Homemade wine

tiff

HAvent yet read up on how to make cider, but yes you can make apple wine.

Lots of recipes here http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/recipes.asp

GooeyBlob

fanmail321123 wrote: »

What can be done with around 500 apples as only so much apple sauce and crumble etc can be made? We'd love to make apple cider (the quickest way possible) but does anyone have a recipe and where do we get any equipment to do this? Can you even make apple wine (and if so, how?)?

I started a batch of apple and blackberry a few weeks ago. I generally peel the apples and cut them up into tiny pieces, and leave them with the crushed blackberries in a tub with a little tapwater and a little yeast. Normally I wouldn't put the yeast in so early, but apples tend to provide their own yeast so I like to give the wine yeast a good start. The other way is to use a Campden tablets to kill the natural yeast.

After a couple of days I pour the liquid into a demi-john, add a kilo of sugar dissolved in water and leave it to ferment.

nopot2pin

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Here's one really simple recipe I've used hundreds of times and it never goes wrong:

Dissolve a 1 kilo bag of sugar in water, then allow to cool. Pour 1 litre of value orange juice (Netto, Teco, Aldi... the cheap stuff from concentrate is fine) into demi-john, add yeast and 1 tsp of pectolase. Add cooled sugar solution, top up with tap water and leave for 6-8 weeks.

The result should be a very nice white wine that costs next-to-nothing and takes very little time to make.

This sounds fab GooeyBlob and the sort of thing I want to try next.:D
I have made a couple of the kit wines... but want to make wine from scratch. This sounds like a good stepping stone. And also sound very foolproof for me:o

Sorry to be a pain... but would you add the same amount of pectolase for say a grapefruit or pinapple wine using the carton of juice ??
And have you mixed any ? And had good results ??

Many thanks

sb44

We have loads of wine bottles that have screw caps, are these ok for homemade wine?

We do have corks and a corker from when I used to make wine years ago (from kits - not brave enough to try anything else).

oldMcDonald

sb44 wrote: »

We have loads of wine bottles that have screw caps, are these ok for homemade wine?

We do have corks and a corker from when I used to make wine years ago (from kits - not brave enough to try anything else).

Have no idea if it recommended as OK or not, however we use them and haven't had anything awful happen to the wine. DH prefers to use them as it saves faffing about with corking them.

sb44

oldMcDonald wrote: »

Have no idea if it recommended as OK or not, however we use them and haven't had anything awful happen to the wine. DH prefers to use them as it saves faffing about with corking them.

Thanks, I didn't think it would be a problem but thought I would ask first.

meanmarie

SB...provided that your wine has not been bottled too early there should be no problem with screw caps.

Marie

sb44

meanmarie wrote: »

SB...provided that your wine has not been bottled too early there should be no problem with screw caps.

Marie

Thanks Marie.

Haven't even bought the kit/ingredients yet but I'm off to look at a couple of home wine making sites for some more info.

Cheers.

nopot2pin

sb44 wrote: »

We have loads of wine bottles that have screw caps, are these ok for homemade wine?

We do have corks and a corker from when I used to make wine years ago (from kits - not brave enough to try anything else).

I have never been too sure about using screw cap wine bottles....
I always use cork...
I just think that if you are going to age them, then the cork is better.
I dont really have any proof to back this up though

sb44

nopot2pin wrote: »

I have never been too sure about using screw cap wine bottles....
I always use cork...
I just think that if you are going to age them, then the cork is better.
I dont really have any proof to back this up though

Age them!

If they are drinkable I don't think we intend to age anything.