A thing or two about wine.

As you know from S-chan, I have recently been engaged with my wine making project.

As you can see on the photo on the right, the first attempt was to make wine from regular, cheap red grape juice.

At the beginning I had problems with getting the equipment. However, after a while, I found the only shop in Edinburgh selling comprehensive equipment, as S. wrote, it is the Edina Home Brew. There I bought 2 carboys or demijohns, 1 gallon = 4.54 litre each.
I had to apply the different volume to the recipe I had since it was for 20 litres of wine whereas I could only make less than 10. I had previously received the necessary yeast and yeast nutrient from my parents. The wine I seem to be making is 1. Malaga, 2. Burgundy. I do not expect much difference in taste though. The other ingredient which was obviously necessary was sugar.

From the equipment I need to have, I am only missing the hydrometer (for measuring how much sugar there is in wine) and thermometer. As with each yeast/bacteria culture, they have their optimal and acceptable range of temperatures. For instance for wine it is a wee bit above 20 degrees Centigrade. In comparison natto prefers 40 degrees.

Other items necessary were the "bung" and "lock" to prevent air coming into the demijohn and turning your wine into vinegar (oxidisation )

As can be seen: WINE BUBBLES, the yeast got to work and started changing sugar into alcohol, creating gas (CO2) as a by-product, that's what the bubbles are.

After yeasterday when we went to the wine club meeting, I wanted to try something even easier, almost ready made wine kits. Even better, yesterday S got, for free!, a small 1 gallon demijohn from her charity shop, good girl!

So, today, we went to the shop again, bought one more demijohn, 2 bungs and 2 locks. Obviously we needed the kits; we decided to take the white Elderflower wine kit and a white California wine. I was careful to clean the equipment, to keep appropriate temperature and add all the necessary ingredients. There is very good chance that the experiment will be successful. The only problem is that the Elderflower wine had too cold water so it might take a while for the yeast to wake up and start the job.



The wine is at this moment all done for now, fermenting in the small place next to our water heater, very good place with stable temperature. I do fervently hope the temperature is not too low, it is unlikely to be more than 25 -29 degrees which would be too high.

After waiting for about 2-3 weeks for the fermentation to stop (need to check the manual) I have to add the next ingredients. One is a stabiliser which, in effect kills the yeast and makes them fall down. After this, you need to add the last 2 small bags, with taste improvements (?) actually I do not know what they are.

So, summing up. After about 4 weeks, maybe 5, we will have our own first wine - about 9 liters. After one more month the grape juice wine will be ready, should be quite nice. We will then bottle it and label it, drink or store for later. Actually, I have just read that in the old days - more than 30 years ago, wine was not considered drinkable before it was at least 10 years old!! Surprising. I do not think though that our wine will be able to stay for as long as that.

The Edina shop is very much recommendable, there is really everything you might need to make wine, either from a kit or from scratch - they have all the possible ingredients.





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