple 3 weeks and it's time for the party. I jar it in mason jars.
 
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dademoss said:
I do wine a gallon at a time when the mood hits. Use frozen juice concentrate and some added suger (I like a sweet wine). Lalvin EC-1118 yeast and a couple 3 weeks and it's time for the party. I jar it in mason jars.
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That's pretty close to what I had in mind. So, we went to the store this week. (First time since early January, we wanted to see if we could go for a while. We did... different topic, though...) So we looked for frozen concentrated juices. Looked at Walmart, they had OJ, lemonade, and fruit punch. That was it. I thought, "Huh? I thought they'd have lots of it." Nope. So, we went to Kroger's. I figured, surely they'd have a good selection of it. Well, they didn't do much better than Walmart. I think they had apple, which I was tempted to try, but wasn't quite what I had in mind. And they had grape. So I figured, maybe I'll just see what's in it. (Kroger brand, that was the only grape there.) The ingredients list just had me putting it back, I think HFCS was a major ingredient. Nope. Not gonna do it. So, my wife found a bottled juice (Kroger brand of a Juicy Juice knockoff, I think) that was pretty much juice concentrate and water, little else. So I bought that.

Poured off about 2 cups, put in about 1.5 cups of sugar, and around 1/2 tsp of plain ol' yeast. Shook 'er up good, loosened the cap enough that when I squeezed the bottle, I could hear the air comin' out, and set 'er on the shelf in the water heater closet. Looked a little while ago and it's bubblin' nicely, doin' it's thing, no bulge on the bottle, and a faint smell of somethin' happenin'. :)

Life is good.

It's been a long time since I scouted for "juice". We don't normally drink it. And it kinda looks like finding the real thing without a bunch of garbage in it is gonna be a challenge. Lookin' forward to having our own grapes, our own berries, our own watermelon, etc, but that's not for another 6 to 9 months or so.
 
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