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Low down on making your own wine?

6K views 23 replies 17 participants last post by  OneLongShot 
#1 ·
I've been looking into making my own wine for a while now, and figured I'd make a post. Anyone have any good websites to check out and read up on? Also, any good wine supply stores either around Pittsburgh or Altoona? Any info I can get would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.
 
#6 ·
Scorpion,
I'm a newbie at this too, but have 5 gallons of cider in the works to make potent Apple Jack and maybe some wine. A couple buddies make wine and beer and are pretty good at it.

Oak Spring Winery just north of Altoona on old Rt 220 will have everything you need and a person to give advice
 
#9 ·
if you want to try something easy, buy 5 gallons of cider and 5 lbs of honey and a pack of cyser yeast from wyeast
(internet). warm up the cider enough to melt the honey and mix it real good and put it in your fermenter and add the wyeast after it cools below 100 degrees. rack it into the carboy after a couple of weeks and let it mellow and rack it a couple of times until its done. it is called cyser and it tastes like asti spumante.
 
#12 ·
I have been making homemade wine for quite a while. Mostly fruits but I have also done concord grape and wild catawba grape as well as honey (mead), dandelion, tomato both red and green. When I first started I found this website and it is about as good as it gets.

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

It is a huge site with more information than you can absorb in a months reading. It is bookmarked on my computer and referred to often.
 
#13 ·
already got 2 1gallon jugs going. the recipe is simple. you use a 1 gallon ice tea jug an d use it as your fermenter, you attach a a big balloon that will stretch over the top, and you use that to collect the carbon dioxide.the balloon will start to inflate from it. after 6 weeks its ready or unless you want to let it sit and age more.
 
#15 ·
ACEarcher said:
Anybody ever make any from the blackberries that are starting to ripen now? I've been seriously thinking about harvesting a couple gallons and trying to make some wine from them.
Your Blackberries are Rippening NOW?
All the places I pick Blackberries, they do not start to get ripe till the second week of July!
You sure they are not Black Raspberries?

I make Blackberry Wine....it always comes out GREAT...just use Extra amounts of Blackberries then what is needed per gallon...

I make 5 gallon batches at a time, my recipe per 1 gallon calls for 5 pounds...I use 40 pounds per 5 gallons and I boil my blackberries before putting them in the cheesecloth bag to start fermenting in the primary fermentor and I use maybe 2 cups of water to keep the berries from scortching on the bottom of the pot when I boil them...make it easier to press them cheese cloth bag by hand on the 7th day after starting the wine...

I also make a Black Raspberry/Wineberry/Blackberry wine that comes out Great, I use the same recipe that is for the blackberry wine for the 3 mixx wine!
If you want the recipe I have, I can PM it to you.
 
#19 ·
Word to the wise. I make both beer and wine and for someone just starting out making either, I suggest making beer first. Making beer is easier and the process is a lot faster than making wine. I think of it this way, making beer is like the training wheels when learning how to ride a bike, the bike being the wine.
When I make my wine, usually out of concord grapes, I start by hand picking the grapes and washing them in cold water. I usually let the grapes sit in the cold water for an hour or two and then I being to squeeze the grapes to get out all the juice, the juice is contained in a big crock pot. Once all of the juice is extracted, I take the skins an put them into a cheese cloth like holder and place them in the juice. After that, the process is adding some ingredients and racking the wine usually about every two weeks up to a month or longer.

I know I left out a lot of steps but wine making is something you learn by doing. I could write out a 10 page paper on what ingredients to use, type of wines, how to store the bottles, equipment, etc.

As I stated earlier, if you want to make wine I suggest buying a beer kit and start there. Beer kits are chalked full of information learned when making wine.......
 
#20 ·
Scorpion said:
I've been looking into making my own wine for a while now, and figured I'd make a post. Anyone have any good websites to check out and read up on? Also, any good wine supply stores either around Pittsburgh or Altoona? Any info I can get would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all.
If your willing to travel to Altoona, then you might as well take a trip to Loretto. There is a wine/beer shop near Loretto and the guy who owns it really knows it stuff.......
 
#21 ·
G2CDeer said:
Word to the wise. I make both beer and wine and for someone just starting out making either, I suggest making beer first. Making beer is easier and the process is a lot faster than making wine. I think of it this way, making beer is like the training wheels when learning how to ride a bike, the bike being the wine.
When I make my wine, usually out of concord grapes, I start by hand picking the grapes and washing them in cold water. I usually let the grapes sit in the cold water for an hour or two and then I being to squeeze the grapes to get out all the juice, the juice is contained in a big crock pot. Once all of the juice is extracted, I take the skins an put them into a cheese cloth like holder and place them in the juice. After that, the process is adding some ingredients and racking the wine usually about every two weeks up to a month or longer.

I know I left out a lot of steps but wine making is something you learn by doing. I could write out a 10 page paper on what ingredients to use, type of wines, how to store the bottles, equipment, etc.

As I stated earlier, if you want to make wine I suggest buying a beer kit and start there. Beer kits are chalked full of information learned when making wine.......
I take it you do not understand the Concept of making Either!

Wine is FORGIVING, Beer is NOT!

Wine has a much Higher Alcohol Content in it, Beer does Not...Sterilization of Material is Much More important in making Beer then it is Wine for the Alcohol Content in Wine kills off many Bacterias that would Kill a Wort of Beer!
Be a little lazy in Sterilization when making Beer and you get a 5 gallon batch of Skunk Pee that is worth nothing but to be Dumped...Be a litte lazy in Sterilization when making Wine and you still have a Good chance of coming out with a Drinkable Wine!

Talk to the Folks at Wine/Beer Supply Stores, Read the books on making beer and wine (The Books that have both in them) they will tell you the same thing... Wine is Forgiving, Beer is NOT....it is Much Easier for someone to start out learning how to make wine then it is Beer, once they understand the concept of making Wine, they can move on to beer!

And it really isn't Faster.. Beer you have to either boil for an hour then strain off the Wort and into a Primary and ferment it for 7-14 days, then let it sit for some more time after racking it off like wine....then after it has sat and aged, it needs Bottled, Sterilize the Bottles, Strain the beer off into a spigot bucket to fill the bottles, fill the bottles, cap them, let them sit for a week or more to carbonate...

Wien, pick the berries, grapes, fruits, get them ready for the primary, either crushing them or cutting them up, into a nylon bag, mix the needed ingredients into the primary with the berries/grapes/fruit....let it sit a day, toss the yeast, stir for 7 days, after 7 days, transfer to the secondary fermentor....let it Sit not 2 weeks but 1 Month, siphon off, let it go again for another month, siphon off to get rid of sediments, do that a 3rd month, and it is now ready to be bottled but if sweetened, you have to add the sodium what ever the name is to keep it from refermenting...if you want a GOOD Bottle of Wine, let it age in the bottles for a few more months...

Neither is Faster then the other...but Like I said, Wine is Easier to learn First, it is Forgiving, Beer is Not!
 
#22 ·
Wine is FORGIVING, Beer is NOT!

WRONG, screw up the process in either beer or wine making and you can screw up your batch.

Wine has a much Higher Alcohol Content in it, Beer does Not...

WRONG! I’ve made both 5.5% content beer and wine

Sterilization of Material is Much More important in making Beer then it is Wine. Be a litte lazy in Sterilization when making Wine and you still have a Good chance of coming out with a Drinkable Wine!

WRONG! Don’t sanitize your equipment next time when making wine and see how crappy it turns out. It doesn’t matter if your making beer or wine, if bacteria gets into either, it will ruin the batch.

And it really isn't Faster..

WRONG! You can make a 5gal batch of beer (Start to finish) in 2 weeks. To make a good wine takes months (Start to Finish)


Any numbnut can get juice at their local grocery store and add sugar and yeast to it and let it sit for weeks and the end product will get you drunk, same thing with beer. It take trial an error to get wine/beer making to a science to have a good tasting product. If it was easy to do then why isn’t every wine/beer maker a millionaire?......
 
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