Congratulations! By deciding that you want to try your hand at the centuries old wine-making process, you have joined a fun and elite group. Life may never be the same. Knowing the answer to the question “How do you make homemade wine?” is a door opener to all kinds of people and places.
So, let’s get started. First we’ll go over the basic steps of making wine and make sure you don’t fall into any of the pitfalls common to beginning winemakers. After all, you do want your wine to actually taste good, right?
Step 1: Decide how much wine should you make in your first batch.
We recommend that you start with at least 5 gallons. That may sound like a lot but it is only enough to fill 25 bottles. By the time you try a bottle – or two – or three, and share with your family and friends, before you know it your first batch of wine will only be a faint sweetness on your lips and in your memory. Chances are your first batch will be history even before it has a chance to age and improve in quality.
Of course there’s the quick and simple method using a plastic jug – of the milk variety and a balloon of some sort. But, once you’ve tasted it a bit, it’s gone. Then it’s time to start the process all over again.
If you make the suggested five gallons, you may even be able to let a couple or three of the bottles age. And that – not letting the wine age in the bottle – is the biggest beginner wine making mistake out there. The taste difference of aged and new wine is simply astounding.
Step 2: Pick a juice…any juice.
Juice ferments. So, you can basically turn any kind of juice into wine. But not necessarily good tasting wine. The new wine maker may want to use grape, cranberry, muscadine, or cherry juice. All of these are good choices for the beginner. Grape juice, cranberry juice and muscadine juice will all produce a rather normal wine as far as taste goes, with muscadine being the sweeter of the three. Cherry juice will usually give you an even sweeter wine. If your palate leans way toward the sweetness side, after your wine has stabilized and the fermenting process is done, you can even add sugar to make it even sweeter.
It is common for wine drinkers to prefer the sweeter varieties early on. That tendency seems to dissipate as the palate is developed and one “develops a taste” for the wine.
Step 3: Completely sterilize all containers and equipment.
We all learned importance of good hygiene in grammar school. Those lessons just as true in the making of wine. Evil bacteria are lurking in those nasty little cracks and crevices, just waiting to infect your wine and turn it bad. These mean little critters can mess with your production at any stage. So, to make sure that your efforts and your wine are not wasted, everything that comes in contact with your juice must be washed, rinsed and sterilized.
You can use boiling water and pour it over your equipment. Make sure you pour while the water is still boiling. Watch out, though. Pouring hot water over or into cool glass will almost certainly cause it to break.
And then there’s the bleach method. You can use a household bleach solution to ready your utensils. If you delete your bleach at the rate of 1 cup bleach to 1 gallon of water you will have a mixture that is very effective for sterilization. Note: the bleach method is best for glass and plastic but not metal utensils, as bleach corrodes metal.
Perhaps best, you can use a sanitizer which is designed to sanitize your your utensils without having to use boiling water. This is the recommended method because it is the safest and probably the easiest. You just pour the sanitizer over everything, making sure that it comes in contact with all the surfaces, and then rinse it off with hot water.
Step 4: Pour your juice into a 5 gallon bucket.
At this point we need to sterilize our juice, or “must” as it is called in the wine making process. We’ll use four Campden tablets. These tablets contain sulfite which will get rid of any bacteria that might be present in your must. All you do is crush the tablets and dissolve them in some warm water. Then pour them into the must. Overnight the sulfites will do their work. Let the must sit for 24 hours and then were ready to sprinkle in or “pitch” the yeast.
What kind of yeast you decide to use is best discussed in a different article since there literally hundreds of different kinds of yeast strains designed for thousands of different uses. But, for our first batch we can just use the bakers yeast that you can find at the grocery store. Later, and after you get a little more understanding about yeast, you will want to switch to one of the specialized strains.
Step 5: Watch and Wait
Now we can watch and wait for seven days. and watch. Either cover the bucket with a cloth towel or put a lid with an airlock on it. As long as the wine is producing carbon dioxide, which is a by-product of the sugars turning into alcohol, your wine will be safe. The carbon dioxide will protect your must from the oxygen in the air.
Step 6:
After the seven day waiting period, siphon the wine off into a different bucket or into a glass “carboy”. You can buy a carboy online or at a local wine shop. Note: Don’t forget about the always important hygiene.
Siphoning off the wine will allow you to transfer the juice into your bucket or carboy without transferring the gunk or “lees” from the bottom of the bucket. Lees is made up of dead yeast and wine that sits on top of lees can develop a bad flavor.
Step 7: Lock it up.
Now that your wine has been transferred into your “secondary fermenter”, then you will want to put an airlock in place and just let it sit for about a month. There’s a song about this part – “The Waiting is the Hardest Part”. It’s true. Every budding home winemaker just cannot wait to taste the stuff – but – don’t do it. It surely won’t hurt you but during this month it is still fermenting. The wine isn’t finished yet. Be Patient.
Step 8: Transfer again.
After the month is up, you will want to transfer it back to your bucket, again making sure that you leave the gunk on the bottom. The process of transferring the wine from one vessel to another is called “racking”. Why? That’s something I am going to research for another article. You are just about there!
Step 9: Stabilize it.
There’s only one action left to do and that is to add a “stablizer” to your wine. A stabilizer inhibits yeast reproduction. In essence, it stops yeast from doing it’s thing. Remember that part of what happens during yeast growth and reproduction is that it releases carbon dioxide (Co2) gas. If that is happening after you bottle the wine, your corks can pop our or your bottles can explode bottles or both. So – put in the stabilizer, stir the wine well, and then return it to your Secondary Carboy fermentation vessel. Be sure and clean out the secondary and sterilize it before you do.
Step 10: Wait some more.
Now, all you have to do at this point is wait until the wine clears. Gravity is your friend here. Of course, it won’t hurt a bit to bottle cloudy wine. But if you wait another month, it should be crystal clear. The clearing process is another subject that you can find a great deal of information on in other guides and books and I suggest you read up on this subject when you get a chance.
Step 11: Bottling time!
Make sure your bottles are clean and sanitized and just siphon the wine into the bottles. Corking the bottles can be a little difficult and I highly recommend you get some king of corker. Again, these are available online or at your local wine shop.
Step 12: Wait one more time.
Now – BE PATIENT and let the wine sit in the bottle for 6 to 9 months. The longer the wine ages, the better it will taste – I guarantee it.
