make wine

I’ve got a bushel of grapes. How do we squeeze em?

... until I drank some from the landlord of a friend. Now I can’t stand the commercial approximations and flat out imitations.

I plan to get two carboys from a store I found on Long Island and fill them with grape juice that I’ll get at a place near that store, or in Whitestone, or in Astoria, haven’t researched these yet.

The first carboy will probably be gone while still being what we call in Bulgaria young wine, not much alcohol in it yet, but at least I won’t have much of a chance to spoil it.

Buy the time we finish that first carboy, the second should be coming along nicely (I so much hope, but my biggest worry should be probably temperature, I’m making it in the kitchen :) and then I’ll start a batch of mead in the first carboy, which should be about ready in another three months or so.

If I can get that going, two to four, six-gallon carboys should supply a years worth of one of the greatest gifts given to our hairless monkey race.

In the meantime I’ll have to make do with the commercial #&@!#$% or honey-based kombucha, or something…

Drinking is sacred, learn how to do the ritual, or you’ll never travel to the promised land, or whatever…

~ love yourselves ~

Well I moved the lilac from the carboy to the bottles last night, I think I will let them sit a while longer but from the glass I had I have a pretty decent sweet lilac wine. I missed the elderflowers I wanted by a few weeks, but you know what that means elderBERRY wine. I found a pretty simple recipe online and when I was done siphoning off the lilac wine last night I strained out the elderberries (and raisons!) from that batch to add the sugar, citrus and yeast. This will be my first fruit wine because all the other attempts I have made have been floral. If all goes well I will actually exceed my expectations for this year and I will end up with 4 wines: Dandelion, Lilac, Elderberry and Hibiscus.

I may have become over zealous. I have decided to make 3 wines this year, all floral/herbals. So far I have bottled up a batch of Dandelion and I have a Lilac that is “racking up” (took me forever to find out what that meant in the recipes I was reading.)
In a few more weeks I will be going out to get Elderflower to make a sparkling wine which I tried for the first time last year with inconsistent but moderate success.

And so I wait. I think that is the truly trying part of making wine- you don’t really know how it turned out until at least 6 months later, and by then if it went wrong you have to wait again until the fruits/flowers are in season! No wonder wine making is considered a fine art, I am sure it takes years to get good at.

I loved the fermentation process, but got vinegar when I opened the bottle. Three tries and no success yet.

but i think i would if i made it myself! i just want to learn a simple wine, made from muscadine grapes because we have a whole bunch of them growing at my house. I wonder if you can use other fruits, too like figs or maybe flower essences like tea olive or jasmine..

This is why I am going to college and want to graduate. So I can do this, professionally, at a great winery.

5 litres of mango wine fermenting away now

I just began my first batch of mango wine two days ago. I’ve been wanting to do this for years and but I always assumed it would be a lot more difficult. How wrong I was. As I’m a broke as brokest person you could imagine, I wanted to use fruit that was native and in season. I originally attempted to make it out of lilly pilly berries, a small native australian shrub (acmena smithii) but unfortunatly most of the fruit in the locale I’m living in are not yet ripe. I gave up until last weekend I managed to get a tray of bowen mangoes for free. The whole process was very easy and so far I’ve spent about $10 for 5L of mango wine. I hope next to experiment with sassafras wine.

I’ve been making wine at home for years now, always experimenting with something new, so I can keep impressing my friends. :) Now, I am trying to brew some special wine based on various berries. I really can’t wait to taste it! If you are contemplating about whether to start to make wine at home, there are plenty of free resources for beginners on how to make wine, just pick one and start it. It’ll be fun and you won’t regret it! :)