Wine Home-made From Scratch, How to Do It
If you looked at the recipe list, it is decidedly amazing in scope! So far, I have used fresh: pineapples, grapes, mangoes, dates, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, plums, raspberries, elderberries, blackberries, and apples. The elderberries, peaches, blackberries, and plums grew on our place in MO, free for the taking. Now, we watch for fruit on sale. Have gotten blueberries, for example at $ 1.88/ lb, 2 lbs. making a gallon of good, heady wine. So, pretty reasonable cost-wise there. The only other ingredients are water, sugar, and yeast. Sugar is usually about $ 0.50 / lb., use 2lbs. / gallon of wine, so add a buck there. Wine yeast is $2.00 / pkg., makes 5 gallons.
Traditionally, ya crush the fruit, to get the flavors and juice out. I got a brainstorm, and tried our blender: works great! Below, the blueberries as purchased, and the blender just opened up:
Cannot find my pictures, so: from the blender, the pulp, seeds, and juice go into a 5-gallon food-grade HDPE plastic bucket, shooting for 4 gallons at a time, so 8 lbs. fruit, and water having 8 lbs. of sugar dissolved in it, go into the bucket, a packet of yeast, it's lightly-lidded, open up stir once a day, keep closed otherwise, for 7 days. On the 7th. day, we strain the seeds and heavy pulp, then run the liquid through a nice new pillowcase. The filtered liquid, now wine almost, goes into a glass carboy like we all used to see on water coolers. A water-trap is fitted, little elbow with water in it, to allow the carbon dioxide generated to escape, while preventing any nasty bacteria, yeast spores, or other foreign stuff from entering. Below are some batches so-prepared:
We bought blueberries which had two sources, note the difference bin color! The stuff will bubble away perhaps another week or more, then begin settling out and getting clear. After a month or so, I use clear plastic tubing to syphon the liquid slowly and carefully out of the carboys and into gallon glass jugs, which are closed and allowed to sit for several more months, after which the liquid will be crystal-clear. Syphon it out again, and bottle it!
Real wine connoisseurs prefer wine at least a year old, but I am real wine some-kinda-sewer, so it rarely gets that old! imp
