Winemaking

[Bravo]

Today I started making some Raspberry jam wine, quite a strange idea for a wine I think so I am gonna try it out.

For anyone that is interested, here is the recipe:

1.5kg (3lb) Raspberry jam
4.5l (1 gallon) Water
5ml (1 tsp) Pectin-destroying enzyme
10ml (2 tsp) Citric acid
2 Campden tablets
225g (8oz) Chopped raisins
750g (1.5lb) sugar
1 sachet Yeast
5ml (1 tsp) Yeast Nutrient
5ml (1 tsp) Tannin

Method:

Put the jam into a fermentation bin, boil the water and pour it over.  Leave to cool.

When lukewarm, add the Pectin-destroying enzyme, Citric acid and a Campden tablet.
Cover and leave for 24 hours (this is how far I have got thus far).

Then add the raisins, tannin, sugar, yeast and nutrient.  Cover and leave to ferment for 4-5 days stirring each day.

Strain the liquid through a fine mesh bag into a fermentation jar, fit a fermentation lock containing sterilizing solution and leave in a warm place.  When the bubbling stops and the wine begins to clear, rack into a clean jar and add the other campden tablet.

Store for six months, racking again if a sediment forms, and bottle when the wine is absolutely clear.

The wine should be drinkable after a further three months.

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Will be starting another wine off soon, anyone any favourite recipes to share?


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[St0rm[TitE]]

never tried making wine but i'm very interested to hear what it turns out like  
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http://oasisfanatics.myfastforum.org

[Bravo]

It's quite an interesting pastime, though (at least for country winemaking like this) you do need considerable patience.

Basically, grapes are the perfect winemaking ingredient, perfect as far as acidity etc goes and all that, so in this instance, the citric acid is the balancer, in another recipe it might be precipitated chalk for example.

If you rub a grape, you get a sort of sticky substance, here the tannin replaces that (got from tea).

So, once you got your ingredients balanced out, you add yeast, which, to cut a long story short, eats sugar and poos out alcohol (and carbon dioxide, hence the bubbling during fermentation).

Now too much alcohol and it kills the very yeast that make it (though you can get resistant yeast for higher alcohol content) so around 18% or so is the max.

To get the basic ingredients for winemaking isnt all that expensive, you could probably get it all together for like £30, cheaper if you hunt for bargains at car boots etc.  And the end product is worth the wait
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[Symon]

I do love my wine , and have often thought about making it myself, Bravo you have nealry as many kids as i where the hell do you store it out of reach ??

Anyway i love mature red smoked oaked barrelled even better.

Do not drink French wine as a rule , cheap and nasty stuff, like South African, the best is south east Australia from the barossa valley.
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http://www.saynoto0870.com/

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[admin (no pm's please)]

all i can say ia hic, as i as in the middle of wales sampling more home brew than you can imagine
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[Bravo]

While it is fermenting I store it in the cupboard that has the hot water boiler in it, though anywhere is fine, you can buy warming plates if you don't have anywhere warm enough (about 21-24 degC or so)

I do enjoy German wines personally, though the best I ever drank was a home made elderberry wine, really smooth it was.
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[Symon]

I think you should all try

buckfast tonic wine

http://www.buckfast.org.uk/site.php?use=tonic

I use to live int he next village Buckfastleigh , and my son went to the school opposite the abbey, he had to go to the abbey every day bless him.

They make there own honey as well from the buckfast bee
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http://www.saynoto0870.com/

http://www.myshopbag.co.uk

[Bravo]

I'll bet that honey makes a nice mead
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[Bravo]

This  doesn't look a bad little kit, though he only wants someone to pick it up locally (West Sussex), so if you live near there, then this aint a bad deal for a tenner.

Only three hours left though.

Actually might be a good idea to try your local homebrew shop.  I went into mine on Saturday, and she had a stack of 2nd hand demijohns in for just £1.50 each, so I got a couple more (brown ones which they have stopped making apparently), though the new ones are £4.25 in there.  You'd need 2 of those really.

The other bits and bats are pennies for such as the yeast, tannin etc, prolly on average a quid each.

I bought a corking contraption which was a tenner, though I did go for the best they had, they had other methods of doing it for like £4, but you wont need that for a good few months anyway.  Bottles you can usually get for free at bottle banks, pubs etc

And seeing as there are plenty of recipes for stuff you can pick yourself (dandelions, elderflowers etc - I wouldn't recommend getting honey yourself   ) then the ingredients become dirt cheap too (just sugar/raisins to buy).
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[Bravo]

Raspberry jam wine is in the fermentation jar bubbling away...

Bottled the pear wine and the orange wine I started a few months ago:

Had a sneaky taste of the orange wine, it reminds me a bit of Avocaat or whatever its called, quite nice.



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[Louise]

Very Professional Looking Bravo - I bet it tastes as good as it Looks too. . . *Hic*
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[Bravo]

A friend of mine has tried the orange wine, he (and his girlfriend) said it was very nice indeed  

TIP:  If you want to get the stickiness off (if you are removing old wine labels some of them can be a bugger to get off) use WD-40, works like a dream.
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[admin (no pm's please)]

I do tend to go for sheer elbow grease, but not all adhesives will remove that way. wd40 sounds a good trick I will try it.
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[Ben]

Cool, your wine looks very proffessional!

I know my mum/dad have made some before, but never bothered with cool looking labels like those..

Did you make them yourself? Or are they labels off previous bottles?


I don't suppose you'd know where to find a label printing template? I have some A4 sheets of white labels.. each sheet has 21 labels on it, the dimensions are: 63.5mm x 38.1mm.

I tried one that I got off some site, however it didn't work properly, and the labels all printed a little bit to far up, and so it wasted a sheet of labels.

How do you print yours? Would really be handy to have a template for them to print onto, (assuming thats what you do?)

cheers if you know!

[Bravo]

I designed mine from scratch on Photoshop, then I printed onto some slightly embossed paper my wife had.  I got my wife to cut them out for me (neater than me).

Then I stuck them on with a prit-stick  
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