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and you thought making wine was tough?
How the heck do you think your grandfather did it?
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Warning!
If you think you know the meaning of the word Sommelier ¹⁾,
DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER!
Leave this page as quickly as you can!

¹⁾ It used to mean "donkey driver" (chuck-wagon driver) in French from "donkey" in Latin or something like that. We'll ignore today's usage of the word.

If you thought Wine-making was tough, and would like to give it a try, come along for the ride and take your chances.

First the disclaimer! I am an idiot and only speak from experience, not from a scientific understanding of the "Art" of making wine. Follow my experience at your own risk !

I suggest you read the whole page before you invite your friends over. After reading it all, you may ignore what you wish.

When you've had a couple of successes (think positive), you may decide to re-read one of those "real" books on making wine. This time it may all make a little more sense and not seem as daunting.

I don't try to copy a certain beverage and pretend it tastes just like Pinot Noir or Chateau Briand. My aim is an interesting beverage that can be preserved without refrigeration until it's been consumed. Every bucket, even from the same berry bush, tastes a little different, which keeps things interesting.

The basic steps to making a drinkable alcoholic beverage:

The easy way:

Buy a 5 gallon / 23 liter bucket of grape juice. ($25.- to $50.-)
Do not open.
Leave it in a spot between 70°F / 20°C and 80°F / 30°C for a month or two.
The warmer the faster she goes.

Open it without shaking it.

Siphon off the contents, into gallon jugs with screw-lids or 2 liter coke bottles, leaving most of the sediment on the bottom of the bucket.

Drink the stuff.

Optionally you can siphon the bucket into another almost airtight container and let it sit for another month or three before "bottling". This is especially a good idea if the juice is still murky.

This process is best suited for soonest enjoyment.
If you really gotta get fancy and just have to "bottle" with real corks, make sure you store the bottles in a place cooler than 60°F / 15°C or you may find the corks everywhere except in the bottles when next you thirst for a cool glass.

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Applicable hints: Those plastic buckets can be harder to open than Fort Knox unless you have a special tool. If you cut a hole in the lid with a knife, it's hard to see what you're doing when you're siphoning, but it works, without shaking up all the sediment. Of course you ruin the lid but maybe you know a supermarket or a restaurant where you can get an endless supply of those buckets. Duct tape or packing tape may also make the lid of some use again.

Tie the siphoning tube to a long wooden stick, with two or three rubber-bands, an inch or two off the end of the stick. That way you can shove the stick to the bottom, leaving the siphon tube high enough not to suck up a lot of sediment.

Take those books on wine-making and wine-appreciation, that you bought a few years back, and use them to block up one side of the bucket a couple of inches and stick the siphoning hose in the deep part of the bucket.

The I-did-it-all-by-myself way:

Get the 5 Gallon / 23 liter plastic bucket from your above experiment.

Find 15-20 pounds of something resembling fruit or vegetables.

Remove stems & seeds if possible. If not possible, crush or mash the fruit without damaging the seeds. Seeds do not help the wine and often contain stuff like cyanide or was it arsenic which might be good for your skin but neither help in the taste department. Squishing with your fingers works well, or a potato masher. A continuous juicer also works. If you can remove the stems and seeds you can use a blender to mush the stuff, with a bit of water to keep from burning out the motor.

Dump the ugly mess, called "must", into the plastic bucket.

Simmer around 10 pounds of sugar in water until it's a nice clear syrup and stir it into the fruit. Add some water to almost fill the bucket and mix it all up. Leave 4-6 inches of space for the foam and "cap" to rise under the lid, or you might have a mess on the floor.

Take a cup or two of your must, with enough water, that it's not too thick, make it nice and warm, not hot, pour in an envelope of wine yeast and stir it up. Keep it warm, perhaps in a bucket of hot water, until you need it. I like to do this when I start to mush or juice the fruit, then, by the time I am finished, there's a healthy slug of foaming yeast to give the bucket a running start.

Once a day, for a week or so, stir up the mess with a stick, to break up the "cap".

When the ugly bubbling has slowed down, use sives, collanders or rags to strain the ugly mess. Try to squeeze as much juice as you can out of the pulp before you trash it. This is the worst part of the process. Don't expect clear juice. The stuff should settle to the bottom eventually. Best strainer I've found so far is panty hose. You can put one leg in the other and have a fine, strong mesh that you can hang over a bucket, fill with gallons of goop, and later squeeze

Pour this murky liquid into a new container, add enough water to almost fill the bucket again and put a lid on it. Anything tight enough to keep flies out, is fine. As long as your juice is bubbling, you don't have to worry about bad bacteria, as the bubbles are CO2 which lies like a blanket over the liquid, protecting it. A sheet of plastic wrapped over the bucket is good. If that's really tight, just put a pinhole or two in the sheet, so pressure doesn't build up.

Let it sit undisturbed for a month. A dark and warm place is good. Siphon off the contents leaving the sediment on the bottom, and drink or bottle it. If you're in no rush, siphon it into another large container (this is called "racking") and let it sit for another month or 3. It should get better and gather potency with age.

To make 23 liters or 5 gallons of wine
A guide to the quantities of fruit to destroy and the quantities of chemicals with which you may interfere in the natural process.
I ignore everything except the fruit quantity and sugar columns.

If you're metrically challenged, just think:
a quart = a liter, 2 pounds = 1 kilo,
give or take a pinch, imperial or US, who cares, it won't matter.

Some thoughts on:

Water - Boiled water is recommended but not always necessary. If your water is safe to drink, tapwater should be fine except for the chlorine. Chlorine, however, evaporates quickly. Take hot water with a shower-nozzle or out of an aerating tap of some kind and let it sit for little while.

Containers - 4 or 5 gallon buckets are a good size. They can be carried and are large enough to make the job worthwhile. 4 or 5 gallon plastic water-cooler jugs work fine for the secondary fermentation. Of course you could always buy a real glass carboy.

Plastic soft-drink containers with screw-lids work well for storing the final product. They are "free" in just about any size you might prefer. One word of caution: never screw the lids down tight, just leave them loose. I never stop the fermentation with chemicals and the stuff can quietly keep bubbling for a year. This protects it better than a cork but if pressure builds up, you may have a fountain of foam when you open them.

Labels - Glue-stiks are perfect for sticking any kind of labels on your containers.

Ingredients - Berries are about the easiest fruit to handle with almost guaranteed results. So far, my favourite is blackberry wine that is always first beverage-choice by friends. It has a surprisingly high alcohol content and never lasted long. Every year I do several hundred liters, along with another experiment or two.

Extra Ingredients - The only reason to use wine yeast is to ensure that a good yeast gets first crack at fermentation. Without it, it's pot-luck if the natural fruit yeast or a bad one from the air, gets things going. Different types of yeast create differing amounts of alcohol in different temperature ranges but all are in the same ball park. One of these days I'll try to educate myself on the finer points of yeast. 2002 I did 150 Liters of blackberry wine using bread yeast and can't tell any difference between it and the rest, where I used wine yeast.

Occasionally I've used yeast nutrient when I had trouble getting some yeast started. Otherwise I haven't used any chemicals in years.

Sanitation - Sterilizing everything is usually recommended but seems pointless when you consider all the stuff that comes with most fruit (dirt, worms, bugs, pigeon plop . . . ). The yeast will actually digest most of the impurities and convert them to good stuff. Personally, I just wash and rinse things with really hot water only. Dirty containers I keep closed until I wash them, so that they don't dry hard, making washing difficult. Clean containers I keep open so that they stay dry. I rinse everything before each use.

Good Luck

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Hi, I enjoyed your website (especially the wine making section).
Thought I would share a recipe for quick small batch of wine.

3 cans of concentrated grape juice
1 pack of bread yeast
1/2 cup of sugar
six cans of water (using the grape juice cans)
a baloon

sanitize gallon jug with bleach
put grape juice in jug
put six cans of room temp water in jug
add 1/2 cup of sugar
shake shake shake
add rapid rise yeast package (or if using reg yeast, put in a small cup with a teaspoon of sugar and a half cup of water... let it sit for about 10 minutes or foamy and then dump in jug
put 5 holes in baloon with pin
place baloon over jug and place jug in a warm dark spot for about 2 weeks.

makes a decent fast small amount of wine

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