Friday, October 19, 2012

Day 19 Wine Making

31 Days of Homestead Living!

Each year about this time we make wine with the juice we have produced during the year.  In years past we have made Blackberry, Grape, Peach, and Fruit Mixes.  I started out several years ago using the Welch's Concentrate Wine recipe on the web.  Since then, we have started to use our own fruit juices, but I still basically follow that recipe.

My recipe:  (CORRECTED TWICE)

11.5 ounces of grape or blackberry juice
Add:
4 - 5 cups of sugar (depending on how strong you want it)
1/2 tsp dry yeast

Add enough water to dissolve sugar and yeast.
Put in Gallon jug and finish filling with water to about 1 inch from the top.

Put a heavy large balloon or surgical glove on fastened at top of jug with a rubber band

Set in warm place for about 6 weeks.  When balloon or glove goes down your wine is ready.  Wine should be checked each day, because sometimes the balloon bursts or comes off, and you have to get another one on quickly so the wine will make.  We usually put our wine in regular size bottles once done.  Everyone loves this.

Next weekend is the time we will probably be ready to bottle our wine.  Right now we have 11 gallons making ready.  After we bottle ours we usually wait a month or longer to drink any.  The longer you wait, the better it will be.




Good luck with your wine making!  Honey

15 comments:

  1. cool for a better natural alternative could you use honey in place of the sugar?? and what in place of the yeast ?? trying to think self sufficiency here.. please let me know via email... heartshavenfarm@wildblue.net

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    1. Hi Kacie Dean,

      Thanks for stopping by. I will also email in a while. I'm sure you could use honey, but I don't know if the measure would be the same. I also have not looked for alternatives to yeast. But I do know that juice will turn hard if it is left alone, I think the yeast just speeds it up. If you find an alternative, I'd be interested to knonw, too. Thanks for stopping by. Come back to see me! Honey

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  2. Is that just one and one fifth ounces of juice? Just want to get it right. Thanks! Love your blog.

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    1. Anonymous, I have corrected the recipe. That was a typo, sorry about that. The correct measure is 11.5 ounces or 11 and a half ounces of juice. I hope you enjoy trying wine making. We are bottling ours tonight. Hope to add finished photos later. I've never taken photos of the finished product before! Thanks for stopping by.

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    2. you are totally awesome! Thank you for this blog! Stay amazing and always be true! ^_^

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  3. yeah what exactly is meant by 11/5? is that 1 and 1/5 or is it 2 cups 1 ounce?

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  4. You say "finish filling to about 1 inch from the top". Does that mean finish filling with water? So that you would have 11.5 oz of juice and the remainder of the gallon being water?

    KevinS

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    1. Kevin, Yes, continue filling with water. I have made that update to the recipe, and I appreciate your input! Thanks for stopping by! Honey

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  5. Hello, any tips as to where I can find one of the glass gallon jugs? Thank you, MeLynda

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    1. Hi MeLynda,

      I started out by putting notices on CraigsList and Yahoo Groups and FreeCycle. I have also gotten them by asking at restaurants and bars. One of mine is a pickle jar that I use a large rubber glove on as the balloom. Good Luck!

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  6. Just to let you know,you can certainly use honey to replace the sugar. In fact, I recommend it. However, it totally changes the finished product. If you used honey alone, (no juice of any kind) you end up with a product called Mead. There are various names for it depending on what juice you use, and I am not 100% positive, but with grape juice I believe it becomes a 'melomel'. When I make mead, it is about 1.5 lbs honey for every gallon in the container. a five gallon container would get 7.5lbs of honey. However, the aging process is waaaay longer. I usually let mine sit for 6 months to get a well aged product.

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    1. I have heard of Mead, but didn't know anything about it. I'm going to look forward to trying this myself! Thanks for sharing and for stopping by!

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  7. Wild yeasts will work, however may turn "funky"
    may i suggest a hydrometer (it takes some of the guess work out)

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    1. Thanks so much for your suggestion. I will look in to that tool! Thanks for stopping by.

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