By Rebecca Pinkerman
As you contemplate the prospect of how to make homemade wine, you will need to decide whether you want to use fruit, such as grapes, or packaged fruit juices. Packaged juices are known as concentrates and can be easily purchased online as well as in home brewing stores. Many novice winemakers feel that concentrates are a great introduction to the process of winemaking. There are also advantages to using fruit rather than concentrates; however. The main advantage to using fruit is that you have more control over the process, and thus the results, when you use fruits.
For the most part, the process of making wine from fruit is similar to making it using concentrates. You will need at least 70 pounds of grapes in order to produce six gallons of wine. In that case you will only need about 25 pounds of grapes due to the fact that wild grapes tend to have a stronger flavor as well as more acid.
You can easily remove the stems as well as crush the grapes by hand. For small batches of grapes, you can use something as simple as a potato masher to crush the grapes; just make sure it has been cleaned and sanitized first. If you are dealing with larger amounts of grapes it may be worth it to go ahead and invest in a grape crusher as this will speed the process along.
An acid test kit may also be helpful in controlling and monitoring the levels of acid that are present in your wine when you are using fruit rather than concentrate. When the acid level in the wine is too high, the resulting wine will typically have a taste that is too sour or sharp. If there is not enough acid; however, the wine may taste somewhat flat.
If you do not have a recipe available you may be tempted to begin throwing some things together and creating your own wine recipe. If you have only made grape wine in the past you may be tempted to believe that you will be able to use the same amount of any other kind of produce that you use when making grape wine. If you are using a produce that is very strong and/or contains a high amount of acid then you will need to make sure that you balance that with some water for dilution purposes. If you used the same amount of elderberries to make a batch of wine as you use to make grape wine, you will likely end up with a batch of wine that is practically undrinkable.
If you are using wine grapes, you typically do not need to add any water at all to make up your full five gallons. With a lot of produce, you may not actually need to add any sugar because the produce may have enough of its own to support the fermentation process. If you are not sure whether the produce you are using needs to have any sugar added, use a hydrometer to test the juice. This scale measures the potential amount of alcohol that can be produced from the juice in terms of percentages from zero to twenty. This will give you a good idea of how much alcohol can be produced from the sugar level that is already present in the must.
For example, if you get a reading of 4 on the hydrometer then you know you have enough sugar to produce 4% alcohol content in your wine. In most cases, one pound of sugar will raise the alcohol level by approximately 1%. Do keep in mind that it is usually not a good idea to try to produce a wine that with an alcohol content of more than 13%; however, because higher alcohol contents could interfere with the stability and balance of the wine.
About the Author: For Free Recipes, Information on wine related gifts, and How To Make Homemade Wine, visit: http://www.how-to-make-homemade-wine.com
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More: How to Make Homemade Wine- Tips For Making Wine From Grapes
