Wine Making Page

How to start:

The first thing you need to do is buy your equipment:

• Primary fermenter- A primary fermenter is a vessel to start the wine process in. It has a wide opening and is usually made of food grade plastic (don't use a plastic garbage can or your wine will taste like it was brewed in a garbage can). If you intend to make your wine in 5 gallon batches, your primary fermenter should hold 7 gallons. Some come with a lid which is convenient but not necessary. If you do not have a cover, it can be replaced by a sheet of plastic. Fill your secondary fermenter and pour the contents into the primary and make a mark at the water level. This marks the amount of water, or juice you will need to make 5 gallons of wine.
• Secondary fermenter- A secondary fermenter (sometimes called a carboy) is a narrow necked vessel that your wine finishes in. It can be glass, plastic, crock ware, or any food grade container as long as it can be made air tight with a stopper. The container can not be larger than the batch of wine you are making. You can use several smaller containers. For example you could use 5 one gallon containers instead of 1 five gallon container.
• Air lock- An air lock is a device to allow carbon dioxide to leave your wine while preventing air from coming into contact with your wine. There are 2 basic styles but both involve allowing gas to pass through a sterilizing solution.
• Racking siphon- A racking siphon consists of a hard plastic tube attached to flexible plastic tubing. There is a detachable device at the end of the hard tube that can be used to raise the bottom of the tube off the bottom of a fermenter so you can remove the wine and leave sediment behind.
• Hydrometer- An hydrometer is a device to measure the specific gravity of your wine. Without getting into a chemistry lesson, the higher the specific gravity, the more sugar in the wine. As yeast eats the sugar to make alcohol, the amount of sugar in your wine goes down. Therefore, by using a hydrometer you can roughly predict how much alcohol your wine will have and you can keep track of its progress. You use an hydrometer by floating it in a tube filled with your wine and reading off a scale on the side of the hydrometer.
• Floating thermometer- Yeast can only produce alcohol in a certain temperature range. It is important to keep your wine in that temperature range.
• Corks- You need something to close your wine bottles. You can get plastic corks or natural corks.
• Bottles- Unfortunately, only wine bottles make good wine bottles. They have special reinforcing around the neck that can take the pressure of a compressed cork. Whisky type bottles can fail if corked and if they do! Start priming your friends to save their wine bottles for you. Other than that, try recyclers, your favourite restaurant or buy the bottles.
• Corker- A special machine is required to cork bottles. These can range from inexpensive one handed devices that require the dexterity of Harry Houdini to floor mounted models your children could operate.
• Filling wand- A filling wand is a stiff plastic tube that you attach to your siphon for filling bottles. It has a valve on the end that prevents wine from coming out unless it is pressed against the bottom of a bottle.

Ask around and see if any of your friends make wine. If they do, borrow some of the equipment until your sure you wish to spend the money.

Next, choose a wine kit or recipe. If you choose a kit, everything you need should be included except, in some kits, additional sugar is required. If you are using a recipe, gather all the ingredients. If you do not have a wine store in your area, you'll have to purchase some of the chemicals by mail order.

WINE MAKING HOME PAGE

WINE HOME PAGE

WINE MAKING HOME PAGE