Content
Alcohol is now expensive, and its quality is questionable. Even people who buy expensive elite wines are not immune to counterfeits. It is very unpleasant when a holiday or party ends with poisoning. Meanwhile, rural residents, summer residents and owners of country estates have the opportunity to supply high-quality home-made alcohol to their table. The easiest way to make wine from grapes is at home.
Even city dwellers at the end of the season or during a trip with friends to the country can buy several boxes of sun berries. And making wine from it will not be difficult even for people who know nothing about winemaking, since it is easy to find recipes.
Raw materials for wine production
Alcoholic drinks can be prepared from any fruit or berry, even not very sweet ones. But the easiest way to do this is from grapes - as if by nature itself it is intended specifically for winemaking. If the crop is harvested at the right time and handled correctly, then water, sugar and sourdough simply won't be needed.
True, without additional ingredients, you can make exclusively dry wine from grapes. For dessert, sweet and fortified ones, you will have to add for every 10 kg of berries from 50 to 200 g of sugar, and, possibly, water. Moreover, extraneous liquid in the production of wine is added only when the juice turned out to be excessively sour - to such an extent that it reduces the cheekbones and the tongue tingles. In other cases, adding water is not worth it - it impairs the taste.
The best homemade grape wine comes from self-grown berries. Their surface contains the so-called "wild" yeast, which ensures the fermentation process. If you buy grapes from your hands or in a store, you will definitely have to wash them. So you will remove the remnants of pesticides with which the berries may have been treated. We will tell you separately how to make a sourdough for purchased grapes.
Isable grape varieties
Wine made from Lydia grapes and other isable varieties is often wrongly accused of being harmful to health. This lie went for a walk with the light hand of French producers to devalue North American alcohol. In fact, the wine and juice from Lydia are excellent, although fresh grapes are not liked by everyone because of the slimy pulp.
Harvesting
To make wine, grapes need to be picked on time. Green the berries are sour; when using them, you will definitely have to add sugar and water. And this not only spoils the taste, but also leads to an increase in the content of methyl alcohol, hazardous to health, in the wine. Overripe grapes threaten to spoil the must due to the vinegar fermentation that has begun in the berries.
It is best to pick grapes on a dry, fine day, and not earlier than 2-3 days after rain or watering. You will have 2 days to process raw materials, later the berries will begin to lose moisture, taste and nutrients. In addition, putrefactive processes will begin, which will not only spoil the taste of grape wine - they will destroy it even during fermentation.
You cannot use spoiled grapes for wine production.
Container preparation
Before you start making wine from grapes at home, you need to take care of the container. Usually they use:
- Three-liter cans - for a small amount of grape drink. They are washed well and then sterilized. A special lid or a medical glove is used as a shutter required for fermentation of wine, after having pierced one of the fingers with a needle.
- Ten- or twenty-liter glass cylinders. It is this tattoo that is most often used for making wine at home. It is difficult to sterilize them, so usually containers for fermentation of grape juice are first thoroughly washed with hot water and soda, and then rinsed with cold. Alternatively, they can be fumigated with sulfur. A water seal is placed on large cylinders, consisting of a can filled with liquid and a lid with a hermetically attached tube.
- The best elite grape wines mature in oak barrels. If you have the opportunity to purchase such a container, you can consider yourself lucky. Take care of it like the apple of your eye, because if you use a barrel for pickling or pickling fruits at least once, you will never be able to make wine from grapes in it. First, oak containers are soaked, changing the water daily: new - within 10 days, already used for the production of alcohol - 3 days. Then steamed with boiling water with soda ash (25 g per bucket) and rinsed with warm water. Fumigation with sulfur completes the processing of oak barrels for the production of wine from grapes at home. A water seal is also installed here.
Sourdough preparation
Fermentation, which is the basis for the preparation of any wine, including grape wine, is a complex chemical process. It is caused by yeast, a microorganism that breaks down sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. When making homemade wine from grapes, natural ones are most often used for fermentation, contained on the surface of the berries in the form of a white bloom. In order to preserve the yeast, the bunches are not rinsed before fermentation.
But sometimes grapes have to be washed, for example, if pesticides were used shortly before harvesting or they were bought in a store or at the market. In the north, the bunches simply may not have time to ripen to the end. Then, to make wine from grapes, you have to use a special leaven. We present three recipes that are most commonly used.
Grape sourdough
Before making wine, collect some ripe grapes of any kind, mash the berries. Add 1 part water and 0.5 part sugar to 2 parts of the pulp. Place the mixture in a bottle, shake well and seal with cotton wool. Place in a dark place with a temperature of 22-24 degrees for fermentation, then strain.
For the production of dessert grape wine for 10 liters of juice take 300 g (3%) sourdough, dry - 200 g (2%). Store it for no more than 10 days.
Raisin sourdough
Pour 200 g of raisins, 50 g of sugar into a bottle, pour 300-400 g of lukewarm water, close with a cotton stopper. This sourdough is used in the same way as made from fresh grapes and is kept in the cold for no more than 10 days. Later, it can turn sour and ruin the wine.
Sourdough from wine lees
If for some reason the raisin sourdough does not suit you, but you need to ferment late ripening grapes, you can use the lees of the wine prepared earlier as yeast. To do this, it is enough to add 1% thick to the wort.
Wine production
The technology of making wines from grapes has been developed for centuries. Although the process of fermentation and aging of light alcoholic beverages follows a similar scheme, each supplier has its own secrets, which are often guarded more strictly than state secrets.In some countries, such as the Caucasus, France or Italy, there are families that have been cultivating grapes and producing wine for many generations. They elevated it to the rank of art and would never share the mystery of making a solar drink, not only with strangers, but also with each other.
We will slightly open the veil of secrecy and give the simplest recipe for grape wine.
Classification of wines
This is a vast topic that can be devoted to more than one article. Novice winemakers need to know what they can make:
- table wines from grapes, which are obtained exclusively as a result of natural fermentation - dry and semi-sweet;
- fortified wines, the recipe of which may include rectified alcohol - strong (up to 20% alcohol) and dessert (12-17%);
- flavored - strong or dessert wines made from grapes, in the preparation of which infusions of aromatic herbs and roots are used.
What is the difference between red and white wines
Distinguish between red and white grape wines. Their main difference is that the fermentation of the former occurs together with the skin and seeds (pulp). Consequently, dyes and tannins dissolve in the wort. Thus, red wine made from grapes differs from white wine not only in color, but also in its rich aroma, and a high content of tannin, which imparts astringency to the drink.
Preparation of raw materials
The grapes collected for wine are sorted out, all rotten and green berries, leaves, twigs and other debris are removed. You can cut off the fruit completely, but some owners prefer to leave some of the ridges for fermentation to get a richer flavor.
If you are going to prepare wine in a 10-liter container, you will need 10 kg of grapes to fill it. They do not wash their own raw materials or those obtained from a reliable source, so as not to use the sourdough for fermentation, but to use the "wild" yeast on the surface of the berries.
To prepare red wine, grapes are placed in portions in a stainless or enamel container and crushed by hand. Then, together with the pulp, it is poured into a glass jar or other fermentation container. It is better not to use any mechanical devices for kneading berries, since if the seeds are damaged, the wine will become unnecessarily bitter.
Wine made from white grapes at home is most often prepared without pulp, from one juice obtained using a hand press. It will be less aromatic, but more tender and light. Naturally, in order to White wine fermented well, you need to use the leaven.
First fermentation
Cover the container with grape juice prepared for making wine with gauze or a clean cloth and place it in a warm place to ferment. It is best if the temperature there is in the range of 25-28 degrees, but not lower than 16, otherwise you will get a very fragrant vinegar.
After 2-3 days, the grapes will begin to ferment, pulp on the future red wine will pop up, on white a head of foam will just appear. Stir the wort several times a day with a wooden spatula.
After about 5 days, the grape juice from the fermentation tank must be drained through a colander covered with several layers of clean gauze, the pulp must be squeezed out and poured into a glass container. In this case, not only the purification of the wort from solid particles occurs, but also its saturation with oxygen. Try not to disturb the sediment at the bottom - you don't need it, pour it out or use it as a starter for apple wine.
Second fermentation
Glass bottles for wine production must be filled with fermented and de-pulped grape juice to 70%. If you want to make a fortified drink, or the starting material is too acidic for normal fermentation, you can add sugar. It is not poured in immediately, but in parts, each time 50 g per liter of juice. If necessary, sugar can be added as the wine fermentation dies down every 3-4 days.
If the grapes were very sour, you can add water, but not more than 500 ml per liter of juice.
Install a water seal on the cylinder, which is a rubber or silicone tube with a diameter of 8-10 mm and a length of up to half a meter, one end of which is hermetically mounted into the lid, and the other is lowered into a glass of water. You can put on a medical glove on a three-liter jar of wine by piercing one of your fingers. The fermentation of sugar contained in grapes into alcohol should proceed in the absence of oxygen. If the tightness of the bottle is broken, you will get vinegar instead of wine.
Fermentation should take place at a temperature of 16 to 28 degrees. For red wine, it should be higher than for white. Yeast stops working already at 15 degrees.
The fermentation process can be monitored by the intensity of bubbling. When it becomes weak, add another 50 g of sugar (if necessary). To do this, pour 1-2 liters of wine from the grapes, dissolve the required amount of sweet sand and return it to the fermentation vessel.
Every 2% sugar in the wort increases the strength of the wine by 1%. At home, you cannot raise it above 13-14%, since it is at this concentration of alcohol that yeast stops working. You will get dry grape wine completely without sugar, the alcohol content of which does not exceed 10%.
How to make a stronger drink? It's simple. After fermentation is complete, add alcohol in a process called blending.
Fermentation of the simplest homemade grape wine usually lasts 12-20 days.
Wine from grapes is removed from the sediment not earlier than the fermentation processes stop. That is, after 1-2 days after the airlock stops releasing air or the glove put on the bottle falls.
Siphon the wine into a clean bottle. Make sure that the lower end of the tube does not come closer to the sediment by more than 2-3 cm. The wine will not be completely transparent.
Quiet fermentation
Ripening, which is also called quiet fermentation, can last from 40 days to a year. Long aging makes sense only when making wine from grapes in oak barrels. Glass containers will not allow the drink to further improve its properties.
Silent fermentation takes place in a container under a water seal in a dark cool room at a temperature of 8-12 degrees, but under no circumstances higher than 22. Young white wine can be tasted in 40 days, red - in 2-3 months.
Clarification of wine
When the grape wine is ripe, it is bottled and hermetically sealed so as not to turn into vinegar. The drink will not be perfectly transparent, in order to fix this, it is cleaned of impurities.
Artificial process clarification of wine called pasting and carried out using clay, gelatin or egg yolk. It should be noted that the degree of transparency of the grape drink does not affect the taste in any way.
The finished wine is stored in the cold in a horizontal or inclined position (neck up).
We invite you to watch a video about making homemade wine from grapes:
Conclusion
Homemade grape wine can be drunk without fear for its quality.It can decorate your holiday table or cheer you up on an ordinary gray day.
