My wine making attempt

Making Wine at Home !

Wine is a beautiful drink and I salute those who invented this. As the middle age started settling in, I started liking and preferring wine more and more over other variations of Alcohol. However, as a wine drinker, the problem I face here is the lack of availability and affordability of good wine. The closest one which gives a balance between affordability and quality is "Cabernet Shiraz" from Grover Winery which is about Rs. 550 here for a bottle. Better wines can be obtained for half that price in west.  The most funny things while buying that stuff from a Bevcco outlet is the facial expression of other drinkers in the queue when I ask for wine and its price and finally buys it :-).

So I started thinking about the alternative, ie, making wine at home. Googling for wine making at home yielded plenty of results. Some of them were simple and some were very complex. I decided to try some simple recipes. A very helpful site was http://www.kosukadi.com/make-wine-at-home-easy-and-cheap-home-made-red-wine-recipe/ and I followed more or less the same procedure there.

The first step was buying grape. On a Saturday, I bought 2 Kgs of black grapes with seeds for Rs.80 from a nearby fruit vendor. Then socked it overnight in water. We had 2 ceramic urns(bharanis) for pickling mangoes. Since they were empty and my wife didn't get good mangoes for making the pickle, she graciously consented to use them for my wine making endevour. Next day, the grape was cleaned and sorted to remove all the overripe and torn ones. It was a team effort with my wife and daughter joining in.

Sorting grapes

Cleaned grapes

The next step was preparing the sugar solution. About 750gms of sugar was added in 2 liters of water and the water was boiled and then cooled. The ceramic jars were sterilized using hot water. Then the cleaned grapes were lightly crushed in a juicer (which was also sterilized). The crushed grapes were put in the jar and  the cooled sugar solution was poured over it and mixed with a wooden spoon. In the meanwhile about 15 gms of yeast which was bought from Big Bazaar was activated in a cup of sugar solution. The activated yeast was finally mixed with the grape and sugar solution in the jar. The lid of the jar was closed and the jar securely put in a dark corner ! Thats the end of step 1 :-)

Making sugar solution

Bharani

Sugar solution 

Yeast

Yeast

Then every evening for another 2 weeks, I had a special job. A wooden churning thing was sterilized and used it to thoroughly mix the concoction in the jar. On the first day there were a lot of form and gas and lot of grape skin floating on top. This started reducing day by day and the alcohol smell got stronger. The best part of this activity was sampling of the liquid ! At the end of 2 weeks, I felt that it is enough and there is no more sugar left to be converted to alcohol. So with the help of my wife, I filtered the stuff.  This was a laborious process. A fine cotton cloth (sterilized) was used as the filter. All the grape skin, dead yeast, etc were removed and the liquid was transferred to another sterilized  ceramic jar. 150 gms of sugar was dissolved in a about 250 ml of water (boiled and cooled) and it was added to the jar to make it full. Now the lid was closed real tight with additional cloth covering to make it really air tight.

This time it was a longer wait. No privilege of daily tasting ! We waited with anticipation for 3 weeks. On a Saturday, I hunted for a siphon and finally got one. That Sunday was a very important day ! I had already collected a few bottles which were cleaned using hot water and then dried. The "wine" was transferred to the bottles cleanly using the siphon. After filling 3, 750ml bottles and a 2 litter bottle, half a bottle of wine was remaining, which was finished immediately. Wine was shared among relatives and friends and was finished in  a few days time.

Siphoning

End result !

The impressions.

It was a fairly strong wine, the estimates varied between 15 and 20% alcohol by experienced drinkers :-). It gave a nice high without any hangover. The "smell" was also there.

But it was lacking in color, not red, but rose. It had a feeling of being "thin" or "diluted" when compared to the commercial ones.

The economy of making wine at home is impressive. I would have spent about Rs.150 for making about 4 litters of wine ! So it is really economical.

For the next try I intent to put about 4 Kg of grapes without any water so that it will be "thicker" and about 2Kg of sugar. I will also add about 100gms of wheat to the mixture for the malt. The next big change is going to be the yeast. I managed to get some real wine yeast through ebay ! I will be using that. Hope the result will be a better wine :-)

The second attempt

I tried to make the wine again, this time with the new formula, I outline above. But I failed miserably :-( What I got was a really sweet liquid. So I added some spices to it and made a sort of "Aristam". I suspect the imported yeast was the culprit and it could not handle the grape here :-)