Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
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Funnel
Yeast feeder
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Strainer
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Citric acid
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Yea st
Sterilized wine bottles
You can usually find inexpensive starter kits at wine making shops, feed stores, or country supply
shops. If you use pots, buckets, and pans from home, be sure you use nonreactive materials like
plastic, stainless steel, or enamel coated. Glass is the historical material of choice and doesn't have
the ability to alter the flavor of your wine.
While you can buy fruit juice concentrate from purchased kits to make wine, the result will be far
inferior compared to making your own juice. Grapes are the traditional fruit for making wine, of
course, but other fruits will work as well, such as elderberries, peaches, and apples.
You can crush your grapes in a cider press, with a mortar and pestle, or the iconic foot stomping
seen in movies and magazines. Collect the juices and add citric acid or lemon juice (either bottled
or fresh), sweetener or yeast food, and high-quality yeast. Your wine making kit should have direc-
tions for the exact amounts of each. Homemade recipes call for a variety of sweeteners depending
on your preference—for example, sugar, honey, corn syrup, or fruit juices.
I recommend using a yeast designed for wine making if possible. Lemon juice or citric acid will
increase the acidity of the wine to help it ferment properly. This original combination of juice and
yeast mixture is called the
must
. Add everything to a clean container and stir it thoroughly. Leave it
at room temperature for one to three hours until it begins to bubble and foam.
Put the lid on the container and add your fermentation lock to the bucket. Allow the must to fer-
ment for a few days while it actively bubbles and foams. You may see a layer of particulates form at
the top of the bucket, carried by the foam. Sediment, called
lees,
will also pile up at the bottom of
the bucket. You'll separate this out during the racking process.
Siphon off the liquid from the first bucket into a clean and sanitized second container. This second
container should be set up just like the first with an air lock or fermentation lock. Do not siphon
off any of the lees or solid particulates. Allow this second container to ferment further until the
liquid turns from cloudy to clear.
thOrny MatterS
If the wine still seems to have some fermentation activity, you'll want to do a third racking. Too much
fermentation after bottling could actually burst bottles and pose a potential danger. A third racking can
help prevent this problem.
