Prices for alcoholic beverages are growing every year, so more and more people are thinking about how to make them yourself at home. The most common of these is wine, which is considered a noble drink that has not only a bright rich taste, but also many useful properties. However, in order for it to turn out to be of high quality, it is very important to adhere to all the requirements of manufacturing technology. Let's figure out how to make wine from grapes at home.
A few words about the choice of raw materials
Today, home-made alcoholic beverages are made from a wide variety of fruits and berries, but grapes are best suited for this. This plant is just perfect for winemaking. If the crop was harvested on time and correctly processed, then sugar and sourdough will not even be required to make wine.
It is important to understand that without the use of additional ingredients, you can only make dry wine from blue grapes at home. Dessert, sweet and fortified varieties of the drink require the addition of sugar. If the berries are too sour, so much so that it is simply impossible to eat, then the juice will need to be diluted with water. In all other cases, dilution with liquid is not recommended, since it significantly affects the taste of the wine.
As for the choice of raw materials, the ideal option is grapes grown independently in their personal plot. This is due to the fact that the berries contain "wild" yeast, due to which the juice begins to ferment. However, if you live in a city and you do not have a summer residence, then in this case you can make wine from purchased grapes at home. But you must understand that any fruits and vegetables that are produced on an industrial scale are processed with pesticides, so they must be washed thoroughly before use. Thus, you wash off the "wild" yeast from the berries, and, therefore, for the preparation of alcoholic beverages, a special yeast is required. How to do it will be described later.
Isabel wine
So, how not to get lost with the choice? A grape variety such as Lydia is best suited for making homemade wine. Many do not use it, because they mistakenly believe that it is harmful to health, but this is not so. On the contrary, a drink from it is obtained of excellent quality, with a very bright rich taste. The berries themselves are not loved by all people, because their flesh resembles mucus in their consistency, but no one can resist a glass of wine made from isabel varieties.
Harvesting Recommendations
In order to make a delicious wine from grapes at home, it is very important to collect the harvest on time. Green berries will be very acidic, so you will have to add water and sugar to the drink, which, in turn, will not only negatively affect its quality and taste, but also increase the level of methyl alcohol in wine, which in large quantities is harmful to health. And in the overripe grapes, the process of vinegar fermentation begins. Therefore, timely harvesting is a very important stage in winemaking.
Trimming clusters is recommended in clear sunny weather. If it was raining before, then you should wait at least three days. Processing of raw materials must be completed no later than two days after harvesting. If the berries lie longer, they will begin to lose moisture and nutrients. In addition, they can rot, as a result of which you can no longer get a tasty drink. Therefore, you must very carefully sort out the grapes, selecting only high-quality raw materials.
Container preparation
What is the best fit? Wine from green grapes at home can be produced in the following containers:
- Three-liter cans - suitable for making a drink in small quantities. For the period of fermentation, the container is covered with special covers or an ordinary medical glove is put on it, on one of the fingers of which a small hole is pierced with a pin.
- 10- or 20-liter glass containers. These dishes are sold in many stores and are most often used by many winemakers. The container is pre-washed with soda, then rinsed with cold water and sterilized.
- Oak Barrels. These containers are ideal for the manufacture of alcoholic beverages, but they are quite expensive, so they are rarely used at home. The container is first soaked with water for 10 days, after which it is steamed with boiling water, to which soda ash is added at the rate of 25 grams per liter of liquid, and then rinsed.
Regardless of the dishes in which the wine will be made from grapes at home, the use of a water seal is mandatory.
How to make leaven?
The basis of the preparation of any alcoholic beverages is the fermentation process, and wine is no exception. This is a very complex chemical process, where various microorganisms are involved, which, eating sugar, break it down into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The fermentation process is started thanks to the “wild” yeast contained in the berries. But if you bought grapes in a store and washed it, then they will not be on the fruits, so you will need a special yeast. For its preparation, a wide variety of recipes are used, among which the three most common will be considered.
Grape sourdough
What is necessary for its preparation? This version of the starter culture is the most common, because it allows you to get a high quality drink. Shortly before the expected harvest, cut a few bunches and mash grapes with sugar well. The optimal proportions of wine from grapes at home are as follows: 2 parts of crushed berries, 1 part of water and half a kilogram of sugar. Ferment is poured into washed and sterilized containers, shaken well, wrapped and stored for 10 days in a room protected from sunlight, in which the ambient temperature is at 23 degrees Celsius. When the mash is ready, it is filtered from garbage.
Raisin Sourdough
What are the features of cooking? If you do not have your own vineyard and you will prepare wine from purchased raw materials, then the leaven can be made from raisins. This will require 200 grams of dried berries, 50 g of sugar and 2 cups of warm water. Further storage of the starter culture is carried out in the same manner as described above. It is worth noting that the mash can be used to produce homemade wine only for one week after preparation. Then it starts to sour, and the drink turns out to be tasteless.
Wine Sludge Sourdough
This is one of the most popular options. If you have a little last year's wine, then it can also be used to make sourdough. To do this, add a few fresh berries crushed with sugar to the precipitate. Undoubtedly, the quality of a drink made from wine sediment will be inferior to wine made on the basis of the two previous options for souring, however, this method is also used by many winemakers.
The process of making homemade wine
The production technology of wine from grapes at home has been used by winemakers for many centuries, so it is worked out literally to perfection. As mentioned earlier, the production of absolutely all alcoholic beverages is based on the fermentation process, but in the case of wine, some nuances must be taken into account. For centuries, winemakers have passed down their secrets and secrets from generation to generation, which allowed them to produce high-quality wines. It is worth noting that in each country they use their own approach to the production of this noble drink, which has certain features. For instance. In Italy, France, or the Caucasus, the process will be similar, but there will be significant differences. We will consider the simplest way to make wine, which will allow you to easily prepare a very tasty drink.
Types of wine
Depending on what proportions of wine from grapes will be used at home, you can prepare the following varieties of the drink:
- The dining room is dry and semi-sweet. Prepared exclusively by natural fermentation. They do not contain sugar and other liquids. They have a very bright and natural taste.
- Fortified - made with the addition of sugar, due to which the alcohol content in the drink can reach 20 percent.
- Flavored - dessert wine from grapes, made at home with the addition of herbal infusions.
It is worth noting that this is a simplified classification of wines. In fact, there are a huge number of varieties of this drink, which only professional winemakers and qualified sommeliers can figure out.
Red and white wines: what is the difference?
Let's dwell on this in more detail. Wine made from grapes at home can be red and white. However, as practice shows, many novice winemakers have absolutely no idea what the difference between them is other than color. The main difference between red and white wines lies in the technological process by which they were made. To prepare the starter culture, not only the flesh of berries is used, but also the skin with seeds, in which tannins are present, giving the product a characteristic color, astringency, as well as a more saturated aroma and taste.
Preparatory process
The most common raw material for the production of a noble drink is black grapes. To make wine at home will turn out tasty only if the harvest is properly prepared. The first step is to sort through all the berries, taking away all the rotten grapes, vine, leaves and other garbage. At the same time, the amount of grapes needed directly depends on how much wine you want to get at the exit. One liter of berries is required per liter of drink. It is strictly forbidden to wash them so that “wild” yeast remains on the peel.
Next, the grapes are laid out in small portions in enameled dishes and crushed by hands, after which the wort is poured into glass or oak containers and the yeast is sent to a dark room for fermentation. It is not recommended to use any devices for crushing berries, because of them, the drink may acquire a bitter aftertaste. If you plan to prepare a large volume of wine, then the crop is crushed in the old fashion with clean feet.
To make white wine from blue grapes at home, filter the juice through a sieve with a fine mesh from the pulp. Such a drink will not have a very strong aroma, but the taste will be gentle and light. To get white wine, you will need to pre-prepare the sourdough.
Wine fermentation
How is this process carried out? Wine from grapes at home should properly ferment. To do this, the juice is poured into glass jars that are covered with gauze and sent to a dark room with an air temperature of 26 degrees. It should be noted that the taste of wine depends on the conditions under which fermentation will take place.
When a foam forms on the surface of the liquid, as a rule, this happens on the sixth day after the start of fermentation, the mash is filtered through cheesecloth, folded in several layers, and poured into three-liter jars. Every day, the must must be mixed. It is worth noting that this stage of wine production is one of the most important, because if you overexpose the mash, it will turn sour.
If you make wine from sour grapes at home, then it must be diluted with water. However, in order to keep the taste and aroma of the drink at a high level, the amount of added liquid should be no more than 500 ml per liter of wort.
A container with wine is installed on a water lock, which is a plastic tube with a diameter of about one centimeter. One end cuts into the lid, and the other dips into a container filled with water. If you stand the wine in three-liter jars, then instead of a water shutter, you can use an ordinary rubber glove. This is necessary in order to ensure the tightness of the packaging.
The optimum air temperature in the room where the jars with wort will be placed is considered to be at the level of 20-24 degrees. But here it all depends on the specific variety of the drink that you make. However, regardless of this, it is not recommended to allow the temperature to drop below 15 degrees, because in this case the yeast will stop working and die.
The presence of a fermentation process can be determined by the emitted air bubbles. As the intensity of this process fades away, another portion of sugar is added to the wort. To do this, a little wine is cast from the container, in which 50 grams of white powder is dissolved, after which it overflows into a quarter and mixes well with a wooden spatula.
At the same time, take into account the fact that the more sugar you add, the stronger the wine will be made from Moldavian grapes at home. However, do not overdo it, because if the alcohol content in the drink is above 13 percent, the yeast will stop working and the wine will not be sufficiently aged, which will negatively affect its aroma. If you do not add sugar at all, you will get a light, dry wine. To make fortified wine after it has finished wandering, add alcohol to it.
On average, fermentation takes about 20 days, but some experienced winemakers extend it to two months by manipulating the temperature of the air inside the room. Thanks to this, they significantly increase the quality of the product, which can be compared with vintage wines. However, this process is rather complicated. Therefore, it is better for beginners not to risk it, but to make wine from green grapes at home using the technology described in this article.
If you used the precipitate left over from last year’s drink as a starter, then pour it into clean containers and send for fermentation only after the air bubbles cease to stand out completely.
Quiet fermentation
Wine from grape raisins at home can ripen from one and a half months to one year. But it makes sense to withstand so long only if you use oak barrels as containers. The tree will give the drink a special aroma and will increase its quality.
Fermentation is carried out using a water lock, and the container is stored in a dark place at a temperature of 8 to 12 degrees. For this purpose, the cellar is ideal. Samples can be taken after 40 days, but high-quality red wine will be ready no earlier than two and a half months. It is worth noting that the ambient temperature must be constantly monitored, since its differences will adversely affect the taste of the noble drink.
Wine lightening
After the drink is ready, it is poured into tightly closed containers with high tightness. To make it more pure and transparent, wine made from oilcake is clarified at home. To do this, use clay, gelatin or egg yolk. If you don’t want to bother with this, you can do without clarification, since the presence of impurities has absolutely no effect on the aroma of the drink. So that wine does not lose its taste, it must be stored in a cool room, for example, a cellar or cellar is perfect for this.
As it turned out, making wine at home is not a very simple process, but quite real. The most important thing is to adhere to a certain technology, and then everything will work out.