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Anybody makin' their own homemade wine? :D
- Thread starter PopPopT
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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.
The Walmart grape juice concentrate is good to use for me, hardly any added crap. Still in stock in my area, at least for now.
Ingredients:
Ingredients: Grape Juice Concentrate, Filtered Water, Citric Acid, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C)
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That's what I was hoping for. Maybe I just went on a day when stocks were low. Maybe in our March trip, they'll have some.
(Gonna see if we can make it until March before we go back to a big grocery store. The hardest part is dairy. Most of the rest of it isn't that hard at all with some planning.)
The other good brand is Old Orchard, we can get it at the Meijer chain, same ingredient list as the walmart stuff.
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A great idea for all my extra raspberries! I made jam last year ad infinitum and froze till the freezer was full. Bet raspberry wine is yummy! Decades ago, in Montana, I made huckleberry wine that was to die for. Beginners luck I suspect.
And one nice thing about your own raspberries, you can get them at the peak of their ripeness, which means, FLAVOR!!!! There is nothing like being able to pick berries when they're fully ripe.
One thing I wish I had but haven't been able to get yet for the current homestead is a mulberry tree. I LOVE the flavor of ripe mulberries. Where i grew up in PA, they looked at mulberry trees like weeds and nobody bothered with them. One year (about 2014 or so) when my wife and I spent the summer with them, we made some mulberry jelly. Dang, that was some good stuff. But, we got those berries as they were basically falling off the tree, ready to squish nearly instantly. So sweet and full flavored. Spreading a sheet underneath and shaking the tree branches was one way of picking. I hope we can find some mulberry trees to plant here. And what we don't get, I know the birds love... just won't plant them anywhere near the clothes line...
Figured I'd throw out another post on this topic. It's been a while.
My dear wife and I decided to do our own personal "wine tasting" here at the house a couple of nights ago. I think we had maybe 6 or 7 different flavors of wines that we've made, most of which we used a couple of different yeasts for to compare.
And the winner was...
... just plain ol' purple grape juice made with bread yeast.
A few, like strawberry / watermelon, and also mango, I couldn't taste either strawberry or watermelon or mango for that one. Tasted more like garden hose water than any of the flavors I was looking for / expecting, yeast notwithstanding. And a few, like apple / cranberry, were at least a bit interesting though not something I really liked well enough that I'd have much interest in making it a "regular". The white grape juice was one that I wanted to like but it just didn't do it for me. A few flavors, like elderberry and blackberry, I haven't found the juice to make it happen (yet).
Anyway... just thought I'd share. Turns out that pretty much the simplest of them all is pretty much my favorite. Wish it were that easy for other things.
My dear wife and I decided to do our own personal "wine tasting" here at the house a couple of nights ago. I think we had maybe 6 or 7 different flavors of wines that we've made, most of which we used a couple of different yeasts for to compare.
And the winner was...
... just plain ol' purple grape juice made with bread yeast.
A few, like strawberry / watermelon, and also mango, I couldn't taste either strawberry or watermelon or mango for that one. Tasted more like garden hose water than any of the flavors I was looking for / expecting, yeast notwithstanding. And a few, like apple / cranberry, were at least a bit interesting though not something I really liked well enough that I'd have much interest in making it a "regular". The white grape juice was one that I wanted to like but it just didn't do it for me. A few flavors, like elderberry and blackberry, I haven't found the juice to make it happen (yet).
Anyway... just thought I'd share. Turns out that pretty much the simplest of them all is pretty much my favorite.
Wish it were that easy for other things. 
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Back in 17 I decided to learn how to make corn "wine" made the pieces & parts to put everything together. Just a little 5 gallon maker which gives 1/2 to 1 gallon of decent end results. Made enough to feel comfortable and packed it all away as one more prep. Lots of home remedy medications need a little near pure alcohol. Friends were happy to take the product off my hands. I've never been much of a drinker but if I am gonna drink it's gonna be bourbon. I've got part of a bottle of Jim Beam sitting here I bought back in 18 and another that's still sealed I bought last year. I'd sooner pour wine or beer on the ground than drink either one.
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As I sit here enjoying a glass of mead I brewed about five years ago (yeah, it's really good), I thought I'd mention there's a batch of maple mead fermenting now in my home office. Seven pounds each of buckwheat honey and grade B maple syrup with spring water and Lalvin EC-1118 yeast. This is my first attempt at maple mead, or acerglyn as it's correctly named. The first two days, it didn't do anything. But now, it's bubblin' like mad. So this will be interesting and I need to be sure to save several bottles to try a few years out.
What are you all brewing?
What are you all brewing?
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I'm not brewing anything, but my Oklahoma nephew brought me some blueberry wine he made and it was awesome.
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We haven't had a good crop of wild blackberries since the mid 80's and never enough cherries to even make a bottle of wine, those fruits were our go to for wine making. Meanwhile, we have a friend that gives us very good bottles of Pinot Noir. We've never bought that type of wine so that's been a real treat.
I made this batch in 2013 it’s still on my shelves, I’m a little afraid to drink it now.
You might be very pleasantly surprised! If no air got to it, it should be fine. Probably better than fine.
I know it's an old thread but I wanna throw out a question for you all.
I have a lot of blackberries this year. We've sold a bunch of 'em but still have gallons of them in the freezer. We also have some grapes coming on, some kind of a green grape that was mislabeled as "concord", which they are not, but there is a crop of them soon to be ready to pick that might make a white wine. (?) Would like to at least try some.
I've never tried to make wine from the actual fruit. I've made it from store-bought juice. But I have the fruit. I don't like the green grapes in jelly, we tried. And we have already made a bunch of blackberry jam. Have all we want of that and then a little, even sold some. So we have fruit.
When we make blackberry jam, we juice them in a steam juicer but then take the berries out of the steam juicer and put them through a food mill for even more juice and some pulp, (hopefully, no seeds, though a few usually sneak through anyway), which has a lot of flavor. We then add that back into the juice and we like what we end up with. But we're not making jam, we're wanting to make wine.
Would or could we just start out with that "slurry" of juice and pulp and treat it like we do the store-bought juice and let the solids settle out? Or just use the juice and forget the flavor packed pulp? I'm guessing at doing something similar with the grapes as I know there is a lot of flavor concentrated around the skins.
I'm looking for simple and would probably be doing it in half gallon mason jars.
Whatcha think? Dunno, I might just have to experiment. (And in this case, I doubt there is a wrong answer. LOL!!)
I have a lot of blackberries this year. We've sold a bunch of 'em but still have gallons of them in the freezer. We also have some grapes coming on, some kind of a green grape that was mislabeled as "concord", which they are not, but there is a crop of them soon to be ready to pick that might make a white wine. (?) Would like to at least try some.
I've never tried to make wine from the actual fruit. I've made it from store-bought juice. But I have the fruit. I don't like the green grapes in jelly, we tried. And we have already made a bunch of blackberry jam. Have all we want of that and then a little, even sold some. So we have fruit.
When we make blackberry jam, we juice them in a steam juicer but then take the berries out of the steam juicer and put them through a food mill for even more juice and some pulp, (hopefully, no seeds, though a few usually sneak through anyway), which has a lot of flavor. We then add that back into the juice and we like what we end up with. But we're not making jam, we're wanting to make wine.
Would or could we just start out with that "slurry" of juice and pulp and treat it like we do the store-bought juice and let the solids settle out? Or just use the juice and forget the flavor packed pulp? I'm guessing at doing something similar with the grapes as I know there is a lot of flavor concentrated around the skins.
I'm looking for simple and would probably be doing it in half gallon mason jars.
Whatcha think? Dunno, I might just have to experiment.
(And in this case, I doubt there is a wrong answer. LOL!!)
My cousin and her husband make blackberry wine. They gave us 6 bottles.
We aren't wine drinkers so I can't tell you how it tastes.
We aren't wine drinkers so I can't tell you how it tastes.
I made wine and beer both during my mountain log cabin years.
My best success with wine was with wild cutleaf blackberries. I made gallons of it and it never lasted long. It was strong but had an aroma and flavor that was unmatched by any of my other wines. I made apricot, raspberry, plum, huckleberry, watermelon, and elderberry.
While I never made a batch of cutleaf that wasn't amazing, I never made a batch of elderberry I could drink. All the others wines seem to vary from batch to batch.
My opinion is that to be successful, pick only vine or tree-ripe fruit that hasn't been sprayed. The second thing is to use the best quality water that doesn't have any noticeable flavor or would settle out with calcium or iron sediment. I found almost neutral PH water the best. I had spring water with a low mineral content that was a tiny bit on the acid side. It seemed to work great. You can't expect to get a great wine from poor quality fruit and bad water.
My beer was never great! One batch, my final, was horrid. I took it to our monthly homebrewers meeting and everyone gave it a thumbs down except one guy that was drunk from oversampling. He wanted to buy the 6 gallons I had brought to give away. No one else wanted it, so he took it all. At the next meeting, he was sober and asked if I had more and I said no that was my final batch forever. He still tried to give me money which I refused saying I should pay him for taking it. I did give him my recipe.
A few years ago while cleaning my storage area and selling off homesteading tools and equipment from the past, I discover an unopen bottle of 40-year-old elderberry wine. I used heavy sparkling wine bottles and plastic stoppers. I thought what the hey, so I sampled it. It had mellowed, so out with some goat cheese and wheat crackers and I had myself a little patio party. I still don't know if with age I had acquired a taste for poo tasting wine or if the wine had mellowed. The experts say to never drink old fruit wines, but I disagree. If they have been kept sealed and out of the light, then give them a sniff test and sample a sip.
My best success with wine was with wild cutleaf blackberries. I made gallons of it and it never lasted long. It was strong but had an aroma and flavor that was unmatched by any of my other wines. I made apricot, raspberry, plum, huckleberry, watermelon, and elderberry.
While I never made a batch of cutleaf that wasn't amazing, I never made a batch of elderberry I could drink. All the others wines seem to vary from batch to batch.
My opinion is that to be successful, pick only vine or tree-ripe fruit that hasn't been sprayed. The second thing is to use the best quality water that doesn't have any noticeable flavor or would settle out with calcium or iron sediment. I found almost neutral PH water the best. I had spring water with a low mineral content that was a tiny bit on the acid side. It seemed to work great. You can't expect to get a great wine from poor quality fruit and bad water.
My beer was never great! One batch, my final, was horrid. I took it to our monthly homebrewers meeting and everyone gave it a thumbs down except one guy that was drunk from oversampling. He wanted to buy the 6 gallons I had brought to give away. No one else wanted it, so he took it all. At the next meeting, he was sober and asked if I had more and I said no that was my final batch forever. He still tried to give me money which I refused saying I should pay him for taking it. I did give him my recipe.
A few years ago while cleaning my storage area and selling off homesteading tools and equipment from the past, I discover an unopen bottle of 40-year-old elderberry wine. I used heavy sparkling wine bottles and plastic stoppers. I thought what the hey, so I sampled it. It had mellowed, so out with some goat cheese and wheat crackers and I had myself a little patio party. I still don't know if with age I had acquired a taste for poo tasting wine or if the wine had mellowed. The experts say to never drink old fruit wines, but I disagree. If they have been kept sealed and out of the light, then give them a sniff test and sample a sip.
Give it a smell and sip test. I bet it is great!
Give it a go! Experimenting can sometimes give great results.I know it's an old thread but I wanna throw out a question for you all.
I have a lot of blackberries this year. We've sold a bunch of 'em but still have gallons of them in the freezer. We also have some grapes coming on, some kind of a green grape that was mislabeled as "concord", which they are not, but there is a crop of them soon to be ready to pick that might make a white wine. (?) Would like to at least try some.
I've never tried to make wine from the actual fruit. I've made it from store-bought juice. But I have the fruit. I don't like the green grapes in jelly, we tried. And we have already made a bunch of blackberry jam. Have all we want of that and then a little, even sold some. So we have fruit.
When we make blackberry jam, we juice them in a steam juicer but then take the berries out of the steam juicer and put them through a food mill for even more juice and some pulp, (hopefully, no seeds, though a few usually sneak through anyway), which has a lot of flavor. We then add that back into the juice and we like what we end up with. But we're not making jam, we're wanting to make wine.
Would or could we just start out with that "slurry" of juice and pulp and treat it like we do the store-bought juice and let the solids settle out? Or just use the juice and forget the flavor packed pulp? I'm guessing at doing something similar with the grapes as I know there is a lot of flavor concentrated around the skins.
I'm looking for simple and would probably be doing it in half gallon mason jars.
Whatcha think? Dunno, I might just have to experiment.
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Now, that's an interesting problem to have! LOL!! Have you even taken a sip to just see what it tastes like?
A few years ago, I'd have said I don't drink. I've mellowed some. Have not learned to like beer but I do like sweet wine, or maybe dessert wine in some circles.
I will hasten to add, I don't drink to excess, ever, and I rarely drink away from home, even when I'm not driving and know I won't be driving. So to be honest, I've never been drunk. I do find that a glass before bed will help me to relax and get to sleep if I happen to need to get to sleep, for whatever reason... could be I'm nervous about something the next day, could be I'm fighting off a little something, could be a number of reasons. Still just a glass, though, and I'm off to bed.
I do also like various alcohols used as seasoning, such as "rum sauce" over bread pudding.
Very interesting! Thank you for sharing!
Good fruit, I have. Good water I have. Now I gotta figure out how to make 'em work for me to make good wine!
Interesting about the elderberry not making good wine. I don't have many of those, not nearly enough to try yet. I have a few bushes growing but this is the first year there are any berries on either of them. I kinda think my wife wanted some jelly but I don't know if we'd even have enough for a small batch of that. I'm doubting it. Perhaps best not to waste them on wine.
Actually, one of my all time favorites comes from a winery near here that has one they claim is part red grape and part blackberry. That's some really good stuff. It's also around $20/bottle, which is a little more than I'd like to spend. It is one that I compare myself to, though, as it has a very "clean" flavor. Gives me a goal, and something to compare to that I know other people like.
If I might ask, you mentioned having good fruit (unsprayed, and mine isn't sprayed), and good water. Are you getting the juice from the berries and then adding water to it in order to get the concentration you want? Maybe something like what you might enjoy from a store-bought juice? Or is there more to it than that? Since I've never started with anything other than store-bought juice, I'm not sure. Any thought, I'm interested!
Thanks!
Very old thread, here is a recipe
In a 6 gallon ferment bucket, 1 quart honey, add 3 gallons bottled water and 1 packet Champaign yeast, install air lock and let it ferment till the ferment stops, symphon off the yeast poop then add 3 pounds strawberries and another qt honey, add water up to 3””
From top. Seal airlock and let ferment till. Done. Siphon /rack / let stand x 3
Either bottle as wine or pour all into your boiler and distill and make some yum yum
In a 6 gallon ferment bucket, 1 quart honey, add 3 gallons bottled water and 1 packet Champaign yeast, install air lock and let it ferment till the ferment stops, symphon off the yeast poop then add 3 pounds strawberries and another qt honey, add water up to 3””
From top. Seal airlock and let ferment till. Done. Siphon /rack / let stand x 3
Either bottle as wine or pour all into your boiler and distill and make some yum yum
I'm drinking hard lemon cider right now. its easy to make.
Buy a gallon of half and half/AKA Arnold Palmer. take a drink
and forget you have it a month. it has about a 3% content.
Buy a gallon of half and half/AKA Arnold Palmer. take a drink
and forget you have it a month. it has about a 3% content.
