Wine Making

Have you ever considered making your own wine? It is really quiet simple and you can buy wine kits to make your own Merlot, Zinfandel, Sake or whatever you like from a kit for about $2.50 per bottle. How much does a bottle of wine cost retail? You can also make wine from most anything you can juice, such as, apples, peaches, blackberries, strawberries, store bought juice and even tomatoes. The best thing about making your own wine is it does not have sulfites and other chemicals in it. It taste fresh and the alcohol content is usually a little greater than store bought wine.

My wife and I are just learning and we have about 5 gallons of apple wine percolating. I am writing down the instructions as we go so this blog will be updated as we proceed to each step. I would love to have you follow along but if you get into a rush, there are many sites you can reference for making your own wine.

Since we live in apple country, we decided to try making apple wine as our first wine project. With two bushels of apples, not only do we get about 5 gallons of wine but we also canned 18 pints and 2 quarts of apple sauce. We also could have made apple cider vinegar but we decided that would be another project.

The following is our process for making apple wine and apple sauce.

We use a steam juicer so we wash our apples and slice into quarters removing any bad spots before putting them into the colander on the top of the steam juicer. We then steam as much juice out of the apples as we can and save the skins and seeds that remain in the colander. This process will occur several times until we have juiced all of our apples.

We then pour our apple juice into a large pot to heat but do not boil. The main reason for heating the apple juice is to dissolve the sugar (lots) we are going to add to it.

Fill the Hydrometer and get a beginning reading. With the apples natural sugar content, the reading will be around 5%.

Add sugar, about a cup at a time, stir until it is dissolved and test again with the Hydrometer

Do not go over 20%

You can expect to add 6 cups or more of sugar to get a 20% reading on your hydrometer.

Note:    As fermentation occurs, the yeast feeds on the sugar and what is left is alcohol. So, when you do your hydrometer test later in the fermentation process, you subtract your new hydrometer reading from the 20% and the result is the alcohol content (ie  20% - 10% = 10% alcohol   or    20% - 0% = 20% alcohol).   You also do not have to start at 20%. You can start at 18%, 15%, 10% or wherever you wish to start. Just remember what % you started at after adding your sugar.

During fermentation, when the hydrometer gets back down to 0%, you have 20% alcohol (40 Proof) or you can stop the fermentation process wherever you desire. I will tell you how to stop the fermentation process later on.

After adding the desired amount of sugar, pour the juice in either a one or five gallon Carboy bottle. Stop at the upper curve of the bottle to allow space for expansion.

Add one Campden Tablet per gallon to stop the natural fruit fermentation.

Note:   If you do not do this step, when you add the packet of yeast, juice will be overflowing the bottle.

Add one packet of Lalvin Yeast for 1 – 5 gallons of juice.

Fill the Air Trap with water up to the Max Line and cork the bottle.

 That's it. The fermentation process begins. The room temperature should be around 65 - 70 degrees.

For the next two months keep water in the trap to keep outside fragrances from getting into the wine.

Note:    The Air Trap is simply like a 'P' trap on your sink or toilet. It allows fluids to go down the drain but the water that remains in the trap keeps the odor from coming back into the house.

Making Applesauce

Take the remains (skin, seeds, etc) and put them in the Squeezo to make applesauce.

Apple sauce will come out of the side of the strainer and the skin and seeds will be deposited out of the end.

Add seasoning, such as cinnamon,  to taste.

Use the skin and seed remains of this process (Mother) to make Apple Cider Vinegar or add it to your compost bin.