Last summer I was in the Crimea, I rented a room in a house by the sea. The owner turned out to be a very nice person and treated me to his homemade wine in the evenings. We spent not a single hour with him in sincere conversation, to the sound of sea waves.
As a memento, I brought several bottles of his wine from that trip. But it quickly ended. And I thought, is it really impossible to make homemade wine in our middle lane? After all, a lot of berries grow.
So my subscriber Ivan Viktorovich began his story.
Why I decided to make alcohol myself
Not a single feast is complete without wine in my family. But, having studied the range of stores, I came to the disappointing conclusion that really high-quality drinks are expensive. Wines worth up to 500 rubles. not always thirsty due to the excessive addition of preservatives and the disgusting taste. Expensive brands are not always possible to afford.
So I decided to make my own wine at home. Fortunately, I live in a small village in the suburbs, 50 km. From Moscow. There are a large number of fruit bushes and trees on the site, the fruits of which can be easily used as the main ingredient for making a drink.
What ingredients are required
Last summer was quite rich in chokeberry, which we have several bushes on the site. It was decided that I would use some of the berries to make homemade wine.
I confess, hand on heart – this is my first experience. But the end result made me happy.
For cooking, I took the following products:
- 6 kg of chokeberry;
- 1 kg 200 g sugar;
- Xnum g raisins;
- 1,5 L of water.
The cooking process
1. Preparation of fruits. Crush 6 kg of chokeberry. To do this, you can use your own hands, a spoon, or a pusher. If you want to feel like a true winemaker, such as Adriano Celentano from a famous movie, then you can put the berries in a bath or a vat and crush them with your feet. To each his own. Fantasize.
Rowan cannot be washed under water because the peel contains natural yeast that will assist in the fermentation process.
2. Mixing ingredients. It is necessary to take a container of 10 liters. Pour crushed berries and 600 g of sugar into it. I do not advise you to cook wine completely without sugar, since mountain ash by nature does not have sweetness. And if you do not add sugar, then the finished product will be quite low in degrees. Not higher than 5. And it will be poorly stored.
My advice is to add a handful of raisins, also unwashed. Similar natural yeasts are present on its surface.
Mix the contents thoroughly. Cover the pan with gauze, tie it with a rope and send it to a warm, dark place for a week. Several times a day, I mixed the resulting juice and pulp (cake from crushed berries) so that the semi-finished product does not deteriorate.
3. A week later, we press the juice. A week later I took off the gauze. After stirring, I noticed that foam appears – a clear sign – you can squeeze the juice from crushed berries. I didn’t use a juicer. It’s a pity, and it will go down quickly. The resulting juice was filtered through cheesecloth. The remaining pulp should never be thrown away. Transfer to a fermentation container. Fill up to a maximum of 40-50 percent of the volume. Leave room for juice and gas that still forms.
4. The process of pulp processing. Send the squeezed berry to a separate container. Pour 500 g of sugar and pour in a liter of water so that the liquid is higher than the volume of rowan. Send to a dark place for 5-6 days.
Important: stir the mass every day, periodically drown the floating berries. Otherwise, mold may appear.
5. Siphon installation. Install a water seal on the container where the previously squeezed juice is located. It can easily be built from an ordinary glove by piercing one of the fingers with a needle so that air and gas come out. Put in a dark place. Let it roam.
6. Squeeze out new juice. Remove the container with the pressed mountain ash from a dark place and strain through a sieve. No additional pressing required.
7. Mixing two types of juice. Remove the water seal from the container, remove the foam with a spoon and add a new batch of berry liquid. Put on the glove again.
8. Fermentation process. This stage will last approximately 40-50 days. A characteristic sign is that the air no longer comes out, and the glove has deflated. Sediment appeared at the bottom and the color of the wine became lighter.
It is already possible to pour young wine from chokeberry into bottles, adding sugar to taste (I did not add, because I do not like excessive cloying).
9. Ripening. The wine matures for about another 4 months. You need to move the bottles to a cool place. If there is a cellar, then that’s it. As soon as a precipitate appears, it must be filtered.
What result did I get
So my chokeberry wine is ready. When I tried what happened for the first time, I was very worried, after all, the first experience. The result — an explosion of the brain, honestly, let out a mean male tear from the realization that it turned out very well.
The wine came out very rich, with a pronounced bitterness. The color is dark and looks great in a glass. The fortress is not big – 9-12 degrees. I will definitely repeat my experiment next year.
Excessive alcohol consumption is harmful to your health. Take care of yourself!
What berries have you tried to make homemade wine from? What result did you get?