As wine shops and liquor stores are closed and many are looking for ways to enjoy a simple drink. Hope this quick guide will help you in making your own wine.
What is wine?
Many think fermenting Grapes yield wine. Which is true, but not completely. Fermenting any fruit and making it an alcoholic drink is wine. Yes, wine can be made from Grapes, Pineapple, Apple, Plum. Orange, etc.
What is the wine making process?
Wine making is converting the sugar content in the fruit in to ethanol by fermentation. Yeast is used for fermentation, which can convert sugar to alcohol. Yeast can convert the sugar content in to sugar content proportion to half of its original volume.
To prepare wine, you need fruit or fruit juice, sugar, water and yeast.
For convenience here is a rough measurement:
- Grapes or pineapple or apple or orange 2 kg
- Sugar 2 cups
- Yeast 15grams
- Water 3 litters
Sterilization is critical in wine making process as you do not want the wine to spoil during this process. Ideally it is best to use a glass or ceramic jar. Alternatively, you can also use food grade plastic container. The container has to be washes well with warm water.
Preparing the grapes:
There are three ways in which you can prepare the fruit
- You can crush them and use it as it is.
- Extract the juice and use it without the pulp
- Smash it, add water and boil it. You need to use the entire content for fermentation
Preparing the yeast:
To activate the yeast, you need to take half a cup of luke warm water. The water should be comfortable for you to keep your fingers in it for 10 seconds without it giving you a burning sensation. Now add in 1 table spoon of sugar for the yeast to start feeding. To this add in the yeast.
Leave it for 10 minutes, you will see froth forming on top, which means the yeast is active and it has started to eat the sugar and producing carbon dioxide.
Fermentation set-up
Have your fruit juice poured in to the container. Add in the sugar, mix it well. To this mixture, pour in the yeast mixture.
You then have to close the lid this container, leaving room for very little gas to escape. The logic is, you want the container to be filled in only with carbon dioxide that the yeast produces and you do not want the content to come in contact with oxygen, which will start the oxidation process and would spoil the wine.
You can also use airlock caps to make this flow one way or you can improvise.
After this you will see bubbles from the wine. You would need to give this mixture a stir once a day.
When is the fermentation done?
Wine is done fermentation when you no longer see bubbles forming on the wine. There are few things happening here:
- The yeast cannot produce react due to its alcohol tolerance level. In this case, there will still be sugar in the wine. This is common.
- The yeast has consumed all the sugar and there is no more sugar available for the yeast to have.
This stage the fermentation process is complete.
How to collect and store wine?
Based on your initial process in preparing the juice, you need to filter and get the clear wine from this mixture.
The process following this will be to make the wine clear and get aged. For this, you can fill the wine in bottles and after a week, you can collect the wine leaving behind the sediment. This way you will be left only with clear wine.
Ageing – fill the bottles leaving little head room. This will minimise oxygen exposure also leaving room for additional gas build-up. Ideally the wine will be great anytime after one month for up to 6 months.
Twist – Alternatively you can also try adding in 3 grams of sugar to the bottle before closing. This will reactivate the yeast and will create more CO2, which will add fizz to the wine and give it a twist.
Please leave your comments and questions below.