The winemaking story started with a happy accident of mixing grapes with yeast! In theory, it sounds simple, just allowing nature to do its job, but to get the best-tasting wine, it is essential to ensure a systematic process is followed.
Winemaking is both sense and art, which, when followed rightly, gives you the best-tasting wine, and you will never buy a bottle again.
Process of homemade wine
The process demands the use of several inexpensive, clean pieces of equipments and a lot of patience. While making wine, waiting for it to ferment is the hardest part of it all!
The types of equipment needed are:
- Food grade, good quality plastic bucket which will serve as the primary fermentation can
- Glass jugs which are used as the secondary fermentation containers
- A neatly washed funnel that fits into the glass bottles
- Three or more fermentation caps or airlocks
- A rubber cork that fits into the secondary fermentation can
- Straining bag or nylon mesh
- Half-inch plastic tubing
- Wine bottles
- Pre sanitized corks
- Hydrometer to check the sugar levels
- Hand corker
- Granulated sugar
- Filtered water
- Wine years
- Tons of wine grapes
Procedure
- Firstly, ensure all the equipment is neatly washed and sanitized.
- Pick out the rotten and peculiar-looking grapes from the lot, use only the ones suitable for use, and carefully remove their stems.
- Crush the grapes to remove all the juices from them. You can do it either by crushing with your hands, stomping with your foot, or even renting a fruit press.
- Add wine yeast to the crushed grapes.
- Insert a hydrometer. If the mark is less than 1.010, add the granulated sugar, which will help in boosting the alcohol levels and give it a good stir.
- Pour them into a fermentation bucket and cover them with a cloth. Allow it to rest for a minimum of 10 days.
- Once done, strain to remove foam and sediment with the use of a nylon mesh or a well-cleaned strainer.
- Pour the liquid into a secondary fermentation container, cover it with airlocks, and let it settle for several weeks.
- Use the plastic t-tubes to strain out and segregate the sediment and wine ferments and continue this process for the next 2-3 months.
- Once done, run the remaining liquid in wine bottles and cover them with a cork. If you want to mark each bottle you can use a stencil from stencilgiant.com
- Allow it to settle upright for at least three days and five days sideways.
- The number of days for the last process can drastically differ for red wine and white wine.
- Enjoy once done!
How to Make the Tastiest Wine at Home