Home made beer wine and sodas.

[bigwheel]

Lets hear some recipes..tips..and procedures. Thanks.

[LivoniaDan]

Lets hear some recipes..tips..and procedures. Thanks.

Got rid of all my stuff 7-10 years ago.
I picked it up on my own with some help of the wine suppliers store employees.
I do miss not making wine...... but I went the easy route.
For the most part, I used Grape Concentrate (which I see now is 2 1/2 X the price).

Did do some fruit wines but my "specialty" and favorite was Chianti.

The only advice/tip I can give at this point is
Research, Research, Research.


Yeast matters--- I used to hear that some people used bread yeast..... NO!
Find the best yeast for the type of wine you are making. Yeast Matters!!!

[bigwheel]

Learned my lesson on bread yeast a long time ago. Its best used for making bread. It makes beer, wine and ginger ale taste funny. Now it does work well for making quick sugar washes in the ethanal producution hobby. Flavor and ABV aint critical on that.

I been making this stuff for years. Has various names in various locations and has been around for thousands of years.

Cowboy Wine

Into a large 8-10 gallon plastic bucket with a lid place this.

5 lbs or thereabouts fresh fruit chopped up and stuffed into a ladies knee high stocking (Cheeries..peaches..plums..apples..apricots watermelons..grapes all work), enough water to fill the bucket up 3/4s full and white sugar to equal 1.5 lbs per gallon of water. One pinch of Champagne Yeast.
Mix it up and put the lid on the bucket. Squeeze the contents of the bag each day for 10 days or so..then squeeze it one last time and throw it away. Put the lid on the bucket and set it up somewhere high enough to siphon off the clear stuff in a a week or two. Seal it up as tight as possible and keep it out of a drafty area. If the lid dont fit right put duct tape around the seam. After a week or two take a look at it and if it looks fairly clean siphon it off into plastic jugs and let set a while more. Siphon if off again or start drinkiing it. Either one works. It builds up pressure for a long time and is usually nicely carbonarted like Champagn and can scare the heck out of 20% ABV