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Gary350
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Homemade Wine.

Is anyone else making home made wine. If you grow fruit and berries you can make good wine. The type fruit that makes good, jelly, jam, pie, cobbler, makes the best wine. I like full body wine I use 100% juice, I never add water. Some people like mild flavor pink wines. If you like good wine and are tired of buying $5 bottle wine and would rather have $35 bottle wine but can not afford it then make your own.

I made 5 gallons of wine 3 weeks ago. This is an easy recipe made with $30 of Welch's grape juice from Walmart.

Dissolve 2 teaspoons of Bentonite in 1/2 cup of warm grape juice.

ADD
1 box of currents.
3 cans of Red Grape frozen concentrated, no water added.
5 gallons of concord grape juice.
2 1/2 teaspoons of pectic enzymes.
5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient.
1 teaspoon acid blend.
5 campden tablets.
Enough Dark Brown Sugar to get 1.080 on the hydrometer this will = 11.2% alcohol when finished.
Wait 24 hours then add 1 package of Red Star wine yeast in the Blue Package.
Keep juice at 70 degrees let it ferment in an open top 7 gallon plastic bucket until 1.030 on the hydrometer.
Siphon juice into a 5 gallon glass jug add the air lock and let it ferment until it stops about 1 week or so.

After 30 days siphon wine to the 7 gallon bucket long enough to clean the sediment out of the 5 gallon glass jug. Check the wine with the hydrometer it should be about .992. It is time to sweeten the wine to your taste and add flavor. I am going to add enough pomegranate juice to get 1.010 on the hydrometer. Add 1/2 teaspoons of Potassium Sorbate to stop fermentation. Siphon wine back to the 5 gallon glass jug, cork the jug, age for 6 months.

If you want aged in oak barrel flavor add 1 cup of oak saw dust for 7 days in a large Tea Bag made from a paper coffee filter. Lower tea bag into wine for 1 week then pull it out.

In about 6 months wine should be clean enough to siphon into empty wine bottles and cork.
Lay bottles on their side for storage at about 70 degrees or less.
Taste the wine when you bottle it, if it taste good enough to drink then start drinking it. All wine gets better with age but sometimes wine is gone before it has a chance to age. LOL. That is why I make more wine than I can drink it gets a change to age.

This wine book has a 101 wine recipes. It is available on ebay for $7 free postage. I bought this book 45 years ago all the pages are falling out so I bought a new book 3 weeks ago on ebay .

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Last edited by Gary350 on Fri Jul 28, 2017 9:27 am, edited 8 times in total.

jeff84
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the times I have made wine, would sound more like jail house hooch compared to that.

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Gary350
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jeff84 wrote:the times I have made wine, would sound more like jail house hooch compared to that.
What happened? Are you squeezing your own juice from fruit? What did you make?

This batch of wine I made was very easy I did not squeeze my own juice, I use factory made juice in a bottle. Best way to get juice from fruit is freeze the fruit first that will break all the juice cells then juice almost runs out all by itself when it thaws out. I have a wine press that I built it works good for black berries, raspberries, elderberries, that I like making wine with. I freeze grapes before I juice them. Last time I used my wine press was 7 years ago when I made 187 bottles of, blackberry wine and raspberry wine. We drank the last bottle last summer.

jeff84
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mine was basically a bottle of welches grape juice. poured a little out, filled with sugar, sprinkled in a little bakers yeast. placed the cap back on lightly so gasses could escape. when the ferment slowed to a crawl, I poured it into another jug, with more sugar for a second fermentation. when it was finished I strained it and stuck it in the frig. drank it the next day. I have done this a few times sometimes I would use concentrate, and would blend white and red grape juice in different ratios.

never had a bad batch. I know people spend a lot more and use more proper procedures, but this works for me. maybe I should at least invest in some brewers yeast next time I give it a go.

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Gary350
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While waiting for 34 bottles of wine to age I have been buying wire to drink. There are lots of good $5 wine. After drinking $10 wine I don't want anymore $5 wire. Now I am drinking $15 per bottle wine wow much better than $10 wine. Today I bought a wine kit I will have another 34 bottles of wine in a few months. $88. kit makes 34 bottles of wine cost $2.58 each.
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My favourite kitchen wine is rhubarb & ginger. One year it did some sort of serendipitous second fermentation and we had the best-tasting-ever "Champagne." Wish I could get it to do that again. (Rhubarb's poking up through the mulch - goody!)

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You can try adding a tiny bit of some sort of sugar and reseal for a couple of weeks. I like just a crackle, like when apple juice is just turning hard.

Rhubarb and ginger? Interesting combination.

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Gary350
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I bought a Cabernet Sauvignon Wine Expert kit. I did not use yeast that came with the kit I used a better yeast. I followed instructions to the end finished wine was .994 on the hydrometer. I stirred in 1 jar of Plum Jam by Smuckers to back sweeten the wine to 1.000 on the hydrometer. I have 32 bottles of wine. I took 1 bottle to the wine club meeting last week it was voted very good wine. I have 28 bottles left. I have 32 bottles of another wine aging. I have 4 bottles of wine that I bought a few days ago at the wine store. Summer is here I need, 10 gallons of black cherries, 10 gallons of blackberries, 20 gallons of black raspberries, 10 gallons of muskadine grapes, to make another 160 bottles of wine. Last summer I tried to get all this fruit and got none maybe I have better luck this year. I have about 400 empty wine bottles that I could fill if I had fruit to make wine.
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First bottle is my homemade Raspberry wine 2021. This years wine turned out extra good it taste a lot like Red Blend wine maybe because I added a jar of, cherry jam, plum jam, peach jam, 1 can cherry pie filling, molasses, dark brown sugar Specific Gravity = sugar = 1.100 14% alcohol. Semi dry wine. Monday I bought 7 bottles of Red Blend wine then went to the wine group meeting at 6 pm. After tasting every wine in the room I had to re taste several of them.

These are all red blend wines. Red Blend is a mixture about 5 to 7 good wines. Most Red Blends are 13.5% to 14.8% alcohol.

Amber Falls Blackberry has taste of Cherry flavor very different wine. This wine is sweeter than I like but the cherry flavor makes it extra good. 14.8% alcohol. $16 per bottle.

Federal & Sterling are new to me they are both very good 14.5% alcohol $14 per bottle.

7 Moons Red Label is an old favorite price is up from $7 to $12 per bottle.

Cupcake has a very good flavor for $12 wine.

Robert Mondavi is an old favorite aged in oak barrel is extra good was $9 now $14 per bottle

Midnight & Apothic both very good $14 per bottle.
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I've been to the Sterling Wines winery. I don't know what the setup is today but when I went many years ago it was at a mountaintop and you had to take a gondola like ski lift up to get to it. Good stuff!

There used to be a winemaker further north, around Anderson Valley, whose last name was Sterling but he couldn't name it that. So he converted his name to Spanish and called his winery Esterlina. That was an even better wine! Not sure if they're around anymore, they were somewhat elderly and that was about 20 years ago.

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Gary350
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Today I cleaned out the, freezer, refrigerator, and pantry. I found 2 lbs of blueberries, 1½ liters of black Raspberries, 1 box of currents, 2 jars of raspberry jam, 1 jar of grape jam, 1 jar of plum jam. 2 quarts of strawberry jam in 8 small jars. Jams is all homemade very concentrated flavor. This should make 6 gallons of heavy body wine with 13% alcohol when finished. I might turn some of this into a Port wine 15% alcohol by adding E&J Brandy.
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Any pectin ..

. and concerns about pectin ..

. if that was an ingredient in the jams?

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Gary350
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digitS' wrote:
Wed Jan 26, 2022 8:17 pm
Any pectin ..

. and concerns about pectin ..

. if that was an ingredient in the jams?
I am very stingy with pectin if I decide to use it. I don't like, jelly, jam or preserves that jells solid it is hard to spread and hard to get it out of the jar. Sugar hides the good fruit flavor so I add only enough sugar to slightly sweeten the fruit. I puree fruit then boil away water to make it thicker. I never make jelly I don't want anything that is jelled solid. Preserves are best but I don't like fruit pieces they will not spread either. Preserves that have been pureed have the best flavor. Preserves puree only needs a small amount of sugar. Stir & cook in a tiny amount of pectin it changes cloudy fruit to clear fruit. I want preserves that is like gravy that spreads easy.
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I bottled wine today. 25 bottles of wine made with, Raspberries, Blueberries, Strawberries, currents, grape jam, plum jam. It turned out to be very good homemade wine made from a bunch of stuff lost in the freezer. Now I need to label 25 bottles.
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Today 4/11/2022 I made a Cabernet Sauvignon wine kit. Instructions on this kit left side of picture are different from the kit I made 8 years ago. I followed the instructions, add bentonite to 8 oz of hot water still well. Add juice, rinse bag several times, add water to 6 gallons. Take hydrometer reading. Kit said SG should be 1.097 but I get 1.090 I think I should have taken a hydrometer reading at 5 gallons then slowly added water to get 1.097. OH well alcohol will be 12.6% not 13.5%. Kit said add oak chips then add yeast that seems wrong but I did it that way. Stir well, put lid on the bucket, wait 2 weeks until SD is .996 then de gas wine & syphon to the 6 gallon jug add chemicals and air lock. Old kit said rack at SG 1.200. I like this EC-1118 yeast it is always slow it always takes 3 days for me to see it has started to ferment and 2 whole weeks to ferment. Watch & wait see what happens this time. It is winter our kitchen has 7 windows its a bit cold in there wine temperature is usually about 70°. OH, I need to freeze ice is 2 liter soft drink bottles if wine gets too warm I need to cool it down. About 5 weeks I can bottle about 30 bottles of wine.
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Today I was board with nothing to do so I bottled wine. 27 bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon from a KIT.
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I bottled 6 gallons of wine today = 29½ bottles. This is 16 lbs of blackberries, 1 lb of strawberries, 2 lbs of blueberries, 1 quart of honey, 8 lbs of sugar. Enough water to have 6 gallons and SG was 1.100 then add EC-1118 yeast. When ferment was SG 1.020 I added 1 lb of sugar and another 4 lbs of blackberries. When SG was 1.010 I syphoned wine to the secondary leaving all the sediment behind. When ferment stopped I topped the 6 gallon jug off with SG 1.100 sugar water. Wine fermented again then stopped. Alcohol should be about 15%. Then I added finings part 1 and part 2 according to instructions. 4 months later SG is .990 it taste so good exactly the way I like it. This is some of the best wine I ever made but its nothing compared to good factory made Cabernet Sauvignon. New corks worked great. I save empty bottles with the original cork in each bottle to keep out, bugs, dust, flies, and the last 1 drop of wine does not dry up hard as cement. Remove old corks rinse 2 times old labels fall off and new wine goes in. Now I need to print photo copies of labels to glue on all the bottles.
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I bottled another 6 gallons of wine today = 30½ bottles. Wow I have never made wine this good before not even from a wine kit. Our local AG center has 1/2 acre of grapes they give away free every summer. They squeeze out all the juice to give away then throw skins in a compose pile so I got 23 gallons of skins in 5 gallon buckets. I ask the name of the grapes someone wrote it on paper Vitis Vinfera very dark blue purple skins. I added water then added sugar stir well finally got SG 1.096 to start. EC-1118 yeast fermented about 6 days when SG was 1.010 I syphoned juice to the secondary. After ferment stopped and I degasses the wine I added finings. 4 months later I bottled it today. It finished at SG .996 I tasted it over and over trying to decide if it needs acid blend or something before bottling it. Ph paper reads 4 and that is probably not very accurate. I added Potassium Sorbate and 6 crushed campden tablets. I tasted it more I don't think it needs anything else so filled 30 bottles with corks. Alcohol is 13%. These new corks are great I need to order 200 more I still have 23 gallon of wine to bottle. That 1/2 bottle of wine will probably be gone by bed time. LOL.
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Today I bottled 8 bottles = 2 gallons of Grape wine. I mixed enough grape wine with 1 can of cherry pie filling to get 1.000 SG. It takes 1 month for the 2 flavors to blend and taste like wine should. I have done this many times in the past with Smucker's Jam it always turns out good. Variety is better than 60 bottles of the same flavor wine.
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