Feb 13 2010
Different Kinds of Grapes and How They Change Your Homemade Wine’s Taste
If you intend to make wines wholly from grapes, I recommend you take a look at the following information. Wine making from grapes is a great way to get back to the basics. It’s also a great way to experiment with different types of grape varieties.
In making fresh fruit wines, it is best to have a fully ripe fruit. In fact, ripe fruits are far better than what most people imagine. As you can see, most of the Winemakers believe that half-ripe fruits or those with green patches on them should be discarded as it needs only one or two of these to give a gallon of wine an acid bite. Indeed, it is important to have a fully ripe fruit if you wish to make the best fresh fruit wine.
Fruits are merely crushed and fermented without either sugar or water being added. Provided you have enough supply of grapes, then making wines from them is the easiest winemaking of all - that is, of course, granted they are fully ripe. Now, to make a gallon of wine, you will need at least twenty pounds of grape fruits and this amount may not make one gallon of wine, though it make one gallon of strained ‘must’. Thus the more grape fruits you have the better. If enough grape fruits are available, the method to use is as follows: 1.All grapes must be placed in a suitable vessel. Crush them and make sure each grape fruit is crushed. 2.Measure as possible as you can the amount of pulp you have. Then on each gallon allow one Campden tablet or four grains of sodium metabisulphite. You must dissolve this tablet in an egg cupful of warm water and stir into the pulp and leave for 24 hours. 3.At this stage, give the mixture a thorough mixing and churning and then add the yeast. Remember, the mixture should then be left to ferment for 5 days. 4.After this, strain the pulp through a strong coarse cloth to avert bursting and wrung out as dry as you can. 5.Put the liquor into jars and fermented the same ways as other wines.
When doing this, it is a good idea to mix a quart of water with grape pulp and crush this well to get as much juice from the skins as you can. Then add one pound of sugar and dissolve it by warming the juice enough for this purpose. Now, this thinner juice must be mixed with the rest, yet before the better quality juice is put into jars.
All fruits should be ripe. This is far more important than most people had imagined. Half-ripe fruits or those with green patches on them should be discarded as it needs only one or two of these to give a gallon of wine and acid bite. Fully ripe fruit is important if you hope to make the best wine.
Knowing that wine is made from grapes is only the beginning. Georgia Smith has been making her own wines for years and has discovered a slew of tricks that help even the novice to make delicious wines right in their own kitchen. To learn more about how to make homemade wine, follow the link.
