How to make grape wine at home - step by step instructions
Homemade wine cannot be compared with store wine, it is natural, tasty, aromatic and many times healthier. If you have your own vineyard, be sure to learn how to make grape wine at home. Even if you buy such a drink from your hands, there is not always a guarantee of its quality. To get more wine, many add water and also recycle the pulp. There are almost no vitamins in such a drink and it is doubtful to assert about its beneficial effect. Real dry and strong wine is made only from grape berries, without water. And sugar is added to it only if the grapes are sour.
What grapes can be used
Also of no small importance is the sugar content of the variety. For dry wine with a strength of at least 12%, grapes with a fructose content of at least 20% are needed. If it is less, you will need to add sugar to increase the strength. In general, 1% of the sugar content in the output will give 0.6% alcoholic strength.
How to make grape wine at home
Start harvesting grapes as late as possible. The longer the bunches are on the branches, the sweeter the berries will be. Tear them off the branches and rub them with your hands so that they all burst. You do not need to wash - this will wash away the yeast bacteria living on the skin. Without them, the wort ferments poorly and sour.
Step by step cooking
Now you can step by step proceed to further actions:
- Put the crushed berries in a saucepan without adding 1/3 to the top. The pulp will ferment and the hat will rise. Place in a warm place for 3-5 days. The temperature should be at least 18 ° C warm, otherwise fermentation will not start. And not higher than 23 ° C, otherwise the workpiece will simply turn sour. Stir the pop-up pulp periodically so that it does not sour, and all the berries give off juice.
- When dry floats on the surface cakeand the liquid turns dark and starts to smell like wine, strain it. Squeeze out the pulp, pour the workpiece into bottles, also without adding 1/3 of them. Add sugar at this stage if necessary (about 200 g for each liter of wort). Install a water trap or wear a medical glove to keep air out. Secondary fermentation takes 10 to 30 days if kept at moderate heat.
- When the wort brightens, the thick will settle and fermentation is over - remove it from the sediment. You have already made a young wine. But it still has to mature in the cellar. Dry white wine usually takes a month. Red matures from 3 months or more.
Once again, remove the matured wine from the sediment and bottle for storage.