Apple Wine

PhoneGuru

Ive never made wine before, but this year I'm determined. We have two mature apple trees and both look to be holding an awful lot of apples, so need to make use of them. There's only so many apple pies I can eat.

Where to start?

Lotus-eater

I don't think you need many apples for apple wine. You want to make cider my lad.
You will need a press and something that turns the apples into pulp.

Plenty of advice of how to make it online.

I've made some stunning cider in the past. Nothing beats the taste of home made cider.

BOGOF_Queen

Firstly you will need a couple of demi-johns, two fermentation locks and bungs, a length of plastic tubing, sterilising solution, muslin, a bag of granulated sugar, large jug, wine yeast, empty wine/water bottles.

For apple wine or any other wine, what I do is (sterilise all equipment first) peel and core the fruit - about 4 or 5 large apples to the gallon of wine (one demi-john). Then add the chopped fruit to your biggest pan (preserving pan size if you have one) of boiling water and let simmer for half an hour or so. I keep the fruit to then make a crumble.

Once cool, strain through the muslin into the demi-john, then dissolve the bag of sugar in the jug with boiling water and add to the demi-john. Top up with cold water to the 'shoulder' of the demi-john. Fit the bung and the fermentation lock. When the liquid inside is cool, remove the bung and fermentation lock and add a teaspoon of wine yeast and a few drops of lemon juice.

Fermentation will then start within a day or so - depends how warm it is - you will hear it bubbling away for a few weeks whilst this happens. In Winter, I leave it by a radiator.

Once the fermintation stops the wine in the demi-john will start to clear. You are now ready to get it off the yeast. (sterilise all equipment first - 2nd demi-john/tubing) To do this, put the full demi-john on a table or worktop and take out the bung and fermintation lock and put in the length of plastic tubing. Place the empty demi-john on the floor and to start emptying the full one, suck the tube to start the wine flowing into the tube and then into the empty demi-john. Make sure that you don't let any of the dead yeast at the bottom of the first demi-john go into the second one. Place a bung into the second demijohn - if there is a hole in the bung for a fermentation lock, I put a bit of kitchen roll in it to stop the dust getting in and spoiling it.

Leave the wine in the second demi-john for a few weeks and then bottle. Same process as before, use the tubing to decant out of the demi-john into the bottles. Leave for a few weeks or months (depending on willpower!) and enjoy.

I have used this method for years and not had a duff bottle yet! Just ensure that everything you use is sterilised first and you shouldn't go too far wrong.

cootambear

The low tech approach is to buy one of those 40 pint plastic buckets, throw the apples in and mash them up with a spade, add 4lbs of dissoveld sugar, fill the bucket to the top with water, after 3 weeks scoop out the apple bits and squeeze any remaining juice into the bucket, leave for another 2 weeks and viola - 6 - 8% proof cider. You dont need to add yeast as the apples have it on their skin.