Wine Makers Club

[r1v3th3ad]

This thread is for wine makers and those interested in making wine.

I feel this will be handy, at least for me...I made an attempt back in October at making my own, it was really good in the making, but I aged it with the fruit too long and it turned vinegar

My method:
I had 5 pounds of blended fruit, 5-9 pounds of sugar, and the rest water filling the bucket to near the 5 gallon line. I used camden tablets as directed and 2 cakes of yeast.

My problems was that I left the fruit in for too long, about 2 months and I didn't have proper equipment...5 gallon construction buckets and garbage bags for seals


anyone with working recipes or questions for the pros, feel free to post away...I will post later with my questions, I just wanted to get this thread started

[magick777]

Cool idea, be nice to know how many of us are home brewers & winemakers. I have an absolute load of half-made wines that need racking, bottling and otherwise mucking around with.

Proper equipment is easy and cheap to acquire; I suggest buying the majority of your buckets/plastic from new as it tends to pick up scratches and store bacteria, however, I've successfully used old fertiliser buckets, with an airlock shoved through a hole in the lid, as primary fermenters. You can bag demi-johns and the like via eBay, Freecycle and similar; I went on the hunt a couple years back and ended up with about 30 demijohns for £100 or so.

I'll post back as and when anything interesting happens on the brewing front...

[magick777]

A quick note of caution to would-be wine-makers is in order. Looking around my kitchen, I presently have:

[list][*]five gallons of apricot wine, smelling heavenly and needing racking before bottling[*]four gallons of spiced date wine, hopefully clearing[*]two gallons of ginger wine, made in 2009, that [b]still[/b] hasn't stopped fermenting[*]two gallons of last year's plum wine, cloudy as fuck, needing racking[*]one gallon of sweet date wine[*]one and a half gallons red grape pyment, needing bottling[*]half a gallon of hypocras, C14th recipe[*]three and a half gallons of assorted meads in various states[*]two gallons of an attempt at a blush wine[*]20lbs of canned pineapple, but no sugar, yeast, or nutrient[/list]
All of this needs attention, and I have no homebrew beer left so that's also a priority. I have no beer kits, no suitable bottles for half of the above, no suitable caps or corks for most of the bottles I do have and not enough clean demijohns to rack into. I might just about get this sorted before this year's plums are falling off the tree...Moral of the story is keep it small, keep it simple, keep it cheap and drink what you produce, before something inspires you to produce more. It's gonna be a fun Spring, I can tell... Edited March 31, 2011 by magick777