Homemade wine?

Anybody ever done it? I kind of want to try it, just because. We did it in my biology class, but I wasn't 21 then so didn't get to try any. Any recipes, recommendations, etc? Or should we not be talking about this on a public forum with folks under 21?

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000373.php

Go ahead and try, but don't expect it to rival even cheap commercial wines. I've dabbled in a lot of adult beverages. In order of decreasing probability of a professional quality outcome::

Beer: any good kit will make a killer beer if you're even halfway careful about contamination.

Mead: Stupid easy, but not fundamentally tasty IMO.

Whiskey and Brandy: once you've got a still, getting good liquor is reliable as hell and can be done from plain old feed corn or otherwise undrinkable wine/cider/mead/beer/whatever. Not exactly legal, but even my local homebrew supply sells distillers gear now.

Hard Cider: Starting to get harder because you're at the mercy of your raw ingredients. The process is super easy if you can get good cider, though.

Other fruit wines: Similar to cider, but even more expensive to do in quantity and it's hard to find fresh raw ingredients.

Honest-to-god grape based wines: good luck. There's a reason vintners get paid big bucks. My parents live in Michigan wine country and I know of at least two wineries that have thought they could save a few bucks and fire their vintner. They both went down the tubes in a hurry. My own couple experiments have been miserable failures.

mtn wrote: Or should we not be talking about this on a public forum with folks under 21?

That shouldn't be a problem. At the ripe old age of 18 the gentleman who ran the local homebrewing shop smiled and explained it was perfectly legal for me to buy all the ingredients and equipment to make my own beer.

Yep, because at that point, it's just materials. Not beer. Corn is legit, hops is legit, barley is legit, yeast and sugar.... you get the idea.

I've made cheap wine. Like some fruit juice, sugar, yeast packet, 1 gallon jug of water witha a balloon over the top. I think that's what we did... Either way we looked it up on the internet and made it college. We made two different batches, first one was good but then we named the second one 'barn yard'. Needless to say no one wanted to make a third batch after drinking 'barn yard'.

I have. Two different kits and some from fresh grapes.

If you go the kit way (which I would totally recommend for a first timer), get a good kit. They actually will be in a box, so this is wine from a box. But the general quality of materials is good, all you really need to supply is first class water, and very clean equipment.

If you like that, and note for 5 gal of wine that's 25 bottles of wine, then you can move onto making wine from grapes- which is much harder. My first batch of fresh grape wine was over tannic, due to my heavy hand in pressing. But now, after 12 years of aging, they are quite good.

IMHO, if you are going to go through the effort, don't do it too cheap.

There should be wine making supply houses in your area- there seem to be a handful in every area.

Eric

My former boss made his own that rivaled anything from Napa.

I'm still trying to find someone who makes dandelion wine (and can spare a bottle)

I would suggest hard cider instead. So easy it's not even funny. Get 5 gallons of fresh cider from a local orchard (easiest to find around the end of summer/beginning of autumn), sanitize a carboy, pitch yeast, wait 2 months, rack into another carboy, wait a year, bottle. You don't even have to boil it.

And it's founding-father John Adams approved as a breakfast snack.

Twin_Cam wrote: I would suggest hard cider instead. So easy it's not even funny. Get 5 gallons of fresh cider from a local orchard (easiest to find around the end of summer/beginning of autumn), sanitize a carboy, pitch yeast, wait 2 months, rack into another carboy, wait a year, bottle. You don't even have to boil it. And it's founding-father John Adams approved as a breakfast snack.

You don't have to, but I highly recommend boiling it or at least bringing it close and keeping it there for long enough. It's nice insurance that the yeast you pitch is what's doing the work instead of random opportunistic stuff from the cider itself (assuming you did a good job sanitizing everything else). With cider it won't bite you all the time or even most of the time. But why risk wasting a batch of five gallons when it's not hard to prevent?

I do it, and its not bad - all I use are good graps - crushed filtered and crushed some more and filtered some more and than let them sit for about 90 days in some old wooden barrels.. i dont add anything - pretty good - bottom of the barrel comes out better.