Well, here is a useful skill! How to make home made wine
the old fashioned way. No carboys of juice, no air locks, no wine yeast,
no hydrometer -- just natural fermentation run wild**! And if you don't get
wine, you should get some great vinegar!
After reading these pages, click here, for a
micro-brew example, no special equipment and just a few bottles. After
all this, if you still want more -- how about
dandelion wine?
**Note: Not quite fermentation run wild. My Dad and Uncles made a lot of wine this way and it was pretty drinkable. They learned year-by-year on how to adjust to get the right sugar content and also how to store it. You leave it alone in a sealed barrel and siphon off what you need. Once you put it into a bottle, fill it to the top and keep it sealed until use -- then drink it! If you leave it, the contact with air will quickly turn it brown and sour the taste.
Here is a list of ingredients:
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| New York Niagara Grapes | Concord Grapes (not only good for wine, but provide nice shade in the process) | A 40 year old Oak barrel (I kid you not). Ten gallons. |
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| Washing the barrel. Rinsing first with water and getting the 'stuff' out from last year. | How to keep that 40 year old barrel conditioned. After cleaning, put in about 2 liters of cheap whiskey and top it off. | Give it at least a week in the basement. Roll it around a few times a day to coat all the sides with whiskey. |
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| Here is some of our Niagara grape, ready to be picked! | Concord Grapes | A couple of bushels. Each weighs about 40 pounds. We filled 4 bushels (160 punds) 2 Niagara and 2 Concord. |
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| Those grapes go in a 'must' barrel. It's just an older wine barrel with the end sawed off -- but it must be cleaned. Then we flip it over and keep the top wet. | To make sure we have a tight seal, before getting it wet, a hammer and chisel are used to tighten the iron bands that hold the barrel together. Once you add water it gets even tighter! | We also clean the grape 'crusher'. You may want to dance on the grapes with your feet, but this simple machine is used to crush the grapes between two iron cylinders (see below). |
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| The crusher full of grapes and sitting on top of the 'must' barrel. | A few grapes still left to go (Sep 24). | After four bushels, we still have a lot of room! |
CLICK HERE FOR PAGE TWO OF WINE
MAKING