People have been making and bottling their own homemade wines for thousands of years. Once you've mastered the basics, it can be a fairly easy task. However, you must follow directions carefully the first time you make red wine, or you will likely end up with nothing more than a bottle of vinegar and months of wasted time. Add this to my Recipe Box.
Instructions
1. Go to your local wine shop and buy a wine-making kit. A wine equipment kit will include items like a primary fermenting bucket, glassware, corks, tubing, an instructional pamphlet and everything else you'll need to make red wine (except the grapes).
2. Start by fermenting your grape pulp or juice in a bucket. In wine lingo, the bucket where fermentation and early mixing takes place is called the "primary fermenter."
3. Bring only pure filtered water to a boil, and use this to dissolve the sugar before you add it to the pulp. Combine the pulp with sugar, water and other ingredients (except yeast).
4. Seal the bucket tightly against the air. Your bucket will need an airtight lid, or you can just use rubber bands and plastic to cover it. After you've covered your mixture, you will let it stand for about 24 hours.
5. Use your hydrometer to get a reading of your mixture. Follow the directions on the hydrometer for use.
6. Pour your early stage wine from the primary fermenting bucket into the secondary fermenter, then add yeast.
7. Keep an eye on your wine while it ferments, and carefully stir it several times a day. Don't stir vigorously, as you'll be bringing unwanted oxygen into the mixture.
8. Separate your wine by siphoning and straining it. This removes excess sediment and prepares your wine for its final stages.
9. Keep an eye on your wine as time goes by. When its done foaming and bubbling, you'll want to add the final ingredients, like bentonite. In your wine-making kit's instructional book, these will be referred to as "fining" ingredients. If you're going the high-tech route and using a hydrometer, you'll do this when the reading is at 0.099.
10. Drop one campden tablet in your wine one day before bottling. At 12 hours before bottling, soak your wine corks in the prescribed sulfite solution.
11. Apply a label to the bottle, cork it and let it age for several months or even a year before you drink.
12. Enjoy!
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