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Alcohol is now expensive, and its quality is questionable. Even people who buy expensive elite wines are not immune from fakes. It is very unpleasant when a holiday or a 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 at home.
Even city dwellers at the end of the season or during a trip with friends to the country can buy a few boxes of sunny berries. And it will not be difficult to make wine from it even for people who do not know anything about winemaking, since recipes are easy to find.
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 will not be required.
True, without additional ingredients, you can only make dry wine from grapes. For dessert, sweet and fortified, you will have to add from 10 to 50 g of sugar for every 200 kg of berries, 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 the cheekbones reduce and the tongue tingles. In other cases, you should not add water – it worsens the taste.
The best grape wine at home will come 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 that may have been used to process the berries. How to prepare a sourdough for purchased grapes, we will tell separately.
Isabella grape varieties
Wine made from Lydia grapes and other Isabella varieties is often unfairly accused of being harmful to health. This lie has gone for a walk with the light hand of French manufacturers to devalue North American alcohol. In fact, wine and juice from Lydia are excellent, although not everyone likes this grape fresh because of the slimy pulp.
Harvesting
To make wine, the grapes must be harvested on time. Green 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 harvest 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.
Spoiled grapes cannot be used to make wine.
Container preparation
Before you start making wine from grapes at home, you need to take care of the container. Usually use:
- Three-liter jars – for a small amount of drink from grapes. They are well washed and then sterilized. As a shutter, necessary for the fermentation of wine, use a special lid or a medical glove, after piercing one of the fingers with a needle.
- Ten or twenty liter glass bottles. It is this tattoo that is most often used for making wine at home. It is difficult to sterilize them, so usually containers for fermenting 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 jar filled with liquid and a lid with a hermetically attached tube.
- The best elite wines from grapes 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 fermenting fruits at least once, you will never be able to cook wine from grapes in it. First, oak containers are soaked, changing the water daily: new – for 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. Finishing the processing of oak barrels for the production of wine from grapes at home is fumigation with sulfur. A water seal is also installed here.
Preparation of starter
Fermentation, which underlies 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 preparing homemade wine from grapes for fermentation, the natural ones contained on the surface of the berries in the form of a white bloom are most often used. In order to preserve the yeast, the grapes are not rinsed before fermentation.
But sometimes the grapes have to be washed, for example, if pesticides were used shortly before harvesting or they were bought in a store or on the market. In the north, the clusters simply may not have time to ripen to the end. Then, to make wine from grapes, you have to use a special sourdough. We will give three recipes that are used most often.
Grape sourdough
Before making wine, collect some ripe grapes of any variety, mash the berries. For 2 parts of the pulp, add 1 part of water and 0,5 of sugar. Place the mixture in a bottle, shake well and seal with cotton. Put in a dark place with a temperature of 22-24 degrees for fermentation, then strain.
For the production of dessert grape wine, 10 g (300%) of sourdough is taken per 3 liters of juice, dry – 200 g (2%). Keep it no more than 10 days.
Raisin starter
Pour 200 g of raisins, 50 g of sugar into a bottle, pour 300-400 g of slightly warm water, close with a cotton plug. Such a starter is used in the same way as prepared from fresh grapes and is stored in the cold for no more than 10 days. Later, it can turn sour and spoil the wine.
Sourdough from wine sediment
If for some reason the sourdough from raisins does not suit you, but you need to ferment late-ripening grapes, you can use the sediment of 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 worked out for centuries. Although the process of fermentation and aging of light alcoholic beverages follows similar patterns, each supplier has his own secrets, which are often guarded more strictly than state secrets. In some countries, for example, in the Caucasus, France or Italy, there are families who have been growing grapes and making wine for generations. They elevated it to the rank of art and would never share the secret of preparing a solar drink, not only with outsiders, but also with each other.
We will slightly open the veil of secrecy and give the simplest recipe for grape wine.
Wine classification
This is a vast topic, which can be devoted to more than one article. Beginning winemakers need to know what they can cook:
- 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
There are red and white wines made from grapes. Their main difference lies in the fact that the first fermentation occurs along with the skin and seeds (pulp). Consequently, dyes and tannins dissolve in the wort. Thus, red wine from grapes differs from white not only in color, but also in rich aroma, and a high content of tannin, which gives the drink astringency.
Preparation of raw materials
The grapes harvested 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 part of the ridges to ferment in order to get a richer taste.
If you are going to prepare wine in a 10-liter container, 10 kg of grapes will be required to fill it. Own or obtained from a reliable source, raw materials are not washed, so as not to use sourdough for fermentation, but to use “wild” yeast on the surface of the berries.
To make red wine, the grapes are placed in portions in a stainless or enameled container and crushed with your hands. Then, together with the pulp, it is poured into a glass jar or other container for fermentation. It is better not to use any mechanical devices for kneading berries, because if the seeds are damaged, the wine will become unnecessarily bitter.
Wine from white grapes at home is most often prepared without pulp, from one juice obtained using a hand press. It will be less fragrant, but more tender and light. Naturally, in order for white wine to ferment well, you need to use sourdough.
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 within 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, the pulp on the future red wine will float up, on the white, a cap of foam will simply appear. Several times a day, the wort should be stirred with a wooden spatula.
After about 5 days, the grape juice from the fermentation tank must be drained through a colander lined with several layers of clean gauze, squeezed out the pulp and poured into a glass bottle. 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 that has accumulated at the bottom – you do not need it, pour it out or use it as a starter for apple wine.
Second fermentation
Glass cylinders for the production of wine must be filled with 70% fermented and de-pulped grape juice. If you want to make a fortified drink, or the feedstock is too acidic for normal fermentation, you can add sugar. It is not poured immediately, but in parts, each time 50 g per liter of juice. If necessary, sugar can be added as the fermentation of the wine fades 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 sealed 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 must proceed in the absence of oxygen. If the bottle is leaking, 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 observed by the intensity of the release of bubbles. When it becomes weak, add another 50 g of sugar (if necessary). To do this, 1-2 liters of wine are poured from grapes, the right amount of sweet sand is dissolved and returned to the fermentation tank.
For every 2% sugar in the must, the strength of the wine increases by 1%. At home, you will not be able to raise it above 13-14%, since it is at this concentration of alcohol that yeast stops working. Completely without sugar, you will get dry wine from grapes, the alcohol content of which does not exceed 10%.
How to make a stronger drink? Everything is simple. After fermentation is complete, add alcohol – this process is called blending.
Fermentation of the simplest homemade wine from grapes usually lasts 12-20 days.
The wine from the grapes is removed from the sediment no earlier than the fermentation processes stop. That is, after 1-2 days after the water seal stops releasing air or the glove worn on the bottle falls.
Using a siphon, pour the wine into a clean bottle. Make sure that the lower end of the tube does not approach the sediment more than 2-3 cm. The wine will not be completely transparent.
silent fermentation
Ripening, which is also called quiet fermentation, can last from 40 days to a year. Long exposure makes sense only when making wine from grapes in oak barrels. Glass containers will not allow the drink to further improve its properties.
Quiet fermentation takes place in a container under a water lock in a dark, cool room at a temperature of 8-12 degrees, but under no circumstances above 22. Young white wine can be tasted after 40 days, red – after 2-3 months.
Lighting fault
When the wine from the grapes is ripe, it is bottled and hermetically sealed so as not to turn into vinegar. The drink will not be perfectly transparent, to fix this, it is cleaned of impurities.
The process of artificial clarification of wine is called fining and is 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.
Ready wine is stored in the cold in a horizontal or inclined position (neck up).
We invite you to watch a video on how to make homemade wine from grapes:
Conclusion
You can drink homemade grape wine without fear for its quality. It can decorate your holiday table or cheer you up on an ordinary gray day.