Making Wine From Other Fresh Fruits
If grape wine isnt what youre after there are endless possibilities with various other fruits – peach wine, cherry wine, blueberry wine, plum wine, and the list goes on and on. Since fruits have different characteristics they may require different or specific ingredients such as pectic enzyme, a specific type of yeast, or yeast nutrient, and may also benefit from being blended with other forms of sugar, like cane sugar or dextrose.
When making wine from fresh fruit it is best to do a bit of research and consult a recipe. Experimenting with fresh fruit is part of what makes making wine at home exciting!
Visit our most popular Fruit Wine Recipe Kits
How To Host The Perfect Wine Tasting At Home
Whats the best way to learn about wine? Tasting it! Hosting an at-home wine tasting is the best way to spend a nice evening with friends and keep it on a budget.
Follow our quick guide to set up a perfect wine tasting at home. Here you will find a comprehensive list of best practices and creative ideas for having a successful wine event.
Racking And Secondary Fermentation
Once the primary fermentation has slowed down, its time to strain out the fruit and rack the wine into a carboy.
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How Do You Make A Dry Wine Versus A Sweet Wine
The final sweetness of your wine is determined mostly by two factors: how much sugar you add and how much sugar your yeast can eat. Different strains of yeast can consume different amounts of sugar before they peter out and die in the alcohol that theyve made.
For an example, lets walk through two different kinds of yeast in a wine batch.
- Yeast A can survive to 12% alcohol content. This yeast will eat some of the sugar you add, die off once the wine reaches 12% alcohol, and then the rest of the sugar will be leftover for the wine to taste sweet.
- Yeast B can survive to 18% alcohol content. It eats all three pounds of that sugar before dying off , and you end up with a dry wine.
Wine Making Starter Kits
The best way to enter the world of winemaking is with one of Northern Brewer’s wine making kits. They are available in 6-gallon and 1 gallon Small Batch sizes, and each includes the specialized wine making equipment you’ll need to start making your first batches of homemade wine .
A wine starter kit is probably the most important investment you will make in the course of your home wine making career. Having the right equipment, information, and expertise from Day One means less frustration and better homemade wine!
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How Do You Know When Its Finished Fermenting
Its finished fermenting when you tap the edge of the glass and no bubbles appear. However, this is not a hard and fast rule. Fermenting can stop or slow greatly due to fluctuations in temperatures.
A cold spell can slow fermenting, while a sudden warm-up can kick start it once more. This can lead to blowing corks in bottled wine, but you shouldnt have that problem if youre using the balloons or plastic wrap.
And there you have it, a cheap and easy way to make wine at home with very little money and no fancy equipment. Once youve tried making wine from fruit juice, then try your hand at making wine from fruit, flowers or even herbs. With a little imagination and experimentation, you can create your own wines to enjoy for years to come.
How Do I Make Sparkling Wines
Country wines and fruit wines are traditionally still wines . Making a sparkling wine is a bit of an advanced technique that requires a good knowledge of how yeast works, the fermentation process, and advanced bottling techniques. We recommend tackling it only after youve mastered a still wine like this strawberry wine. When youre ready to move onto sparkling wine, Wild Wine Making has some great information about that process.
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How To Make Wine At Home From Bottled Juice
There are basically two methods of making your own wine at homeyou can either buy the individual tools and ingredients you need, either online or from your local homebrewing store, or you can buy a simple kit that contains everything you need.
First lets look at a kit by Spike Your Juice.
The kit comes with a fermentation lock and stopper that should fit almost any bottle of juice, six packets of yeast , and six labels for your newly-spiked juice bottlesyou dont want the kids confusing their grape juice with your grownup version!
The manufacturer recommends any 64 ounce bottle of juice that doesnt contain any preservatives. Just like making hard cider or grape soda, the preservatives in juice would kill off the yeast. Also, the juice needs to have at least 20 grams of sugar per servingyou have to give the yeast enough to eat to produce alcohol!
I started with a 48 ounce bottle of Welchs Farmers Pick Grape Juice at room temperature the same juice I had made grape soda with previously.
The instructions say to just pour in the packet of yeast, but as you can see the yeast just kind of sits on the top, so I gave the bottle a bit of shake as well to mix things up.
Then you simply insert the stopper with the airlock, fill the airlock with water, and let the fermentation begin.
To start, I took a measurement of the pure grape juice, before the yeast package was added. The specific gravity was 1.066.
Then, I measured the juice after 48 hours of fermenting, and got 1.062.
Beginners Guide To Making Wine From Fruit Juice
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Are you looking for an easy way to make wine at home but you dont have any winemaking equipment? Heres an easy homemade wine recipe using common items that you already have around the house. Winemaking at home is easy with our beginners guide to making wine from fruit juice.
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Closing Thoughts On Making Wine
Hopefully this has given you some idea on how to make wine from grapes at home easily. Dont let the wall of text scare you though, the process is very simple- anyone can do it! If youd prefer to make wine using a pre-made kit, wed suggest checking out our guide on some of the best wine making kits that are available online.
We wish you all the best in your wine making adventures.
The Ultimate Supply Checklist For Wine Tastings
- Location and space suitable for event
- Tables and chairs
- Tasting stations
- Table covers, and other decoration
- Wines or spirits for the tasting
- Wine glasses
- Ice buckets or cooling crate
- Ice
- Dump buckets
- Paper and pens
- Wine glass marker pens
- Mini-plates and forks, as well as display platters for food/pairing items
- Napkins
- Water bottles or water glasses for attendees
After reading this ultimate guide about how to host a wine tasting at home, I am sure you are ready to start planning your first wine event! Take advantage of this COVID-19 lockdown or quarantine period and start practising with your family to become a little sommelier.
We hope you liked the idea of tasting and learning about different wines from the comfort of your home. Share your experience with us in the comment section below and dont forget to subscribe to our newsletter to stay tuned.
Cheers!
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Choose The Proper Container
When making wine from fruit juice, always start with a very clean jug or bucket. A gallon milk or water jug will work and so will a clean cheap plastic bucket.
Avoid containers that have held anything toxic. Were trying to make wine here, not poison. And especially, dont use anything that has held vinegar unless you want to make more vinegar.
Smell the container before you start. If it smells like soap, your wine will taste like soap. Sometimes rinsing the jug with a bit of baking soda and water can remove lingering food fragrances. Be sure to rinse again with clear water before you start making the wine.
To make sure all smells are gone, let it dry completely and smell the container again. When you cant smell anything, the container is good to make wine.
How Red Wine Is Made: Follow Along Step By Step
Red winemaking differs from white winemaking in one important way: the juice ferments with grape skins to dye it red.
Of course, theres more to red winemaking than the color. Learning about the process reveals secrets about quality and taste that will improve your palate. So, lets walk through each of the steps of how red wine is made from grapes to glass.
Winemaking Pictures:
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Variations On Wine Recipes
The blackberry drink we’ve just made is a dry wine. . . which means that almost no sugar remains in the beverage after it has fermented. The wine, in short, is not sweet.
If you prefer a sweet wine, there are a number of ways to alter this recipe . Most are beyond the scope of this article.
There is, however, a very easy way for a home vintner to serve sweet wines. Just make up a solution of half water and half sugar. Heat it until it clears and then allow it to cool , and keep it in a pretty decanter on the table for anyone who wants to sweeten his or her wine to taste. Honey, of course, may be used in the same way … but stick with the milder tasting light honeys and use only about half as much .
Read Me: An Important Winemaking Caveat
Like most things in life, the craft of home winemaking falls on a wide spectrum. On one end, you have the folks who love to dive all inthey spend hundreds of dollars on special tools, they sanitize everything using synthetic chemicals, they take scientific records, they use very specific winemaking additives. On the other hand, there is what I like to call heritage winemakers. These people use barely nothing more than a clean canning jar, fruit, water, and some sugarafter all, thats the way folks have been making wine for generations. And then there are all of us who fall somewhere in between on the spectrum.
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Equipment For Making Wine At Home
Here’s all the important items of hardware you’ll need to set yourself up as a vintner:
An open container of at least eight gallons capacity A two-gallon stainless steel or enameled bowl or pot A two-quart, small-mesh sack Nine one-gallon, small-mouth jugs One one-half gallon, small-mouth jug Six feet of flexible, clear plastic tubing Twenty-five screw top wine bottles with plastic caps A roll of plastic food wrap An assortment of rubber bands A DEPENDABLE hydrometer
The first item on the list will be used as a primary fermentation vat. Some people prefer that this container be made of the traditional wood or crockery. But, since both wood and crockery are porous and almost impossible to completely clean and disinfect, many other home winemakers feel that a better bet is a primary fermenter made of food-grade plastic. Try a brand-new plastic wastepaper can or garbage pail … they’re ideal.
Beware of most metals when you’re selecting the primary fermenter and other utensils for your home winery. Metal almost always leaves a haze and an off-taste in wine. Stick with wood, glass, and plastic. And make sure your main fermenting vat will hold at least eight gallons. Primary fermentation is often quite vigorous and can overflow a smaller container.
I’ve saved the most important item of equipment till last … because a good hydrometer is an absolute necessity for anyone who expects to make quality wine consistently.
How To Make Homemade Wine The Easy Way
If youre new to making wine, a quick and easy method is making wine from fruit juice using frozen juice concentrates. Simply check in your grocers freezer section to find a wide variety of frozen juices. This recipe can be adjusted for any type of juice or juice blends.
Its fun to experiment with different flavors, but if you do, always make sure that you like the taste of the juice blend itself before you try to make it into wine. If it tastes bland or strange as juice, it will taste even more so once it becomes wine.
Check the ingredients list for preservatives. If it has preservatives, it wont ferment. If it doesnt ferment, you wont get wine.
Another thing to check for is chemicals. You want a juice concentrate that is 100% juice. Some juices have added vitamin C . This will work fine. Try to avoid any other chemicals for a better tasting wine.
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Different Approaches To Making Wine For The Beginner
There are a couple of different approaches that you can take as a beginner winemaker. One of the easiest methods is to purchase a winemaking kit. These kits can be purchased for about $50-150 dollars and generally produce 6 gallons of wine. Thats enough wine for 30 bottles. There are also one-gallon kits available that will make 5 bottles of wine but they are less popular. These kits include the concentrated juice, yeast, and all of the additives that you need to create your wine. They come with easy to follow instructions to ensure you produce high-quality wine every time. You can find more information about specific winemaking kits on our site here.
There is nothing wrong with taking the wine kit approach. In fact, I might recommend it for the first batch of wine you make. However, there is nothing quite as satisfying as creating your own wine from fresh fruits. There is much more involved in making wine from fresh grapes or fruit. First, you need to source the fruits. For wine grapes that is not as easy as it seems. There are places online where you can purchase wine grapes and/or juice frozen and have it shipped to your house. For other types of fruit, you can get them from a local farmers market or grocery store. You need a good quality winemaking yeast, that can be purchased from your favorite wine supply store. and youll need some equipment to get started.
Can Homemade Wine Make You Sick
The quick answer is that homemade wine, in general, cant make you sicker than regular store-bought wine.
However, the chance of making errors when homebrewing wine is obviously higher than the manufactured wines you see in stores.
Homebrewed wine cant kill you unless you really mess up.
The process of making both beer and wine simply doesnt allow hostile bacterias that can make you sick on a life-threatening scale.
There are some things that can go wrong tho, that might give you indications that it is the winemaking you sick, but usually, it is due to human mistakes when brewing the wine.
Here are some things that can go wrong and possibly make you a bit sick when drinking and making homebrewed wine:
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Crushing Red Wine Grapes
Crush and de-stem the grapes. For most grape varieties, about 90% of the larger stems should be removed. Test for total acidity following the instructions in your acid testing kit. If the acidity is less than .7%, add enough tartaric acid to bring it to that level. Test for sugar with your hydrometer. Correct any deficiencies by adding enough sugar to bring the reading up to 22% . When these tests and corrections have been completed, the must should be sulfited. Estimating that you will get roughly one gallon of juice yield for every 16 lbs. of grapes, calculate the anticipated amount of juice. Using this estimate, add enough sulfite to give you a sulfur dioxide level between 50 and 130 parts per million . The amount needed will depend on the condition of the grapes, with moldy grapes getting the most concentrated dose. Unless you have found it necessary to add more than 65 parts per million SO2, yeast should be added immediately. If using more than 65 parts per million SO2, you must wait four or five hours before doing so.
Tips For Winemaking Success
As you make your own wine at home, keep the following tips in mind:
- If your wine has an “off” taste, it may have to do with contamination from wild yeast or bacteria. Be sure to clean your equipment very well before you begin the process.
- For beginners, it’s a good idea to start with a kit, rather than follow a recipe or experiment on your own. That way, you can learn the process without too many variables.
- There’s a lot involved in this process, and it’s important to follow the directions carefully and wait the specified period before sampling your wine.
- Expect a few imperfect batches of wine before you become a master wine maker. The more wine you make, the better your wine will be.
- Try your wine multiple times. If it isn’t as good as you’d hoped, it may need to age a bit longer. You never know what a few more weeks will do.
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