Wine making the beginners guide

paidinchickens

Hi sorry if there is already a thread on wine making but I could not find it.

I like to have a few slurps of the old merry juice once in a while:beer: but obviously this costs money!

I have had five demijohns gifted to me from freecycle :T but have gotten no further.

please has anyone got an idiots/right from the beginning guide to help me out.

carrielovesfanta

Hi there,

I only just started making homeade wine and I found a super-easy beginner's recipe on the selfsufficientish website. There's a whole article called something like taking the fear out of wine making and it's in 3 parts.

It basically details how to make a fruit teabag wine which uses 1 box of fruit teabags, 1 kilo of sugar, 8 pints of water and some wine yeast/yeast nutrient.

I bought Young's Wine Yeast super compund from Wilkos as it has both the yeast and nutrient together. You need a teaspoon of it, only costs about £2.50 for a big ish tub.

You can make it in a bucket and it takes about 2 weeks (although 3 gets rid of any lasting fizz) I found it made a sweet, fruity rose type of wine. Not brill for pairing with meals but nice to drink on its own. It was also very easy.

paidinchickens

so apart from the demijohns I will need???

A big bucket with a lid

bubble things to go on top

Wine bottles and corks ( i have a few empties lol )

sterilising solution

anything else?

carrielovesfanta

if you are going to use the demijohns, you can put the stuff straight in there. I made up the teabag/sugar mixture in a big jug, then poured into the demijohn and added more water. You can get 2 plastic airlocks in Wilkos for about 2 quid so they aren't too dear.

You can get sterilising solution but i used boiling water.

I just used old wine bottles with screw lids, all sterilised with boiling water. You can get plastic stoppers (wilkos again) and they are very cheap.

My original buy from wilkos consisted of

Fermentaion bin with lid (about 12.50)
2 demijohns (about 6.50 each)
twin pack of air locks
pack of stoppers
super compound yeast
and some sterilising sol that I didn't use yet.

cost about 25-30 quid in all i think, but mum bought the demijohns as a gift