I am interested in trying to make my own wine, my boyfriend is into home brewing beers and after awhile you just get a little tired of the same old thing you know?
My only thing is I don't know step one about how to go about starting the process of making a wine or the materials I would even need. I would really like it if someone could point me in the direction of a good tutorial for making a simple but delicious wine, maybe like a Riesling?
Any help would be sincerely appreciated!
Thank you.
Regarding the equipment, your boyfriend probably has almost, if not all of the equipment. The trick will be getting an empty carboy
I've not done recipe kits, but I THINK most will need a 6.5 gallon carboy. Most beer brewers seem to use 5 gallons, so you may need another one if you want to do a recipe kit.
Alternatively, I've had pretty good (getting better) success with fresh fruit. You can make wine out of just about any fruit (my granddad actually used tomato with amazing results), so are you interested in only grapes?
I'll run through the basics of using fresh fruit, someone can please correct me if I miss something/give misinformation.
If you're using fresh fruit, you'll likely need to start in a bucket. Get a straining bag and add your fruit. Dissolve sugar into water, and add Tannin, Pectic Enzyme, and Campden Tablets. Let the fruit sit for about a day, then add the yeast and yeast nutrient. After about a week, get as much juice you can out of your fresh fruit, and discard the pulp. Transfer to a carboy for a few months and rack when necessary. When it's clear, you're ready to bottle.
One of the biggest differences in the process between making beer and wine is the bottling. With beer, you want to keep the yeast alive and feed it while it's in the bottle to produce carbonation. With wine, you want the yeast dead/unable to reproduce, so as you're ready to bottle, you'll want to add some Campden tablets (potassium metabisulfate) and potassium carbonate. These will work to kill the yeast and act as a birth control for the remaining yeast to prevent reproduction. Remember, too much carbonation (yeast eating sugar) equals big boom.
After you've killed your yeast, you can do something called "back-sweetening" your wine. You can adjust the amount of sugar (or frozen juice concentrate) and make it however sweet you want it to be. Since the yeast is gone, the sugar will remain and won't be fermented.
That's just a quick/basic run down of the process. You'll find some better resources online, I tend to use E.C. Krauss's articles a lot.
