Thread: Homemade Country Wine Production

Wow, this new forum/blog has opened up a whole bunch of avenues to our knowledge base on this site. And this is a cool one, I have made some vey good home brews (have not made beer in a while, but always has been fun), but my wine making is terrible. Made two batches, in five gallon carboys, and poured them both out! You got skill bro!

Originally Posted by Slab

Wow, this new forum/blog has opened up a whole bunch of avenues to our knowledge base on this site. And this is a cool one, I have made some vey good home brews (have not made beer in a while, but always has been fun), but my wine making is terrible. Made two batches, in five gallon carboys, and poured them both out! You got skill bro!

I can help with that anytime. I run the basic fruit formula 3lbs Fruit to 3lbs Sugar to 1Gal Water. I use Distilled most say Spring Water. Lalvin EC1118 Yeast will even work in low Citrus PH wines but makes the most Alcohol. Lalvin 71B retains more fruit flavor. For simplicity and weight handling I make 3 gallon batches and when doing that I just a dump 10# bag instead of weighing out 9#'s. Blueberry is hands down the easiest to make a real drinkable product. Muscadines make a good wine too but the Citrus wines (can be as high as 22% ABV) are my summertime favorites. Those must be consumed over ice or plan on a over consumption situation happening. They really sneak up on you. The Raz-A-Ritas are 20% on average that's 40 proof without distillation.

So those are all 3 gallon carboys, not 5 gallon ones? I agree about the weight, full five gallon carboys are fine, just not convenient. My old back complains.

Cool, I may just have to try this, thanks for the inspiration John.

Backing up a bit, Fruit wines are susceptible to flavor changes and you scratch your head "What Happened?". Your wine fermented thru the Primary stage just fine, the necessary precautions were taken when racking to prevent contamination, Secondary fermentation went off without a hitch. Time to think about bottling your batch so you give it a taste, yuck! The Blueberries you crushed perfectly, the Yeast Starter was foaming well, your Sugar/Water was perfectly clear when everything went together, even bought nice new bottles to rack your wine into. But Yuck? Here is what I discovered, while the Yeasts were munching away on everything you fermented they did a very good job of it so all the available sugars were turned into Alcohol. Our taste buds do not know what a Blueberry tastes like totally devoid of any Sugars. Now you know, Yuck! Enter the Wine Conditioner.



I had this on order for a while and just picked it up at our local Brewing / Winemaking retailer. Peaches, Apples, Blueberries, Muscadines, etc taste totally different without their original sugars. Many new Wine Makers just add a 2:1 Sugar/Water syrup to Backsweeten. But it never really tastes right, somethings off. This is a job for the Inverted Sugars in the Wine Conditioner. You still must Stabilize your product when using this additive but just a small amount and your back tasting your wine exactly like the Blueberries that went into it. I made this mistake in the past but discovering this product has totally changed the quality of my final, bottled, product. I thought I would get it out to any who are interested in making their own Homemade Wine or are already doing so but using a Sugar Syrup for backsweetening. Soon the citrus wines here will be filtered, stabilized, conditioned, and bottled. Posts will show every step. Wine Conditioner is hard to find and mostly ordered Online. You want some on hand and a little goes a very long way.

With the very late freeze we had this spring (only 6 times in the last 100 years) killing almost all our fruit crop for 2023 and killing 4 of our California imported Fruit trees, fruit harvest is very slim at best. We have one Muscadine Vine that survived Hurricane Katrina but has not bared fruit for years now (drops crop every year) is ripening the first crop since 2005. If I can get 3 gallons of Muscadines it will be enough to make a batch of Muscadine Wine.



I hope we do so I can show how easy it is to make a good Country Wine at home.

Muscadines wouldn’t last long enough to make wine around my house….lol

The last bottle of Santa Rosa Plum wine. This was bottled March 2021. I really thought is was a miss as the ABV was 20% (40 proof) and the skins really made a tart aftertaste. Dust on the Bottle, we have all heard the song. I would drink a bottle every now and then but left this last bottle and the last bottle of Meyer Lemon till last week and this week. What a extra year in the bottle has done. Really mellowed, blended, crisp, clean taste, just like biting into a ripe Santa Rosa Plum. Looks like when the bottling starts here in a month almost all will get a extra year aging in the bottle. The Lemon was just a surprise as this Plum.



Good corks for everything this year.



Although a Amalgamated cork, this brand cork every one had a great seal. You can see in the photo no leakage past the bottom of the cork. Very good sign of a great seal.

Would prolly make a good fishing float…