Professional Documents
Culture Documents
You need to be sure to get equipment that is within your budget, but that will
serve you well. A cheap corker that drives you insane every time you use it
will not help you in your quest to bottle lots of wine! The extra $10 you
spend may save you hours of pain and agony.
Click on each photo to get a full description of the item, what it is used for,
and what you should look for when buying the item.
BASIC PERMANENT EQUIPMENT
Carboy Hydrometer
Corker Thermometer
RAW, SINGLE-PASS MATERIALS
Brush Biosan
Clamp Connectors
Tubing Siphon
Straight Tube
Procedures
The Preparation
Make sure you THOROUGHLY sanitize and then rinse all parts of the kit.
Cleanliness is one of the most important aspects of making a wine. Any
leftover gunk can turn into mold, destroying all of your subsequent hard
work. Gather up your raw materials, be they grapes, concentrate, plums, etc.
You can use commercial winemaking cleansers sold at most winemaking
shops, or bleach, iodophor, or B-brite. The aim is to clean out your carboys
and other equipment as thoroughly as possible.
Prepare the winemaking area. Try to keep your kit in a room around 70F.
This is a natural process that is going on! It needs a good temperature to
work with. If the temperature is too hot or cold, your wine is not going to
come out properly.
If you're starting with the raw fruit, press it, strain out the skins for peaches
and other fruits, although you should leave red grape skins on if you're
making a red wine. If you remove the skins on red grapes, you'll end up with
White Zinfandel!
Primary Fermentation
If your kit came with glucose solids, mix these in first with a kettle of hot
water, just like Jello. Once they're dissolved, mix in a kettle of cold water.
Watch it wiggle?
Pour your ingredients or concentrate into your primary fermenter. It's clean,
right? If you're adding concentrate, add in whatever water they require to
rehydrate it - probably 2 bags of warm water. This concoction is called must.
Stir in the starter - usually called "Package 1". It mixes in better
if you take a cupful of the must and pre-mix the starter in that.
Note that some kits add this in before the concentrate, like in
this photo. That's OK too.
Does your kit have any sort of flavoring required now? Elderberries? Oak?
Add those in.
Now you need to add more water. Add in cold water so you end up with what
your kit requires. Many hold 5 gallons. Stir up your mixture. Make sure you
stir it with something clean!
Check the temperature, because you want a good temperature for the yeast
to grow in. Around 75F is usually good. Write that down. Also, check the
specific gravity so you have that on record as well.
If everything is set, add in the yeast. Sprinkle it on top - don't mix it in. You
now have all ingredients set for part 1.
Seal up the container! Put on an airlock of some sort. The mixture will begin
to ferment in around 2 days, shown by a bubbling or foaming. Watch for that
- if it is too cold, your yeast may not start. You can drop the temperature a
bit, to 60-70, when the yeast has begun foaming.
Let this stage continue for about a week. If you've got Elderberries in there,
stir it once a day to mix them around. If not, leave the mixture to its own
devices.
Secondary Fermentation
If you've got Elderberries or wood chips in there, remove them now. Is your
carboy clean? Siphon the wine into it, without taking any sediment.
If you're making white or blush wine, mix Bentonite with maybe 12oz of
warm water. Pour this mixture into the carboy.
Using oak chips? Toss them into the carboy.
Fill the rest of the carboy with water that you've first boiled and then cooled.
Put the airlock on, and leave it for around 12 days
The Clearing
Siphon the wine off, leaving behind the sediment. You can either do this into
a clean carboy or just into another container, wash your carboy and send it
back in. If you have them, add in sulfites and sorbates and stir well.
Over the next day, stir well at least six times. This removes the carbon
dioxide.
At the end of this segment, add in any final ingredients and top off the
carboy with cool water.
Let the wine settle for around 10 days.
Now use hot water to swish around in the bag and get the rest
of the concentrate out.
Fill the rest of the container up with water, leaving space at the
top for fermentation to occur.
Stir this all together very well, being sure to use something
clean and sanitized to stir with!
Final step on Day 1 - add the yeast! Sprinkle it on the top, do not
stir. Cap with an airlock, and let your wine sit somewhere warm.
There is now a 3/4" to 1" layer of ... sludge ... on the top of the
surface of the wine. The airlock is letting out a bubble every 5
seconds or so.
I'm trying here to show the layer of sludge - it's pretty thick, a
dark color, with large bubbles emerging occasionally.
OK, we went to work. Go figure :) ... when we returned home later in the
evening, the foam was completely gone.
The wine is in the bedroom to stay warm for this portion of its
development, and I woke up at night thinking it was a clock
ticking, the airlock burping was so regular!
I didn't take any pictures in the evening, because the wine looked exactly the
same. Regular burping of the airlock, regular stream of tiny bubbles flowing
up through the liquid and vanishing.
10/28 Day 5 - Streams of Bubbles
Thursday morning. More of the same - streams of tiny bubbles, the quiet
processing of grapes into wine.
The airlock sometimes gets a bubble here too - the gas being
expelled is becoming more likely to form bubbles.
Here it sits
...
Adding in a bit of
oak
OK, the point of this phase is to put the wine into a larger vat,
mix in some stabilizers and clarifiers, mix it steadily for a day,
and put it back in the smaller vat.
In goes the first packet, actually called "Package 2" in this kit. It
is Potassium Metabisulfite. It's mixed into some wine we took
out beforehand.
Day 23 - Stabilizing!
Today the wine is sitting with two packets of stabilizer in it. We're stirring it
every few hours when we can, to get the gas out.
Stir stir
stir
Stir stir
stir
Stir stir
stir
That's it! Now it just sits and ages until we decide it's
ready to bottle!
And Decide When will u Drink it