Using Wine Recipes for Fruit Wine

Making wine at home is easy and it’s relatively inexpensive to start. There are now winemaking kits that you can buy that will provide you with all the basic equipment you need and recipes. Or you can buy the separate pieces of equipment to make your own wine making kit. Once you have all the basic equipment together you can start looking for wine recipes to make your own fruit wines.

Basic Equipment

You will need a one gallon jug and an air lock to ferment your wine. You will also need a siphon tube and a two-gallon, possibly larger, food grade bucket. This is the very basic no-frills equipment that you would need when you are just starting to tinker with wine recipes. Other kits will have other things such as a corker, acid test kit, and hydrometer. You can invest in these things once you get serious about making wine at home.

Ingredients

Wine recipes utilize any fruit or vegetable with natural sugar content. You would be surprised at the things that you can make wine from. Aside from the traditional fruit wines, such as apple or blackberry, you can also make wine from zucchini, sweet potatoes, and even Brussels sprouts. Once you master the basics you can start experimenting with wine recipes.

Apple Wine

You can make apple wine at home by cutting up three and a half pounds of cooking apples. It’s important not to peel the apples. Place the apples in your one-gallon jug and pour a gallon of cold water over it. Cover the bucket and leave it for a week, remembering to stir everyday. Use a plastic spoon when stirring.

Strain the liquid through a muslin cloth into your second bucket. Add two and a half pounds of sugar and the juice and rind of two lemons and one orange to the liquid. Stir it all up until it’s well dissolved. Add a teaspoon of yeast, use wine yeast not baker’s yeast, a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and another teaspoon of pectic enzyme. All can be purchased at a brewer’s supply store.

Leave it to sit for twenty-four hours before straining the liquid into a fermentation jug that needs to be closed with an air lock. It will need four months to ferment properly and turn into a good wine. During the four months you will have to siphon the contents of the jug into another when an inch thick layer of sediment builds up in the fermentation jar. Most wine recipes follow this method but will have slightly different ingredients.