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How do I make wine?
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Posted by Breezey (Breezey221@ivillage.com) on Mon, Sep 24, 01 at 13:46
| Hello! I have buckets and buckets of muscadines(sp?) and my hubby wanted to know how to make wine. Does anyone have any web sites or instructions? I am sure it is a long process!
Thanks so much
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Follow-Up Postings:
RE: How do I make wine?
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Lots of websites, just do a search on winemaking and get them; but if you want good old fashioned homemade wine, here's the family recipe:
Squash the grapes until you have juice, then strain into a gallon jug until its 4/5 full. Dissolve a cup or two of sugar in water and add.
Wine is basically vinegar made without contact with air, so that's the tricky part. You can get an airlock stopper at a wine- or beer-making store for a dollar or two, but you can also just put in a cork with a hole in it and some rubber tubing. Run the tubing down into a pitcher of water so the end is under water. The CO2 from the wine will escape as bubbles, but no air can get back in.
Put the whole contraption in a dark, no too cold, not to warm place. After a while it will start to bubble and probbaly some will spill out the tube, so you need to change the water in the pitcher when it turns purple and you get fruit flies (adding a little bleach to the water wont hurt)
This process uses natural yeasts, so you dont need to add those. After the bubbling has stopped, strain off the dead yeasts and bottle it. This is not a vintage wine that will be best 20 years from now, but a little aging wont hurt.
One thing - EVERYTHING that touches the wine from start to finish must be absolutely clean and sanitized - water with bleach in it will do - bottles, gallon jug, sugarwater measuring cups, stirrer, tube and stopper or airlock. Treat the preparation area like an operating room, in other words.
Keep notes so next year you'll remember what you did wrong and can make adjustments. |
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