Home-made wine recipes?

[lazybloke]

Anyone make their own wine?
I tend to quaff a cheap dry wine. I don't have high standards, so why do all my home-made wines seem so bad?

I've had limited success with Mead and a sweet ginger/blackberry wine, but my results are rarely consistent. I last had a try 5 years ago, and figure it's time for another go.

Does anyone have some '101' wine making tips?
Does anyone have an apple wine recipe, perhaps with a bit of spice?

 

[KnackeredBike]

I use the beaverdale kits with an extra 500g of sugar to bring the alcohol up a bit and it reliably makes a decent red.

My method, which avoids syphoning because I find it a PITA

1. Clean a fermenting vessel out with washing up liquid, then green Clinell wipes.
2. Add grape juice, water, oak chips, sugar and yeast. Stir with powerdrill and coathanger degasses. Put on lid and airlock.
3. After about 10days when spec gravity is reliably below 1 use tap to transfer to second clean fermenting vessel. Tip carefully to get all of liquid out without disturbing crap at bottom.
4. Stir with drill until degassed which takes about 3 mins with power drill.
5. Add finings and stabiliser to instructions.
6. Once clear clean out 30 screw top bottles with Starsan and bottle using tap.

Job done, about 90mins work and £1.35 a bottle.

 

[User482]

I've made a few wines from the River Cottage "booze" book, and they've turned out quite well. Rhubarb is probably the best, gooseberry also works well. Apple needs some grape juice to give it body. All the country wines I've made improve considerably if they're given a year to mature before drinking.

 

[guitarpete247]

I like the Wilko Pinot Grigio. I make the 30 bottle kit. I've got a kit ready to start soon.

 

[lazybloke]

I like the Wilko Pinot Grigio. I make the 30 bottle kit. I've got a kit ready to start soon.

I was thinking more of country wines but I suppose the kits produce more consistent results.

 

[Accy cyclist]

My god parent/father was from Ukraine (He did look a bit like the Marlon Brando one,as well). He made his own wine for years. I remember being fed the potato one,when i was a child. No wonder we developed a liking for alcohol at an early age! He didn't bother with finding out the strength of his produce,but it must've been about 25-30%.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

(it tasted of bananas)

It might be worth seeing if you can identify the type.

Banana variety

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

The bananawine was from a kit not described as bananawine. It was a long time ago, but I think it was a medium white. Obviously I did something terribly wrong.

Only if you don't like banana flavour.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

I do! Just not in wine.

Chef - No banana wine for table 6

 

[User482]

I'm still hesitating over making wine from the grapes in my garden, having made kit wine in the past that was disgusting (it tasted of bananas). So I am on the lookout for tips and encouragement.

I made a drinkable white wine from my garden grapes - so a few pointers:

1. You'll need about 20lbs of grapes to make one demijohn of wine. If you have less, you could use it to blend into an apple wine.
2. The grapes must be pressed - if you blend them the seeds and skins will impart unpleasant flavours and excess tannin.
3. You could tread the grapes to press them, but I got by with pressing them by hand through muslin-lined colander, with the aid of a potato masher. It does take a while, and don't forget to boil the muslin as it's a bacteria trap.
4. The must will almost certainly need to be chaptalized (have sugar added) as outdoor grown grapes in this country don't develop enough of their own. You're looking for a gravity of 1080-1095. Mine was about 1060 so I added heavy sugar syrup to bring it up. There are online calculators so you can work out how much to add. So a hydrometer and trial jar is essential.
5. Leave the must and sugar, a crushed campden tablet and some yeast nutrient to stand for 24 hours in a covered sanitised bucket, then aerate well with a sanitised whisk, and pitch the wine yeast. After a few days you can rack it into a demijohn and leave to ferment out. Try to keep fermentation at a steady temperature of around 20 degrees. The banana flavour you mentioned can occur if you've fermented at too high a temperature.
6. Once all fermentation has ceased rack it again to get the wine off the dead yeast. You can measure the gravity at this point to calculate the alcohol content. I then left it in a demijohn for a few months before bottling.If you have an air gap due to the racking, top up with some white wine (preferably) or boiled cooled water
7. The wine I made was minging at first, but became quite pleasant after six months, and better still after a year.
8. A general tip: beer and wine making is mostly about cleaning and sanitising.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

Anyone make their own wine?
I tend to quaff a cheap dry wine. I don't have high standards, so why do all my home-made wines seem so bad?

I've had limited success with Mead and a sweet ginger/blackberry wine, but my results are rarely consistent. I last had a try 5 years ago, and figure it's time for another go.

Does anyone have some '101' wine making tips?
Does anyone have an apple wine recipe, perhaps with a bit of spice?

Because decent dry white wine is the most difficult thing to make for a winemaker, never mind a bloke in the kitchen?

 

[FishFright]

I can heartily recommend Pea Pod wine ...

 

[hopless500]

Raspberry wine has been the most consistent for me. Others are very variable and I've not yet worked out why. I have some demijohns which are overdue for bottling.. I've experimented this year with some being a country grape recipe and some are just pure grape juice with a little sugar and yeast added. Will be interesting to see how they differ.

 

[User482]

Raspberry wine has been the most consistent for me. Others are very variable and I've not yet worked out why. I have some demijohns which are overdue for bottling.. I've experimented this year with some being a country grape recipe and some are just pure grape juice with a little sugar and yeast added. Will be interesting to see how they differ.

I made loganberry wine last year but I wasn't that keen: it had more than a whiff of cordial about it. Still, it was fine for mulled wine so it didn't get wasted.

 

[srw]

Many years ago @rvw made some excellent mead and I made some mediocre beer from a kit. Either were by far the cheapest way to get sloshed for a pair of impecunious 20-somethings. More recently we've made some rather agricultural cider from the apples in the garden. I think @User482 has it right:

8. A general tip: beer and wine making is mostly about cleaning and sanitising.

My parents tried (also because of cost) but shared my slightly slap-dash attitude to sterilisation. My grandfather drank a pint of his home-made beer every lunchtime and another pint every evening. He was a stickler for cleanliness. There's a lesson in there somewhere.

There's a classic and very detailed book that my parents had on their shelves, and I found a second-hand copy of a while ago: