Here's some piccies
not sure how much wine this will make yet, gotta look up some recipes, I guess around 2 gallons tho. Stay tuned for the recipe and method I choose.
Monday 25 October 2010
Making Wine from Grapes ... what!
Well its only taken me 20 something years but I've finally done it, started a batch of wine made from grapes! One of our wonderful neighbours has a vine and way too many grapes for their own purposes. So they said we could raid it whenever. This evening we went raiding and picked ourselves 7.8 kg (net weight) of grapes.
Here's some piccies
The first of two carrier bags, round about 4 kg, complete with stems at the mo.
The second carrier bag full after removing stems and washing
The whole lot in the fermenting bin, comes up to around the 3 gallon mark. 1 gallon of water (with 2 campden tablets in it) just covered them. So now the natural yeasts and other things we don't want, are being taken care of. Soon the crushing begins!
not sure how much wine this will make yet, gotta look up some recipes, I guess around 2 gallons tho. Stay tuned for the recipe and method I choose.
Here's some piccies
not sure how much wine this will make yet, gotta look up some recipes, I guess around 2 gallons tho. Stay tuned for the recipe and method I choose.
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I have 1 kg of grapes, should I then just use 1 camden tablet?
ReplyDeletemy 7.8kg of grapes made 2 gallons of wine. i've always used 1 campden tablet per gallon of wine. not sure how much wine you're making, if you're going to make a gallon then you'll need to add plenty of grape juice. A good part of the flavour in grape wines comes from the skins. so if your grapes have particularly flavoursome skins then you'll still capture that flavour character. The longer you leave the skins in your must the more flavour will be pulled from them. I'd aim for anything between 2 and 7 days, maybe 10 if i was feeling brave. If you add grape juice to make the wine up to 1 gallon then check the ingredients. it may already have sulphites (campden tablets or similar) added. in which case i wouldn't add any more. If not then i'd use one tablet per gallon of wine.
DeleteAlternatively, you could get the wine underway with grape juice and then when it's been fermenting for 4-7 days then add your crushed grapes. you could keep them in the freezer in the meantime, (they'll take less crushing when they come out and are defrosted). Adding the grapes late will retain more of their delicate flavours. The extra alcohol will probably help to extract flavours too. The downside is a lot of fiddling about with hydrometers and calculators to work out how much sugar to add at each stage so you make the wine the strength you desire.
Sounds like you've got great fun project/experiment on the go. best of luck! Wish i had more experience of making grape wines to draw on and help you.