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The art of winemaking has to be learned for many years, but everyone can make homemade wine. However, making homemade wine from grapes is a complex process that requires knowledge of technology and some important nuances. If you are going to make wine with your own hands, you need to understand that you will have to write down or remember your every step, perform specific actions at a certain time. Therefore, for the period of preparation of a homemade alcoholic drink - 40-60 days - you will have to give up other business and almost constantly be at home, because grape wine does not forgive even the slightest violation of technology.
How to cook homemade grape wine, this article will tell. And also, here you can find a simple recipe for making a delicious drink, learn about when wine is made with the addition of water, and how else you can improve the taste of grape alcohol.
Secrets of making homemade wine from grapes
The technology of making a wine drink is a rather complicated and time-consuming process. Often vineyard owners ask themselves the question: "Am I preparing my wine correctly, or can I do something else to improve the taste of the drink?"
The wine will turn out delicious, beautiful and aromatic if you make homemade wine from grapes correctly, in accordance with all the recommendations of the professionals in this business. AND recommendations from winemakers are as follows:
- For making wines, it is better to use special wine grapes such as Isabella, Saperavi, Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and others. This does not mean that table or dessert varieties of berries are completely unsuitable - they can also make an excellent wine, just, in this case, the result can be unpredictable.
- You need to harvest on time: slightly unripe berries with a characteristic sourness are most suitable for winemaking. Although many dessert wines are made from berries that are overripe and wilted on the vine. At home, it is better not to wait for overripening, since the berries can ferment, the resulting vinegar will spoil the taste of the drink.
- The best time to harvest is a dry and sunny day. For a couple of days before harvesting, there should be no precipitation, since the water washes away valuable white bloom from the grapes - wine yeast. Therefore, you cannot wash the grapes before preparing the wine, the berries are simply removed from the bunches, clearing them of twigs and leaves.
- Wine glassware must be sterile so that the fermentation process is not disturbed. Before work, cans and bottles can be fumigated with sulfur or doused with boiling water, and then dried. It is allowed to use such materials as food grade plastic, glass, enamel coating, wood, stainless steel. Metal dishes are completely unsuitable for this, because they will oxidize and ruin the wine (this also applies to spoons, pushers, lids).
- Traditional ingredients for homemade wine: sugar and grapes. Water is added only when they want to get rid of excess acid, and vodka or alcohol will make the wine stronger, preserve it, thereby extending the shelf life.
Attention! In no case should you use utensils for winemaking in which milk was once stored - this will disrupt the fermentation process, even if you thoroughly wash the container.
Homemade grape wine recipe step by step
There are simple recipes for grape wine, and there are many more complex ones: with the addition of other ingredients, soaking apples, herbs or berries in a drink, saturating the juice with the aromas of wood or spices.
Here will be considered a step-by-step recipe for a traditional homemade wine made from just two ingredients:
- 10 kg of grapes;
- 50-200 g of sugar for each liter of grape juice (depending on the natural acidity of the berries and the taste preferences of the winemaker).
The technology for making delicious wine consists of several large stages:
- Grape harvesting and processing. As already noted, it is better to pick well-ripened clusters, on which there are no overripe berries yet. Dropping bunches should not be taken, because of them, the finished wine may have an unpleasant taste of earth. The harvested crop must be processed within two days. First, the berries are sorted out, debris and rotten or moldy grapes are removed. Now you need to transfer the grapes (with your hands or with a crush) and put the resulting mass in a wide bowl or pan, filling 34 volumes. Do not grind grapes with a blender, meat grinder or other similar devices, if the seeds are damaged, the wine will become bitter. The dishes with the pulp (transferred by the grape mass) are covered with a clean cloth and placed in a dark and warm (18-27 degrees) place. Here the wine will stand for 3-4 days until the pulp brightens. After half a day or a day, the fermentation process will begin, a cap of peel and seeds will rise above the juice. Stir the wort several times a day so that the wine does not turn sour.
- Compartment of juice. In a few days, the cap will brighten, a sour smell will appear over the wine, a quiet hiss will be heard - all this means that the fermentation process has started. Now you need to collect the floating pulp, squeeze it out with your hands. Drain the juice, leaving a sediment at the bottom of the container. All the harvested grape juice is poured into glass bottles or jars, previously filtered through several layers of gauze. It is recommended to pour the future wine from one vessel into another several times in order to saturate the juice with oxygen, which is necessary for fermentation. The bottles are not filled to the top - you need to pour no more than 70% of the wine from the total container volume.
- Water seal. Those who have wondered how to make homemade wine know that cans must be fitted with a glove, pipes or a special lid. The fact is that for effective fermentation (and not souring), wine at this stage does not need oxygen, and the carbon dioxide released during the process should also freely leave the juice. These conditions can be provided by a water seal - a design that provides a free outlet for gases, but does not let oxygen inside the bottle with wine. This device can look differently: a tube connecting a container with wine and a jar of water, a special lid for winemaking, a rubber medical glove with a pierced finger.
- The initial stage of fermentation. During this period, active fermentation of grape juice takes place, and the main thing now is to provide the wine with a sufficient temperature. For white wine 16-22 degrees is enough, red needs a little more heat - from 22 to 28 degrees. If the temperature jumps or drops below 15 degrees, fermentation will stop - the wine will turn sour.
- Adding sugar. This is probably the most difficult stage in making homemade wine. The main task of sugar in winemaking is to be processed during fermentation and turn into alcohol. Giving the wine a sweet and more pleasant taste is only in second place. You need to know that 2% sugar can be processed into 1% alcohol... Any grape already contains sugar - an average amount of 20% (in most regions of the country). This means that if a sugar-free wine recipe is chosen, then the drink will have 10% strength at the end. But the sweetness of the wine will be zero, and not everyone likes such alcohol. It should be remembered that the maximum concentration of wine alcohol is 13-14%, if there is more sugar in the wine, it will not ferment and will correct the taste of the drink. It is necessary to determine the sugar content of grapes according to the taste of the juice: it should resemble compote or tea in sweetness, be sweet, but not cloying. For normal fermentation, the wine should not have more than 15-20% sugar.Therefore, sugar is added to wine in parts, adding the next batch only when the previous one is processed. The first 50 g per liter of juice is added on the third day of fermentation. When the wine turns sour again, you can add another 50 g of granulated sugar. This procedure is repeated 3-4 times within 14-25 days at the stage of active wort fermentation. People who make wine professionally recommend draining a couple of liters of juice and diluting sugar in them, and only then pouring this syrup from a bottle. It is necessary to stop adding sugar when the wine will not sour for a long time, which means that sugar is no longer processed into alcohol.
- Removing wine from sediment. The fermentation period for homemade grape wine is 30-60 days. You can find out about the end of this process by a deflated glove or the absence of air bubbles in a jar of water. By this time, the wine is clarified, and a loose sediment appears at the bottom of the bottle - fermented yeast. To prevent the dead fungi from giving up their bitterness to the guilt, the drink must be drained from the sediment. One or two days before, bottles and cans are raised above the floor: you can put dishes with wine on a stool or on a table. When the agitated sediment descends again, the wine is poured into another container using a small hose (7-10 mm in diameter). The end of the hose is not brought to the sediment more than 2-3 cm.
- Sweetness adjustment. The active phase of fermentation is over, the added sugar will not turn into alcohol, it will only improve the taste of the wine. Sugar is added to taste, but you shouldn't add more than a glass for every liter of wine. Homemade grape wines can be fortified, for this they add vodka or alcohol (from 2 to 15% of the total). It should be remembered that alcohol will harden the wine and worsen its natural aroma.
- Maturation of homemade grape wine. The production of the drink does not end there, now the stage of "quiet" fermentation follows. It can last from 40 (for white varieties) to 380 days. If the wine has been sweetened, it is necessary to put the water seal back on, when sugar was not added, a simple nylon cap is put on the bottle. Young wine is stored in a dark and cool place with a stable temperature - the cellar is optimal. As soon as the sediment layer becomes more than 2-4 cm, the wine must be drained so that there is no bitterness.
- Storage of finished wine. The complete readiness of the drink will be indicated by the absence of sediment in the bottle - now you can pour delicious wine into bottles and store it for up to five years.
Important! Photos of wine drinks attached to the article will help you understand what the color and transparency of high-quality homemade wine should be.
How to make unconventional homemade wine
Even the most delicious wine made from sugar and grapes can find a more interesting alternative. Simple time-tested recipes will help to diversify the assortment of home-made wines:
- Polish table wine can be obtained by replacing sugar with raisins. In this case, the amount of raisins should be twice the required dose of sugar.
- For cooking Hungarian wine raisins are also needed, but they also take wine yeast. A wooden barrel with such a drink is buried in the ground and kept there for a whole year.
- You can put wine for fermentation, after placing a bag in the bottle with chopped cloves... When the grapes are fermented, the cloves are removed - the wine manages to get saturated with the spicy aroma of this spice.
- They even cook lemon wineadding the zest of one lemon to the wort. When the product is fermented, you can add orange peel, lemon balm and a little mint.
- For the preparation of the famous Moselle wine you need to evaporate the elderberry and mint in a wooden barrel. When the container is saturated with these aromas, the broth is poured out, replacing it with young grape wine. You can also add a few mint leaves and elder flowers here.
- Apple drink based on grapes, they do this: fresh apples are regularly put in the fermenting wort, after a few days they are replaced with new ones (so as not to ferment).
Advice! Do not be afraid: only by experimenting, you can come up with your own recipe for delicious homemade wine.
By performing the wine preparation technology given in the article in stages, you can get a wonderful drink at home, which will be no worse than expensive store-bought grape wines. And by adding a drop of imagination, it’s easy to "compose" your own wine recipe, the secrets of which will be passed on from generation to generation.
