simple winemaking

[Trixie]

Does anyone have a recipe for apple wine, from fruit. I need one that doesn't call for nutrient, acid, enzyme, etc. In other words just fruit, sugar, water and yeast.

I used to make wine this way 30 years ago, have lost my recipe book and my confidence as well.

Thanks so much.

Trixie

[Vickie44]

http://homesteadinghousewife.blogspo...01-hiccup.html

" prison wine "

[kyweaver]

I get most of my recipes from http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/recipes.asp
Pectic enzyme is just for clarity. You can leave it out of any recipe, it will just be a little cloudy. You can also skip nutrient if you give the yeast something else to get minerals and protein from. Add a handful of raisins or an extra packet of yeast for those nutrients.

Bread yeast CAN be used, but if you can get it, wine yeast does make a difference. A lit of liquor stores carry some homebrew supplies. Wine Yeast is like 79 cents.

[||Downhome||]

I think hard cider is really what your after, but could be wrong.

get ya a jug, suitable airlock-make or buy add your yeast (I really do suggest a wine type) or get ya a few grapes off the vine, don't wash them just put them in your jug. other option is raisins. I have made mead with only honey and water so there is yeast in honey-though I think there are yeasts everywhere so maybe I just got lucky and got a suitable volunteer.
airlock it and wait till it stops bubbling.no guarantee on consistency per batch might have a good brew or vinegar. so I suggest keep it as clean as possible which if you get the cider from a orchard should already be pasteurized then the weak link is the yeast source. if your shooting for wine your going to need juice not cider and well they do some things to get juice and its not all apple either. same basic process either way.

[Shrek]

3 pounds of apples peeled, cored and pureed, 4 pounds sugar,snack box of white raisins for tannnin, 4 gallons of warm water and a pack of bread yeast in a 5 gallon bucket. Cover with a T shirt tied to cover the bucket and let it work for a few days to a week .

Then siphon the must into a 5 gallon carbouy and install a cork and airlock or make a plug of plastic wrap around the siphon hose and put it in a soda bottle of water as a thumper line airlock and let it work for two to three more weeks and you will have a beer strength hard cider apple wine.

[Old John]

Making Hard Cider from apples was discussed, in a Thread on here, a few days ago.You could find it with a thread search on "Brewing" or maybe "Beer Brewing". It was within the last week or two. There are many threads on various Brewing topics.

Now, I don't mean to be bossy, or arrogant, but.........
When you leave out too many of the steps to Good Brewing, you simply are taking a chance on making a sour mess, that is not much good for drinking. It's Chancy; and it's a Risk you do not need to take.
Sterilizing your equipment, your Wirt, or your wine must, killing off the wild yeast and bacteria, so the Cultured yeast has a good chance.....These are not things folks do just for the "fun of it". They give you a better chance of making a good, palatable beverage, each time instead of wasting time, energy & money.
I Love to see folks learn how to do good Brewing, and keep at it.......Because they learn to make good Brew, each time. It's much more fun to make a good predictable Brew.
Well at least it is for me. Have Fun!

[Trixie]

Thanks, All.

OK, I'm getting there.

Now I know about enzyme, but what exactly is 'nutrient' and is it necessary?
Is that what the raisins are for and would they be necessary for any wine or just apple?

[Willowdale]

Yeast nutrient provides nitrogen that the yeast needs to reproduce and metabolize sugar to alcohol. Grapes are nature's perfect wine-making food, and the only fruit you can easily make wine from just by squishing them, no added water or sugar needed (wine yeast even lives on the grape skins, though most wine makers prefer to kill that yeast and add one whose properties they know).

If you add raisins you're getting the nitrogen from them to help the yeast get started, plus added sugar.

Sanitation is more important than anything else in wine making. Clean and sanitize everything you use, and rinse well if you use something like bleach solution so as not to pass on the taste. Spoilage is caused by stray bacteria or wild yeast strains clinging to the bottles or coming off your tools, and it only takes a speck to grow into a wine-ruining disaster. Also take GREAT care not to let fruit flies get on anything that touches your wine. They carry acetobacter, which turns alcohol to vinegar, and only a touch of it is needed to take over your whole batch. Although a big jug of apple cider vinegar can be nice, too.

Definitely use wine yeast, it's cheap and bread yeast will make the cider taste yeast-ey. Also, bread yeast dies at a fairly low alcohol concentration, so your finished product may not be strong enough to keep well.

About the balloons, they're porous and can let nasty smells mess up the wine. You can buy an air lock and stopper for under four bucks when you buy the yeast, and it will last forever, or you can make an airlock by running a plastic tube from the hole in the stopper to a jar of water, keeping the tube end under the surface so gas produced in fermentation bubbles out but nothing can get in.

Wine and cider making is fun :-) I have four gallons of spiced cider bubbling merrily away in the kitchen right now!

[Willowdale]

Another thing handy to know. Most wine makers sterilize their must before adding the yeast, to kill off any wild organisms. But a lot of people don't, and usually, if your tools are jars are clean, it turns out ok. Once the yeast gets started, it's pretty vigorous and often can outcompete what was in the juice.

For my spiced hard cider I started with pasteurized (no preservatives! that's important, as the preservatives would stop the yeast from acting) organic cider and didn't sanitize the must, but when I started a batch of persimmon wine using windfall fruit, I sanitized the must. That means I stirred in some potassium metabisulfite (that's what makes the "sulfites" in wine) and let it sit for some hours before adding the yeast. Potassium metabisulfite is also cheap, but I understand your desire to keep it simple. It's just one more thing that can help make sure you get a good result. Folks made hard cider for centuries without it.

There's a really great book by Annie Proulx and Lew Nichols (she wrote "Shipping News") called Cider: Making, Using and Enjoying Sweet and Hard Cider. It takes a very organic and traditional approach, and may tell you more than you want or need to know but is a good read and will help you feel very confident about what you choose to do and not do.

Have fun!

[Beowulf]

In the interest of not being bossy, I've kept my opinions to myself, but here are a few of them anyway...

As willowdale said, sanitary conditions are a must. EVERYTHING that touches your brew has to be sanitized, either by heat, chlorine, or (my personal favorite) iodine. Skipping this step is always a gamble. Some times you dodge the bullet, and everything turns out ok. More often than not, you end up with an undrinkable mess. Skipping sanitizing *never* turns out something better than would have been produced by sanitizing.

Second opinion:

Table sugar is for coffee, tea, baking, and cereal. Not for brewing. There are far better sugar sources for brewing. Table sugar is pure sucrose. Fermenting it produces some alcohols and esters that are bad tasting at best, and hang-over inducing at worst. If you need an additional sugar source, consider grape juice, honey, or malt extract (dry or liquid.)

Third Opinon:

Invest 6 bucks in a hydrometer and use it. You will never know if your brew is done unless you do. Better yet, invest 12 bucks in two hydrometers. They break easily.

Fourth Opinon:
Your patience will be rewarded. Lack of patience will be punished. So sayeth the Brewing Gods.

Fifth Opinon:
Home brewing is a fun and rewarding hobby, but going about it haphazardly is a recipe for bad brew, and a short-lived foray into a frustrating mess.

[Trisha in WA]

Originally Posted by Vickie44

http://homesteadinghousewife.blogspo...01-hiccup.html

" prison wine "

Those of you with strong opinions, please give us yours on this recipe. It looks very simple and I would really like to try it, but don't want to waste my time either.
Trisha

[KSALguy]

YouTube

this guy has several videos out on YouTube and out of all the ones i looked at i like his the best, its simple for the most part and i can see how i would adapt it to my setting, but also it follows thru to the end when he does a tast test of what he made, the other ones dont follow thru so you really dont know what to expect,

[Beowulf]

Originally Posted by Trisha in WA

Those of you with strong opinions, please give us yours on this recipe. It looks very simple and I would really like to try it, but don't want to waste my time either.
Trisha

I think it's a crap shoot.

Refined sugar aside, she is relying on the wild yeast on the surface of the fruit to begin fermentation. Simply put, you have no idea what that yeast is. You don't know what kind of flavor profile it will produce, how it will flocculate, or at what alcohol level it will die. Personally, I prefer to not trust my wine to blind luck.

All of the fruits that she mentioned would (and have been ) make wonderful meads, by replacing the sugar with an appropriate amount of honey, and using an appropriate strain of yeast.

I've made "prison" wine while in the Army in the middle east (alcohol was illegal) from reconstituted freeze dried grape juice and bread yeast fermented in a water can buried in the sand for a couple weeks. I celebrated my 21st birthday with it. It did in fact make me and several of my friends very drunk, but it tasted foul. I have since learned to make stuff that people actually like to drink

[Trixie]

Thanks , and I welcome everyone's opinions - bossy or not.

OK, I got the reason for the raisins and will buy some when I go into town for water - our coop water is bad stuff. Now, do you add raisins to any wine, or just apple?

One other question, I have read of people cooking their fruit before beginning the process. Good or bad and would that sterilize it?

I am going to have to use table sugar, I have a 50 lb bag that has been stored under my stairs for about 3 years. We use very little sugar, otherwise.

[Beowulf]

The raisins are for tanin (which are in grape skins, including raisin skins), so you would only add them to wines that you want more tanin in. Cooking the fruit... Personally, I would just clean it thoroughly if possible, and perhaps give it a 5 minute soak in a no-rinse sterilizing solution such as star-san.

If you cook the fruit, you will very likely release pectin, which will make the end product hazy unless you also add pectic enzyme, however the cooking will sterilize adequately, so no need for the sanitizing rinse.

[stanb999]

Here is a recipe I posted a bit ago.

Hard Cider/ Wine Making

I cheat and use "turbo yeast 24" and lots of sugar. I can get up to around 17% or 34 proof. At that level it only mellows with age. But it's clear and drinkable in less than 14 days. with no additives. You should try my receipe for blueberry wine.

2 quarts of blueberrys
2 lbs of sugar
3 quarts of water
2 tablespoons of turbo yeast

mix all ingredients in large bucket with loose lid. No cooking or sterilization required.
After 36-40 hours add 2 more lbs of sugar.
Let stand for 3 days.
When most fermentation bubbling has stopped pour off liquid into another container. Discard what remains in the pot.
Let the sediment build and pour off the clear several times. Do this once a day for about 1 week.

Now you can bottle it up. Your done. Chill and drink. But beware this is a powerful brew.

Gotta love the "Hom Brew" .....hickup.

[LisaInN.Idaho]

Originally Posted by Vickie44

http://homesteadinghousewife.blogspo...01-hiccup.html

" prison wine "

I forgot about this blog...I love Dana!

[TxCloverAngel]

Hey y'all!

Long time no talk! But Ive been around... here and there.
Any questions about the recipe.. ask away!
I'm still here...
Quietly sitting in my corner. lol

And yes... I still make this wine, and I think I would be kicked out of my family and lose most of my friends if it wasn't my "go-to" gift for everyone

[champ7ac]

As a home winemaker, I would suggest a couple of websites that a great deal of knowledged could be gleaned.

First off is the jack keller site. Mentioned in an earlier post.

Secondly is. www.winepress.us/forums

The wine press site has recipes, and allows newbies all the tools to make good wine.

Best advice was given earlier, buy a hydrometer and use it.

[mamahen]

Originally Posted by Beowulf

In the interest of not being bossy, I've kept my opinions to myself, but here are a few of them anyway...

As willowdale said, sanitary conditions are a must. EVERYTHING that touches your brew has to be sanitized, either by heat, chlorine, or (my personal favorite) iodine. Skipping this step is always a gamble. Some times you dodge the bullet, and everything turns out ok. More often than not, you end up with an undrinkable mess. Skipping sanitizing *never* turns out something better than would have been produced by sanitizing.

Second opinion:

Table sugar is for coffee, tea, baking, and cereal. Not for brewing. There are far better sugar sources for brewing. Table sugar is pure sucrose. Fermenting it produces some alcohols and esters that are bad tasting at best, and hang-over inducing at worst. If you need an additional sugar source, consider grape juice, honey, or malt extract (dry or liquid.)

Third Opinon:

Invest 6 bucks in a hydrometer and use it. You will never know if your brew is done unless you do. Better yet, invest 12 bucks in two hydrometers. They break easily.

Fourth Opinon:
Your patience will be rewarded. Lack of patience will be punished. So sayeth the Brewing Gods.

Fifth Opinon:
Home brewing is a fun and rewarding hobby, but going about it haphazardly is a recipe for bad brew, and a short-lived foray into a frustrating mess.

So - I am wanting to make a sweet table wine, how do I go about making sure the wine is "sweet" and not dry?