What You Need To Know About Contaminants Of Homemade Wine

Airborne yeast and acid loving bacteria are two enemies of wine-making. Most acetic bacteria convert alcohol into acid thereby turning homemade wine to vinegar. Similarly, the yeasts and spores of fungi that turn wine flat or turn it sour are also in the air. If you're using fresh fruit and other ingredients from the garden or shops, these bacteria, yeasts and fungi are also present, but no worries because they are easily destroyed.

Most ingredients used in making wine are supplied in containers and they will not be contaminated by these causes of spoilage. But, the water that you might use can contain harmful bacteria that can spoil the wine or possibly the wild yeast can cause poor ferments and these ferments could give 'off' flavors such as sour tastes.

Surprisingly, it is the mold on cheeses, half-empty pots of meat paste and jam are often yeasts growing there for it is the yeast floating around in the air that ruins the wine you make. In order to treat these yeasts, you must keep the fermenting wines and finished wines covered closely. Such finished wines should be covered under the heading 'storing' and it is important that you keep fermenting wines covered.

As soon as the prepared yeasts have been added to the prepared liquid, the top of the jar should be covered with a piece of polythene and this should be pressed down all around by hand and a strong string should be tied tightly around. Through this you can keep airborne diseases away from the wine. It is also a good idea if you use a Fermentation lock instead of polythene.

If the whole idea in using fermentation locks is to keep airborne diseases from contaminating the wine, make sure that the bung and lock are airtight. If they are not, the gas leaking will prevent air from reaching the wine during the early stages, but as it slows down the outgoing stream of gas through the leakage holes wouldn't be strong enough for this and so the airborne diseases could easily reach the wine.

Having fitted the lock to the bung and jar, remember to run a little sealing wax where the bungs enter the jar and where the lock enters the bung. Actually this precaution may not be necessary, but it's better to be on the safe side. You can now remove one piece of the lock and bung and insert a new bung when fermentation ceased. The wine during this process can then be put away to clear.

Making The Best Homemade Wine From T'Noirot Extract

An excellent reward of homemade wine making is to be able to flavor your wines with very little effort. This can be easily done with what is called T'Noirot extracts. No extra work is needed, the stuff is ready to use. T'Noirot extracts are blended to give flavors identical to popular liqueurs, thus you are assured of the real thing and not a fake substitute.

T'Noirot extracts are potent and should not be judged by their pure scent. Anyone smelling the raw undiluted extract is likely to think that something is off or bitter. Do not pay any attention to the strength of the odor and do not taste any wine being made from the extract until it is done fermenting. The flavor will also improve immensely as it ages.

Extracts contain blends of bitter and aromatic plants. They have delicate flavor that is something quite unique when it comes to making wines. These extracts were not intended for this, but making wines from them instead of fruit or other ingredients are something that you could be proud of.

Unlike many wine making processes, this one should be carried out over a period of ten days in a one gallon jug. Do not rack the wine into different containers. The sediment in the bottom is where much of the complexity develops with the T'Noirot extracts.

Also, dividing the wine batched is not a wise idea. Even if you have two half gallon jars on hand, resist the urge because the flavors will not be able to develop proportionally. Instead use a larger vessel if you must but only rack the wine one time and only do so after all fermentation has stopped.

Here's a basic recipe to get you started.

Basic Wine made from T'Noirot extracts

Gather the following: 6 cherry brandy extract bottles, three pounds of sugar ,1 gal. purified water, one packet of yeast.

One-third of the sugar should be boiled in a half gallon of water for two minutes; after cooling, pour it into the gallon jar. Add the extract, & yeast. Cover as directed and ferment in a warm place for ten days. Boil the rest of the sugar in remaining water for two minutes and when cool add this to the rest. Ferment in a warm place for a further fourteen days. Cover and leave in a cool place until all fermentation has ceased.

The Basic Steps In Making Homemade Wine With Ribena Syrup

Ribena is a famous syrup made of excellent quality that could well be added to fermenting 'musts' made up from fresh fruits of your choice to get special results. If you wish to use Ribena in winemaking, you must reduce accordingly the amount of sugar in whichever homemade wine recipes you have in mind. Of course, the addition of one or two bottles of Ribena per gallon would make a vast improvement to the flavour and even to the quality of the wine.

One extra bonus is that there is no fruit to buy! Best of all, Ribena has been treated with a pectin-destroying enzyme, which means that you can boil it without fearing pectin clouding the finished wines. Boiling kicks off the SO2 and gives you a wine flavored like cooked blackcurrants. The over all goal with using the Ribena is that you can reduce sugar needed. The steps you can use for the addition of Ribena syrup are listed below.

Step 1: I use two bottles of Ribena diluted with twice the amount of water (four bottles full). Add yeast to the mixture be sure it is allowed to ferment for ten days.

Step 2: When the ten days of fermentation have ceased, two more bottles of Ribena and one bottle of water can be added and the mix and again be sure it is allowed to ferment for ten more days.

Stage 3: After twenty days of fermentation, two bottles of Ribena and one more bottle of water were added. The mixture was then allowed to ferment for completion, taking, in all, three months. Of course, the result was a good, round wine flavored delightfully though not too strongly of fresh blackcurrants.

Fermentation should be done in small-necked bottles plugged with cotton wool or fermentation locks. Racking wasn't carried out until about a month after the final addition & monthly racking followed until fermentation stopped. At a young age, this wine was nice to drink, but it improved enormously after 6 months.

How To Make Homemade Wine With Low Alcoholic Content

You may be surprised to find that a high percentage of alcohol is not everything. Many various wines are made in the range of eight to eleven percent of alcohol at the lower end. Some wines made with the recipes based by the book, of course, while wines made by the recipes in most winemaking books are a good deal stronger than others made by brand names.

It makes sense that a good percentage of alcohol ensures that wines keep well for a longer period of time. Sometimes a stray spore of yeast, either left in the wine or contaminated, will begin to reproduce and live on the sugar present. The only way to avoid this is to make a homemade wine that is extremely dry in nature. But, not all people like dry wines.

Many people prefer their wines semi-sweet to sweet. Thankfully, the wines most recipes are based on in wine books keep well because they contain large enough amounts of alcohol to destroy yeast or bacteria that may remain. So the challenge lies in producing a sweet wine with a low alcohol content.

The primary goal in making low alcohol wines is to add just enough sugar to make the amount of alcohol needed and to allow the wine to ferment strait out. Often wine will be dry if you use less than two pounds of sugar in one gallon. If two gallons are being made, always double the amount of sugar. For example, if you have decided on making wine of ten percent of alcohol, the amount of sugar must be one pound fourteen ounces per gallon.

Feel free to try it. Take any recipe in your book and use one pound and fourteen ounces of sugar. One side note of importance is that if invert sugar is being used, it contains some moisture, so for every pound of household sugar, you must use one and a quarter pounds of the invert sugar. Also, invert sugar is sold in tins containing seven pounds. Sometimes weighing this proves awkward. It may be easier to dissolve it and consider that one pint represents two pounds of sugar.