Step by Step: How do you make wine?

I realized the other day that though I've been trying to run a site on simple winemaking recipes and techniques, I never have posted a simple explanatory guide on how it is that wine is made. Thus this very generic guide on making wine at home will be forever placed on the right hand side of the page in the "Guides" section, where you can also find the glossary I have been putting together, and which I add to on occasion, and the sugar guide from a post in early October of this year. This post will include all of the must-knows before you begin the most basic winemaking, without overwhelming you with details. It's an easy hobby, and only ever has to be as complex as you want to make it! Give it a try!

Let's break winemaking down into steps.

Step one: Sanitize your space, your utensils, and the container that all of your ingredients are going into.

Step two: Put your juice and any other ingredients like sugar, water... into the container.

Step three: Put in your yeast (the temperature of the juice must be between 65 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit for most yeasts to do their work).



Step four: Cover the container so that air can get out, but not in. How? They make special airlocks for this, but a balloon with some pinholes poked in it usually works just fine.

Step five: Wait (It might take eight days, it might take forty. This depends on your yeast, the temperature, the amount of sugar in the juice... all sorts of things. Just wait until the yeast stops working, and the wine isn't as cloudy.).

Step six: Bottle your wine, keeping as much yeast out as possible. If there is a lot of yeast floating around in the wine, then its probably not ready to bottle.

Step seven: Put the bottles somewhere cool to age for a while. Aging will depend on what you want out of your wine, and what kind of wine it is.

Note on Aging: My peach wine is great at ten months old, my light mead is good at two months, my pumpkin wine takes over a year to develop its smooth vanilla taste. You can drink the white hillbilly wine after a month, and it tastes like a two dollar bottle of wine, or you can drink it at ten months old, and its about as good as anything you can buy at the wine shop for ten dollars.


Rules: If you follow these basic rules, then you're bound to have something that, given time, tastes pretty good:

1.) Cleanliness, you must make sure everything you do is sanitary, especially that you ferment your wine in a sanitary container

2.) Do not use juices or concentrates with preservatives, these often kill your yeast, make it difficult to ferment, or cause your yeast to produce off-flavors or odors.

3.) Use wine yeast only.

4.)Patience! If it doesn't taste good, don't drink it, and don't throw it away. I once dumped out five bottles of wine because I didn't like it. Ten months later I still had two bottles and it was amazing!

All About Peach...

Last February I shared my recipe for peach wine. I had had the wine for a while, and it was pretty good, definitely worth making again (which I have), but then Cait and I went a while without having any. A few months, and it underwent a transformation. A really, really wonderful transformation.

When we opened our third-to-last bottle of our 2010 Peach in early October, it was very dry, fruity yet woody, complex. There are ways in which I would liken it to a nice dry Rioja. Now we have no bottles left.

The recipe is really quite simple, and if you'd like to make a cheaper version or if you simply can't get raisins and lemons in time, then you can always substitute a little acid blend and a tiny bit of grape tannins (less than 1/8 tsp). Of course if you are using fresh peaches, slice them up and boil your water, then pour it over them to kill off the wild yeasts, or use a campden tablet crushed. If you recall from the original post, I use my mom's home canned peaches, and it could not have turned out any better.

I am visiting my parents this weekend, and raiding their peaches.

I must warn you about something if you plan to make this recipe. After two months the wine still is too woody, it's drinkable, but almost a little disappointing. After four months, it might be hard to save any. If you make it to six months, you're half way there. On its first birthday, this wine is good for any occasion. Give it as a gift (if you can stand to part with it), bring it to a get-together.

You must try this recipe!

The Winemaker

Pear Cider

Ramble: This recipe for pear cider or pear wine is simple and delicious. At our farmers market right now pears are going for $2.50 for 8 quarts! That's almost enough for two gallons of this delicious beverage!




Recipe:

4 lbs. Pears peeled and sliced
boiling water to 1 gallon
6 cups sugar
1/8 tsp. tannins
1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme
1tsp yeast nutrient
champagne or wine yeast






Peel and slice the pears into small chunks. Place in a sanitized stock pot. In another pot, bring your water to a rapid boil. Carefully pour the water over the chopped pears, place lid over them, and allow them to sit until the entire mixture reaches room temperature, or at least under 100 degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 centigrade). Add the pectic enzyme and stir about to mix it in.

Let sit overnight. The following day the pectic enzyme will have made your pears quite mushy, use a very well-washed hand or better yet a sanitized potato masher to squish the pears even more. Give the mixture time to sit and let the pear juice work its way out of the fruit. This can be anywhere from a few hours to overnight. More time generally means more pear flavor.

After having sat a while, use a cheesecloth (two layers is best) or a few turkey stuffing bags, or beer boiling bags to strain the juice from the pears. Do not squeeze the juice out if you can help it, just let it sit!

Add in all other ingredients, making sure that the sugar, tannins, and yeast nutrient are dissolved, and place the entire mixture into your sanitized fermenter, with an airlock attached. All for fermentation, and bottle when clear!

Tips:
How to make it bubbly: I know I like my pear cider bubbly, so here's how it goes: If you're filling a beer bottle/small bottles: add 1 tsp sugar to each bottle before filling. If using wine bottles add 1 1/2 tsp. sugar to the bottle before filling. Store at room temperature for a few weeks to get carbonation, and keep the bottles in a Rubbermaid bin or leak-proof container if possible. If you have added too much sugar your corks could pop or your bottles could explode. This has only ever happened to me once, a long time ago, when I added way way too much sugar when bottling. With these proportions I have never had a problem! Also, good synthetic number 9 corks stay wedged in the best!

Related Recipes: meddyglyn, light mead, medium mead, sweet mead, apple cider

Lakewood Winery, Seneca Lake, NY

In early September Cait and I visited my parents in North-central Pennsylvania, and took my mom to Watkins Glen, NY to do a day hike up the gorge. Things took a turn, it was very hot out, and we ended up doing a few wine tastings at some of the Vineyards/Wineries along Seneca Lake. The best of the batch was, by far, Lakewood Vineyards.

Lakewood is just a few miles up from the southern tip of Seneca Lake, in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. The winery is on the west side of the lake. The atmosphere was casual, the staff was a riot, and the place was bustling, and it's no wonder, they have some really wonderful wines.

As you know, I am a dry red wine fan, but I tasted a bit of everything. My favorites were by far the Gewurztraminer, their Long Stem White, and Candeo, a sparkling wine that they claim is for those moments when "beer is too little, and wine is too much". I know, these are all white wines, but that's where the Finger Lakes wineries excel. We bought a few bottles and have since enjoyed them.

Wines are not all that Lakewood makes, they also have a few meads on hand. I am happy to report this, as I know that my mead and meddyglyn recipes are among the most popular on the site.

Lakewood makes a mead called Seifu's Tej, an Ethiopian style mead that they brew for a chain of popular west-coast Ethiopian restaurants under the guidance of a master Tej blender. It is an exceptional mead, light, crisp, with a hint of sweetness and very refreshing. They also make their "Mystic Mead" which is a blend of wildflower and orange blossom honeys. Though I did not sample it on this trip, I look forward to trying it in the future.

We will certainly be returning to Lakewood. A link to their website can be found here: Lakewood Vineyards.

Next Week in the Winemaker's Notebook:

Next week in the Winemaker's Notebook I have a fun mix of recipes, wine-related recommendations / anecdotes / tips, and an update all about a favorite recipe!

My first post will feature a trip to Lakewood Winery, in the Finger Lake's region of upstate New York, where grapes are not the only thing they're fermenting! I'll talk about a style of mead that was new to me, and definitely new to New York!

The next post will feature a recipe for Pear Cider! Don't let the word cider fool you, this recipe packs a little more punch than your grocery-store variety ciders, and a delicious punch at that! Check in, and make for yourself one of the favorite drinks of the ancient Romans!

The last post of the week will be all about peach! Our peach wine recipe is top notch, but there are a few considerations you may want to know about before you make it. I'll include a few new tips, and some variations to the original recipe posted! Make some now while you can still get peaches, or do as I do, and use home-canned peaches any time of the year!

Until next time,

The Winemaker