Thread: Homemade Country Wine Production

Well 2023 is ending with a lot of Wine production in the bottles. Since the largest fermenter I have is 6.5 gallons I have to use 2 to hold all the wine from these 9 gallon batches. Going forward into 2024 I will only make 6 gallon or smaller batches (6Gal = 30 bottles). Since the Peach was in 3 different carboys a little imbalance of alcohol by volume existed. Try as I may I still have some bottles with a higher ABV than others. Not by much but it should all be exactly the same.



The first picture is the filtered Peach wine. Peach wine is notoriously cloudy, I racked this wine 3 times and bulk aged it a year to get it to clear on its own. Still a side by side comparison of the before and after in the wine is dramatic. So you have to clean everything up very well afterwards the second picture is of the Filter Machine disassembled, drying in the kitchen.



The bottle tree has a sanitizer injection pump in the top that shoots sanitizer thoroughly inside with the bottle inverted. After, you keep the bottle inverted, and place on a peg on the rack to dry. Of course I had to remove all the labels on the bottles, boil them for 1 hour, then remove the label residue before sanitizing.



Now that the wine is bottled it has to stand upright for a couple of days for the corks to set before placing on their sides for storage. I will add the Gold Metallic Seals I bought to color code the Peach wine and label before placing the wine in the storage rack.

Great job. Yep, same when making beer, it's all about cleanliness. Keeping the stuff you don't want growing in your wines or beers. Anyone can make good beer if you can keep things clean IMHO. Wine, I dono, I've mentioned this before that I made two batches and poured them both out. I've never made a bad batch of beer.

I’m afraid I’d make myself sick if I tried making anything…..lol.

Originally Posted by SuperDave336

I’m afraid I’d make myself sick if I tried making anything…..lol.

Oh no, you'd know if it was bad! And it would not make you sick, at worst, it'd have an off taste.

I always hear Vinegar is one of the byproducts of a bad wine. After the ABV gets up a bit it becomes harder for bad stuff to grow. The biggest problem with wine is you can't stop drinking it too early. So this time I left all the wine in bulk storage for a year. Now stuff is getting bottled it is much harder to not walk to the end of the hall when the previous bottle you were drinking runs out.

So good ABV 14.5%-15.5% Grape wines are 3-5 years old. The older stuff is usually $50 a bottle. Country wines really need 2 years to smooth out, 3 years to be super fantastic. Life expectancy is 5-6 years so if a bottle makes it to 3 you did very well waiting but the wait is then over. I started small but expanded quickly. You have to be able to follow the directions in order, no short cuts, to consistently make a good wine. I do not use recipes so I guess at some point I will make a dog but it has not happened yet. I realized today my calculations were off on the final ABV of all my 2022 wines by 1.3 - 3% meaning my wines are stronger than originally quoted. A year in the bottle will fix that, smooth them right out.

When that S-10 hot rod truck gets moved to the big building a wine room is in the plans for where I'm working bottling now.

Originally Posted by Rojo

When that S-10 hot rod truck gets moved to the big building a wine room is in the plans for where I'm working bottling now.

Now that will be nice. I like having space to do stuff without having to unpack everything and then pack back up when done. Currently I can’t even tie jigs unless I can get the kitchen table free. Kids homework, eating, etc.. all comes before jig tying.

Originally Posted by SuperDave336

Now that will be nice. I like having space to do stuff without having to unpack everything and then pack back up when done. Currently I can’t even tie jigs unless I can get the kitchen table free. Kids homework, eating, etc.. all comes before jig tying.

I understand I would take the kids in a heartbeat over space for projects. I don't have any, kept my application in but it was never accepted. You are blessed to have them my friend.