Wine Making Help Needed

KJ

Hi, Im getting married in 2 years time and wanted to make some wine for the wedding. I've read that it takes up to 2 years for the wine to reach perfect drinking age so I assume I will have to start soon.
Could somebody tell me the processes involved and the ingredients needed. I would like to make a nice berry wine, maybe blackberry but not sure how to go about it really.

Lugh Ildanach

You can get wine-making kits which have all the ingredients, all you have to add is water. Or alternatively you can put together the ingredients yourself. The basic ingredients are:

- Grape juice (can be in concentrated or dried form, or simply grapes you have crushed yourself)
- Yeast
- Stabiliser and finings (available on homebrew websites or stores)
- Water

Some kits require you to add sugar, although grape juice has a lot of sugar in it already and so isn't needed in many of them. You can add flavourings like oak chips or other fruits (eg. elderberry, orange peel, raisins) to get the flavour you're after.

You basically put the juice concentrate and the yeast in a bucket with water and cover, let it ferment at room temperature for a couple of weeks. The yeast eats the sugars in the mix and converts them to alcohol. This process takes about a week, perhaps 2-3 weeks depending on the yeast involved. You then add in the stabilisers and finings to stop the fermentation and remove some of the crap that you don't want and then you have your wine. You can siphon it from container to container to get rid of any sediment and also degas it to make sure that there are no bubbles in it (unless you're making a champagne type wine).

Depending on the wine, it can be drinkable pretty much immediately, although most improve with age. Very much depends on the kit or the ingredients you are using.

If you're looking at doing it from kits, have a look at the ones they have in the homebrew online stores. Below are links to 2 which have shops you can visit too (one in rathmines, the other in laois), and I think there is one in Galway as well.

www.mybeerandwine.ie
www.thehomebrewcompany.ie

KJ

Lugh Ildanach wrote: »

You can get wine-making kits which have all the ingredients, all you have to add is water. Or alternatively you can put together the ingredients yourself. The basic ingredients are:

- Grape juice (can be in concentrated or dried form, or simply grapes you have crushed yourself)
- Yeast
- Stabiliser and finings (available on homebrew websites or stores)
- Water

Some kits require you to add sugar, although grape juice has a lot of sugar in it already and so isn't needed in many of them. You can add flavourings like oak chips or other fruits (eg. elderberry, orange peel, raisins) to get the flavour you're after.

You basically put the juice concentrate and the yeast in a bucket with water and cover, let it ferment at room temperature for a couple of weeks. The yeast eats the sugars in the mix and converts them to alcohol. This process takes about a week, perhaps 2-3 weeks depending on the yeast involved. You then add in the stabilisers and finings to stop the fermentation and remove some of the crap that you don't want and then you have your wine. You can siphon it from container to container to get rid of any sediment and also degas it to make sure that there are no bubbles in it (unless you're making a champagne type wine).

Depending on the wine, it can be drinkable pretty much immediately, although most improve with age. Very much depends on the kit or the ingredients you are using.

If you're looking at doing it from kits, have a look at the ones they have in the homebrew online stores. Below are links to 2 which have shops you can visit too (one in rathmines, the other in laois), and I think there is one in Galway as well.

www.mybeerandwine.ie
www.thehomebrewcompany.ie

Thanks a million for your help. I'm gonna try get this done next week. I already have a 25 litre bucket from my last beer home brew so just need to pick up the other ingredients and some bottles.