Homemade wine

buxtonrabbitgreen

I only made wine once. It was elderberry or elderflower. I can't remember which. It smelled like cat wee and tasted absolutely foul. It was very alchoholic though as I discovered when 2 of my DS friends turned up at the door holding him up. Needless to say I didn't realise he had gone off with a bottle.

Contains_Mild_Peril

Another method of clearing cloudy wine is to whisk some egg white into a small amount then mix it back in with the batch. ifyou don't have much by way of supplies and equipment, it's often possible to improvise, e.g. you can sterilise your equipment with sterilising fluid designed for baby bottles etc - it doesn't have to be the stuff made for winemaking/ brewing, and if you don't have anairlock, a cotton wool plug will do at a push.
There are still plenty of dandelions about which can be used for wine, but you'll need to add grapes in some form (raisins are normally the cheapest way) to get a palatable dandelion wine. Strictly speaking, alcoholic drinks made without grapes (e.g. a lot of fruit "wines") aren't really wine, but some of them still taste nice.

pol

I think it's definitely old style. Years ago it was the only way people could afford to drink alcohol, and was nearly always made from homegrown ingredients. Nettles, vegetables, tea, potatoes, fruits can all make a decent wine.
Cheapest is probably made from a box of fruit teabags and a pack of sultanas, it makes a fair wine and is one of my favourites. If you get an offer on tinned or frozen fruit, then that works out quite good too.
Lots of advice and recipes here to try.

pol

Melissa177

My parents used to make wine - we had a huge wild bramble patch near our house, and we would make bramble wine, elderberry wine etc.

We bought demijohns second hand, and a wine making kit, and made a total of 137 bottles.

It was very good stuff too!

My family couldn't afford to go out at the time drinking, so bramble picking became our family entertainment, and then we could relax in the garden with a glass of wine after the fruits of our labour!

We sterilised old wine bottles which we were given by friends by washing them in boiling water and putting them in the oven for a short while; my parents had some kind of corking mechanism as well, although I can't remember how that worked!

apple_mint

HM wine is definately OS! We haven't bought any wine since April 2006 and just make our own wine.

Hints:

Save your wine bottles (and get your friends to do this too)
Buy your demijohns on car boot sales.
Pick up some wine making books on car boot sales too.
Start off with a tinned fruit wine (these are ready in about 3 months)
Think about it as a long haul - you have to get to the stage of making enough wine to cover your 'normal' consumption.
Be prepared for some failures (or strange tasting wines)
Country wines are lovely but don't expect them to taste the same as bought wines.
Find a good local wine shop (they give you advice) .. or one on line.
You have to speculate to accumulate (buying demijohns, fermentation bins, airlocks etc).
Read around the subject online first.

heavenleigh

I must admit i love to drink wine on a weekend, hubby hates it.
I can also drink lager,cider, spirits or turps if on offer that week in local satan run super market.
Just wondering if any of you make your own wine? is it cheaper than buying bottles (i tend to go for chilean, south african etc avoiding france and the usa in particular)
I quite like the idea of stomping on reduced tesco grapes in the bath but realise this might be a tad unrealistic.
I like a dry wine.
What i suppose i am really trying to ask is:
Is it any good?
How much does it cost to make?
Does it do the job?

Leigh xx

Topher

I don't know..... but I'd like to, as I'm interested too.
My Gran used to make her own, became a really involved hobby. Some was vile, some was reasonable, never great though.
Topher

Kantankrus_Mare

Ive made wine for years.

To begin with I only used kits which are easy peasy to use and pretty fail safe.

Have ventured onto making it from fruit as I have an allotment and access to as many brambles as I can pick. (A good bramble wine is lovely).

The best Ive made is a mixture of bramble and elderberry which funnily enough Ive started some off today from fruit I had frozen from last summer.

meanmarie

When OH and I were young and had lots of energy but no money, we did a beer and wine-making evening course and made both for years...beer was faster to mature than wine.

There used to be beer and wine-making kits which IMHO is the easiest way to start, they give you all the information you need and I think that you can produce wine in something like 3 or 4 weeks to bottling stage.

There are also many wines which were traditionally made by gardeners...rhubarb, parsnip, dandelion, elderberry, rosehip and others that I can't think of...self-sufficiency books or sites are probably the best places to find recipes for these...I know that there are many in John Seymour's book 'Self-sufficiency'...the old one, haven't read the new one yet...try google for more information.

You should also be able to get books in charity shops or libraries...not sure if its a popular pastime anymore since wine has become relatively much cheaper than it was in the '70s.

Good luck and Slainte!

Marie

Kantankrus_Mare

The kits also vary in price.

I only make the 5 gallon kits as it works out more economical.

You can get a kit to make a basic dry white wine for about £22. This says it makes 30 bottles but after sediment etc you are more realistically looking at 25 bottles.

£22 divided by 25 equals approx. 88p per bottle. :beer:

The more expensive kits in the homebrew shop sell at about £34 which seems expensive but produces really good quality wine and again works out at about £1.36 a bottle.

Of course you have to buy all the equipment to start off with but you can often pick this up from local newspapers or car boots etc.

Costs me £4 to make a demi-john of bramble and elderberry (and of course the time to pick the fruit)

You need to put a can of grape concentrate in to give it depth and a sachet of yeast. This makes 6 bottles sooooooo £4 divided by 6 = 66p per bottle.

Happy drinking :beer: