Cheap wine makers out there?
 

The thread on sodas made me want to share this current small project of mine.

I am current working on a "cheap" wine making project and I am about 30 days into the fermentation process. I did a sampling at about two weeks and I was fairly impressed with the results.

I have purchased no special tools, I am using plain bread yeast, and literally used a bottle of grape juice from the store with just a little sugar added to bring the grape juice to the proper sugar levels.

Here is what I have in to my wine experiment:

One half gallon non-concentrate store brand grape juice: $1.55
One third cup sugar: $0.05
One packet baker's yeast: $0.50
One latex glove for air barrier: $0.10

For a total cost of $2.20 (not bad for two liters!)

I meant to take pictures but neglected too so I will explain the above ingredients/materials.


I did not buy any wine making supplies. I wanted to do this as cheap as possible. The key to all of this of course is sterile equipment. The good thing about buying grape juice from the store is that the container and it contents are already sterile so all I need to do is get the total sugar content to about 250g-300g per liter. Look at the label to determine the current grams of sugar per liter and add as needed. In my case it took about 1/3 cup of sugar to get the right levels. Naturally, the amount of sugar will result in how much alcohol content you will have at the end of the fermentation.

After this step I simply added my yeast (active dry bread yeast) which I initially activated in some warm sugar water before pouring in to my grape juice. Again, make sure everything you use is VERY clean and perfectly sterile. Also, keep your liquids covered. There is always natural yeast floating around in the air so it is important to keep that out or it may spoil your batch.

After the yeast was added, I had to create a one way flow valve using my latex glove. Yep, I am a cheap SOB. All I did is prick a couple needle size holes in the end of the fingers. Obviously a balloon would work just as well. I placed the glove over the container and verified it was seal with a rubber band.

Next, you wait.. At first (within the first 24 hours) the yeast will bubble a little but after about 24 hours it will bubble pretty good inflating your glove or balloon a good bit. Your pin holes should relieve enough pressure to keep it from popping. In about a week or so the bubbling will slow; however you want to turn your bottle upside down a few times over the first two weeks to keep the yeast at work until there is virtually no sugar left. It is probably best to keep this in a dark and semi cool place. (BTW: They do make S valves with water as your barrier but again, I was too cheap for this).

Any ways, after about two weeks I changed the bottle out with a sterile two liter coke bottle. It is best to siphon off the wine with a sterile hose so you don't get the dead yeast sediment on the bottom or junk floating on the top. Naturally, there will be some wasted wine but this is unavoidable. Alternatively, you can slowly pour the fermenting wine and just stop before you reach the sediment. The next two to four week in the new container (or you can clean and reuse the original) will have drastically less bubbling and really is the point where your yeast is slowly dying off causing the wine to clear more and more as it sits. You can get a very clear wine by added Bentonite and letting it sediment out the rest of the junk. This works pretty well but is not required (therefore I didn't do it because I am cheap).

Any ways, I plan to drink my wine this easter so I will let you know how it tastes. I was thinking about rebottling it in a store bought bottle and just serving it to see if anyone notices :D

Dave

Re: Cheap mine makers out there?
 

for a second there, i thought you were trying to find landmines :wink:

Re: Cheap mine makers out there?
 

HAHAHA - OOPS! :D That must have been a slip ;)

Strangely, the W is NOWHERE near the M!

Fixed it for you ;)

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Hey Dave, I have 48 gallons of wine in my basement right now. About half of which is ready to bottle. There is nothing wrong with the process you are using, and yes keeping things sterile is key. Concord grapes ferment very well, but are not always the best tasting. To improve the taste it needs to age for about a year and if you are really being cheep a packet of wine yeast will only set you back about .50 USD.

I know people who make this type wine in 5 gallon plastic water jugs. At the end of the fermentation process they add Potassim sorbate to prevent reproduction of the yeast and then add in more grape concentrate to sweeten it up and give it that fruity flavor again. It's actually very good. The alcohol in it acts as a preservative for the unfermented grape juice and it will last a long time. This is actually how a light wine like "White Zinfandel" is made.

A hydrometer is the only other thing that might come in handy, that way you could determine the alcohol content but it's really not necessary.

Here is a Welch's recipe with a few additives to make it better.



Welch's Frozen Grape Juice Wine
2 cans (11.5 oz) Welch's 100% frozen grape concentrate
1-1/4 lbs granulated sugar
2 tsp acid blend
1 tsp pectic enzyme
1 tsp yeast nutrient
water to make 1 gallon
wine yeast
Bring 1 quart water to boil and dissolve the sugar in the water. Remove from heat and add frozen concentrate. Add additional water to make one gallon and pour into secondary. Add remaining ingredients except yeast. Cover with napkin fastened with rubber band and set aside 12 hours. Add activated wine yeast and recover with napkin. When active fermentation slows down (about 5 days), fit airlock. When clear, rack, top up and refit airlock. After additional 30 days, stabilize(potassium sorbate), sweeten if desired and rack into bottles. [Author's adaptation of a friend's recipe]



enjoy

s

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Dave, I have made a ton of wine over the years. I have typically used fresh concentrate 2 gallon base.

I am quite surprised by your thread though. I thought you could not make wine from store bought grape juice as it is pasturized and denatures the grape. Maybe you bought non pasturized juice? Maybe I'm way wrong?

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Thank you SB!! I will try your recipe next. I almost compare making my first wine/alchohol to the first time I shot a gun. It is a very liberating and freeing experience. If I smoked, I guess the next step is to roll my own but alas, I don't smoke.

Any experience with mead? I LOVE honey so this will likely be something I will attempt as well.

Thanks again!

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Judging by my results, it seems there is not problem with pasteurized juice. I think the only thing you really need is sugar!

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Pastuerizing's OK, actually that's good, no wild yeast. Potassium sorbate is what you have to watch out for.

S

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

No, I've never done mead. Looks easy enough though. A good website for recipes is:

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request.asp

And for the recipe I gave you I dont think you really need all those additives either. The acid blend does help bring out the flavors. The pectic enzyme does help it clarify but is not necessary. Since it's a grape juice you do not need the nutrient either.

have fun!!

s

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I've made mead (http://www.moremead.com/mead_logs/Ancient_OCC.html) that recipe to be exact. Way too sweet for my taste but if that's your thing then go for it. I would like to make a dry mead sometime though.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I have made wine, beer, meads, and something else I won't mention.

Mead was great, but you do need a good supply of honey. If you are going to try a dryer mead, use a stronger flavored honey (buckwheat, etc). It gives it more taste and character. I prefer the fruit meads when I made it. The best was the saskatoons I picked and mixed with an alfalfa honey, the strawberry was a close second, with the blueberry a distant third. I like the wild fruit even though it takes longer to pick.

:coolbeer:

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

not considered a wine but ive been doing some research on making a peruvian alcohol called "chicha" made from fermented corn and can be ready in a few days...the alcohol content is low but if let it ferment a lil longer it will go up.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Have you considered using one of the yeast which will ferment out to a higher alcohol content?
:coolbeer:

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Thanks again SB. My grandfather use to make mead all of the time, unfortunately, all of his equipment was given away, without knowing it, but he had a great setup including the bee hives to feed it. He liked the non-sweetened version.

I will be adding bee hives to my acreage hopefully in the next 12 months but for now I will just use store bought honey.

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Thank you for that. I think I would kick back on the sweetness as well but nothing wrong with a good "dessert variety" that the women would drink ;)

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Dave, may I suggest http://beemaster.com/forum/ and http://www.bushfarms.com/bees.htm they are great resources

I go foundationless and extract by the cut and crush method.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

This is a very good forum out there which covers most brewing topics:


http://www.homebrewtalk.com/index.php?


:coolbeer:

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Nice Dave. I want to try this next.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

im going to start the hard cider recipe on the homebrewtalk.com site...seems pretty straightforward.....ill let ya know how it goes in 30 or so days

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

How to Build a Cider Press

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Moder...der-Press.aspx

looks interesting

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

As an egyptian, let me tell you just how easy it is to grow grapes if you have a good area for it. :laughs:

Looks great!

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Get some Champagne yeast or yeast for making Sherry. Those will stand the highest amounts of alcohol. The cream sherry I made from raisins came out excellent.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I used to make my own wine coolers for next to nothing. I would throw in three and a half cups of sugar per 2 liters and let it ferment. In about a month I would siphon out the liquid and mix it with crystal light or kool-aid.

It tasted great, and got you drunk for as little money as possible.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I never did anything to sterilize it. I figured the alcohol that was produced would kill any bacteria that would grow

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Good thread, Dave. I have 60 gallons of red wines and 6 of white aging right now, and I'm about to start on 12 more gallons. I use varietal juices from wine-making kits, and while it is not as inexpensive as Welches, it will make a better tasting wine in most cases. But using Welches definitely works; people do it all the time.

I should like to point out that your equipment needs to be sanitized, not sterile. It is difficult, and in some cases impossible, to sterlize your winemaking equipment. An autoclave (or your home canning pressure cooker) will sterilize items that can tolerate the heat, typically only metal and glass items. Plastic would not fare well.

But it isn't necessary to sterlize your equipment. You can use inexpensive commercial sanitizers (e.g., StarSan, Iodophor) or even common diluted household bleach to sanitize. Some choices are better than other. A no rinse sanitizer like StarSan or Iodophor is preferred over bleach, which is slower acting and must be very thoroughly rinsed before you can use the sanitized item in winemaking. Most winemakers use sodium or potassium metabisulfite mixed at about 2 tablespoons per gallon of water as a sanitizer. The SO2 (sulfur dioxide) gas given off by the solution is what does the sanitizing.

Potassium metabisulfite is also an important additive to your wines that will help preserve them. It is added after fermentation is complete, typically 1/4 teaspoon per five or six gallons of wine. If you are going to age the wine for more than a year, whether in bulk or in bottles, you'll need to double that.

There are many varieties of yeast that have been specifically adapted over centuries of use to tolerate the alcohol content of wine. They will do a better job for you than common brewer's yeast or baking yeast, and they are just as easy to use, and nearly as inexpensive. Check out a homebrew store locally or online for options.

Winemaking is a fascinating hobby. You can do it very inexpensively, as you described, or you can spend a lot of money on it. But "a lot" is relative. My cost per 750ml bottle of wine ranges from $3.00 to $4.50 per bottle, and that includes the cost of bottles, corks, capsules, labels, chemicals, grape juice, yeast, clarifying agents, and all other consumables. My wine is better than most commercial wines in the $10 to $20 range. In fact, I have to spend $35 or more in most cases to get a better wine than I can make. Since I have been a homebrewer of beer for years, I already had all the equipment, but you could purchase all the equipment you need to make a 5 to 6 gallon batch at a time for $50.

A good site for winemaking that covers everything from country wines using a variety of fruits, to Welches, to wine kits, to wines from fresh grapes, as well as information about starting, caring for, and managing home vineyards, is http://www.winepress.us/forums/.

For beer especially and also some wine and mead information, the best site is http://www.homebrewtalk.com. I recommend the winepress site over homebrewtalk if your emphasis is wine.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Hey, great information Silver, thank you!

By the way, just a little update. I broke out the wine and tasted it this past weekend. My father drinks a good bit of wine so I let him give a taste. In any case, I was met with pretty good success.

His comment was that it was lacking a little flavor and punch (low alcohol so not much burn). For grins, I might try the same recipe again and just go with a little more sugar, say a 1/2 cup instead of 1/3 cup.

In the mean time I might get a little more serious and try out several of these concepts posted on this thread. Thank you all for the great information!

As I mentioned further up, I kind of liken my first wine making to shooting a gun for the first time. Kind of a liberating thing to do.

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

If you want to make Mead go for Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne yeast. That stuff will go up to 18% ABV before petering out, so it can tolerate the really high alcohol levels. There is a guy on GIM called homebrewer, he can point you in the right direction. Hopefully he'll poke his head in here. I'm not up on my wines and meads, I'm mostly a beer brewin type of guy.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Yea and talk to "blorp" he seems to know about this stuff too.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Does anyone know how high of an alcohol concentration average bread yeast can go to?

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Yeah I think that's who I meant. I think he was the guy who told me.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Shouldn't have much of a problem, but it may taste bready! And I don't know how high of an alcohol tolerance bread yeast can endure. You might only get 4%~5% alcohol.

But back in the olden days egyptians made beer by leaving it in the dark for a few days allowing the wild yeast in the air to ferment it!

So anything will work, just not efficiently.

Oh and goldsilverman if you want a dry mead try that EC-1118 it aught to ferment out a lot of the sugars.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I have all of the equipment, but am waiting for my grapes and plums to ripen before the first batch.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I've used it before and gotten good results I'm wondering if anyone knows the typical alcohol % that the average bread yeast can go to

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

In my experience never higher than 4% normally 1-2% just get a hydrometer with gravity readings (1.000-1.150) and potential alcohol (0%-20%)

Take an O.G. (original gravity) and F.G. (final gravity) with this you can determine alcohol content.

and Dave is right, it does taste bready.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Dave T,

You may have identified my alcohol problem, or lack there of (no AA here!).

The bread yeast that I used probably died off early DUE to the alcohol level and not due to the lack of food (sugar).

I will order some better wine making yeast as recommended in this thread and give this same experiment a go. For scientific reasons, I am only going to change the yeast and leave the sugar levels alone. I would like to eliminate one thing at a time. Maybe I can make a second with the wine yeast and increased sugar levels to have a side by side.

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Dave, what doe syour wine taste like? Is it still sweet. You don't have a hydrometer, right. If you get some wine yeast(EC-1118 will be good,or Red Star-Premier Curv�e. Both are very aggressive and highly resistant to alcohol)you can easily restart this batch and go ahead and ferment it out.

For restarting a batch or starting a tough must go read this:

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/yeast.asp

The correct method of making a starter is to rehydrate the yeast, activate its life cycle, and add it to the must. The optimum way to rehydrate the yeast is to add it directly to 1 cup of 100-105-degree F. tap or spring water (the harder the water the better; do not use distilled water). Stir gently, cover, allow to rehydrate for at least 30 minutes, check on it to be sure it is viable, and then leave it another 3 1/2 hours. During this time, allow the starter and must (or fruit juice) to attemperate to within 10 degrees F. of one another, and then add to the starter 1/4 cup of pre-sweetened, reconstituted juice (not pure concentrate) or strained must. Re-cover the starter, set it in a warm place and leave it alone. Check on it 4 hours later to ensure it is viable and add to it another 1/4 cup of juice or strained must. Again, cover and leave it alone for 4 hours. You can now add it to the must or add another 1/2 cup of juice or strained must to really increase the yeast population (at the end of an additional 4 hours, the colony will be approximately 64 times as large as it was when rehydrated). For highly acidic (native grapes, LIKE WELCHES) or potentially troublesome musts or juices (like blueberry, peach, or Ribena blackcurrant), the more must you add to the starter, the better acclimated the yeast will be to the conditions they will be living in. There are other methods of starting a culture and most are just as successful, but this method, only slightly varied, was recommended by George Clayton Cone of Lallemand, the makers of Lalvin wine yeasts, and that is good enough an endorsement for me.

Cheers

s

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Good advice.

I can say that there is a slight sweetness too it, a little fruity. Typically, I whirl the wine in a glass and count lines to get an idea of alcohol content (assuming this method actually works) beyond just tasting it. You are right, I do not have a hydrometer, perhaps I should consider getting one if I am going to be doing this more often?

I might give the above mentioned yeasts a try and see if I can up the alcohol content a little more.

Dave

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

OK, if it's slightly sweet/fruity, then I'd say it's aorund 1.01-1.02 SG fully fermented would be around .995 or even lower(very dry). Starting point would be up around 1.085(12%) to 1.10 (15%)Just follow the direction on Jack's yeast page and you should be fine. You can even add a little more suger to your must, but don't over do it. It is possible to get the must soo sweet it becomes toxic to the yeast.

If you really want to push the alcohol content to really high levels you need to keep adding sugar about every three days. This allows the yeast to adapt and even mutate to the very high alcohol contents. But with EC-1118 you really don't need to.

Full fermentation can take as long as a couple years. Don't bottle it if it's still fermenting. lol

Have fun, this is a great hobby. I got my neighbor a kit as a gift and she's doing her first batch. She's like a little kid watching it every day!!!!!!

:23_31_2:

cheers

s

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

Let me tell you, the first couple weeks seemed to TAKE FOREVER! Making wine or any other alcohol for that matter is definitively a course in patients! In our "I want it now society" I could see why this is a hobby reserved for a few. Personally, I am enjoying it but you have to get past check it every day mentality! LOL!

Dave

P.S., Again thank you for the comments.

Re: Cheap wine makers out there?
 

I always thought my wine was more in the 6-10% range as I could feel the burn of alcohol in my throat