SWORD

So I got bored one day and began cruising the internet for another hobby to teach myself (idle hands are a devils... something or other) and I stumbled upon some wine making sites. I used to ferment juice when I was in High school and sell it to friends. This would be a step up from that.

I went out and gathered the supplies, and decided to get 'r' done. What I ended up with was some very nice dry strawberry apple hooch. I call it hooch because, although I ended up with some damn good results, I used some really cheap ingredients. For example, instead of using wine makers yeast, I just used regular bread makers yeast. Instead of fine corn sugar, I used bleached granulated sugar etc...

I learned a few things and I have gone on to brew better, more flavorful and favorable wines. But I wanted to go on the record here by stating that you can absolutely make same damn good stuff right there at home for almost no real cost at all. Ill share some simple instructions in a moment. But first, some warnings for the novice so you don't make the same mistakes that I did.

1. The more you invest and the more patient you are, the better your results will be. You WONT be patient your first time around, its too much fun and its too exciting. But when you do it the second time, try to do it right. 
2. More sugar = more alcohol. Don't expect the wine (hooch) to be sweet. Most of the time, the yeast eats all the sugar and you are left with a very dry wine. Don't get upset! You can easily sweeten it after you are done with more sugar (Ill tell you how to prevent reactivating the yeast - if you want to do it that way. Seriously, find that entry before you just add more sugar.) You can also simply add so much sugar when you're making the original mix that the yeast eats as much as it can and produces so much alcohol that it poisons its self to death. This works too, and you get some seriously hard-core alcohol content this way AND the uneaten sugar sweetens the wine. BUT if you add WAY too much, you have ruined the wine and its like drinking alcoholic sugar water. 

If you plan to sweeten the wine after you are finished fermenting it, you need to do something to make sure the yeast is all completely dead. Some people boil the wine, which DOES work, but in my opinion it does something... icky... to the flavor. I have heard people say that it depends entirely on what you fermented and that some fruits and basic grape wines actually get better by boiling and it reduces some of the bitterness. Ill keep looking into that and some day Ill know, until then there is the other method I know that works. (Potassium sorbate, sold as a chemical or with a product name of Sorbistat K, its a commercial wine stabilizer. Potassium sorbate disrupts the reproductive cycle of yeast. Yeast can't reproduce and dies off. Add 1/2 teaspoon per gallon of wine dissolved in a cup or two of the wine you are treating and stirred thoroughly. Allow it to sit a few moments and look for small white lumps of undissolved powder. If present, keep stirring until the wine is clear without any lumps. Then add it to the larger batch and stir well.)

After you let it sit a couple days, you may then add either regular sugar, corn sugar, flavored syrups... whatever you want, depending on how traditional you want to be.



My Generic Recipe:

• 12 cans/bottles of any 100% juice concentrate
• Yeast (either bakers yeast or wine makers yeast, depending on how traditional you want to be and how much you want to spend) - Anywhere from one to 4 packets of yeast (or 1-4 tbsp if you're doing it that way.) More yeast often means more alcohol and a faster fermentation. 
• 3 gallons of water
• 4 cups sugar (or whatever... try more if you want to. More sugar also means more alcohol, just remember my warning about too much sugar). 

1.  You will need an airlock (or you can use the method where you stretch a balloon over it and poke a few tiny holes in it. Like I said, it depends on how much cash you want to spend. )
2. You will need a 4 gallon jug. The water plus the juice concentrate plus the sugar takes a lot of room. You may even want to use less water depending on how much room you have to work with. Don't sweat it, it doesn't make any difference in the long run. This is your first batch, you will master these skills and have it all worked out by the time you run your next batch.
3. When it is all in the jug and bubbling and fermenting away, just sit back and relax. When the activity is done you just need to siphon it either into your individual drinking jugs or into a big holding jug to let it settle. This 2nd option is preferred as it leads to a better quality wine, but if you are just brewing hooch for a party so you can make some cheap get'r'drunk punch, then you don't care about this step. 
4. If you want a better wine, keep following these instructions. You will have siphoned your wine into a holding jug and left the bottom layer of wine in the fermenting jug. This stuff is nasty, you don't want it. Let it settle in here and add the Potassium Sorbate and then the sugar if you are going to sweeten it. You will probably have a little more settling on the bottom after another month or so. (the longer the better)
5. siphon into your drinking jugs/bottles/whatever. You can either drink it now or "Rack" it for a while. The longer it sits, the fuller the flavor. There are a lot of people with a lot of theories on racking the wine. Do whichever suits you, I just store it on its side. Let it sit for a while (professionals say 3 months, fancy pants vintners say a year minimum... But trust me, you could have probably just drank the stuff on stage 3 if you just wanted to get drunk. Stage 4 makes a very nice home wine... but after 3 years, if stored properly, you have some damn  fine stuff you can impress any date with. (unless maybe you're drinking it out of a mason jar... that usually only impresses hillbilly girls. 

If you have any questions, just send me an email.