"Making Wine"

Wine can be made from many different items, I have seen recipes for "pea Pod" wine and "carrot" wine is very popular. Use your imagination and don't be afraid to make mistakes in ingredients, you just may come across a winner!

As with beer and wine both. Care (extreme care) must be given to sanitation. The rule of thumb is "if it touches the wine, it must be sanitized". It is easy to relax and "Cheat" when taking a sample for Hydrometer readings, etc., but don't risk it. It is not worth having an off tasting beverage, just to save one or two minutes in the kitchen.

I have seen pages on the Internet that tell you to boil fresh or frozen fruit to extract the juice. I am not going to tell you not too....but....I have had terrible results by doing this and have talked to others that have had the same experience as myself. So your saying "what do you do then?" I try to freeze any fruit before I use it. It is not only convenient to save some fruit for making wines in the winter months but it helps break down the fruit and allow easier juice removal.

Have a good wine recipe you would like to share? Send it in and put "wine recipe" in the message box of the E-mail. Write the recipe like you would like it to be seen on this page and I will convert it to html. Happy wine making, DaBoozer!

• Crab Apple
• Choke Cherry
• Plum
• Raspberry Current
• Rhubarb

Wash and chop rhubarb into 1 inch pieces and add to fermentation vessel. Boil water and pour it over cut rhubarb. Crush rhubarb until it is mashed. Let stand for 7 days, mash each day. Press fruit to remove juice. Add juice to secondary fermentation vessel. Disolve sugar in juice and heat. Cut up raisins into little pieces and add to mixture. Wash and slice the lemons and orange, add to vessel. Disolve yeast in 1/2 cup warm water and add to vessel. Fermentation takes approx 2 weeks. Allow to settle and clear. Bottle and cork when clear. Allow to age for a minimum of 1 year. The longer the better. (This is the hardest part, but patience pays tremendous dividends)

RASPBERRY CURRENT WINE

• 3 1/2 lbs raspberries
• 3 1/2 lbs currants
• 8 lbs sugar
• 1 Package wine yeast
• 1 tsp. nutrient (optional but helps yeast to work quicker and more thoroughly)
• 2 campden tablets (optional but helps to clear wines quicker)

Blend fruits using a food processor. Boil pulp in enough water to cover for 2 hours. Strain pulp and add to extracted juice. Cool to lukewarm and add yeast, sugar, nutrients, and campden tablets.

Cover loosely and protect from insects. Stir daily, skimming off foam, for 1 week. Let stand another 2 weeks then siphon into another container. (When siphoning, do not siphon the sludge from the bottom of container.) Continue standing and siphoning process every 2 to 4 weeks until wine is clear.

Bottle and let stand a couple months for best flavor. This wine is good when bottled but, as in all wines, improves with age.

CRAB APPLE WINE

This batch started at almost 6 gallons. It is just started and I hope to get about 20 bottles when I am done.

• 16 pounds Crab Apples (stems removed and cut into quarters)
• 2 cans frozen grape juice concentrate
• 3 gallons water
• 6 pounds sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons pectin
• 2 teaspoons yeast nutrient
• 1 to 2 packages champagne yeast

I was not ready to make this wine when the fruit was ripe so I froze it for later use. All ingredients other than the yeast and nutrient were added to the fermentation vessel. I boiled the water before adding it and poured it over the fruit at boiling temperature. The fruit will need crushed and the juice extracted. I have not gotten that far yet. Normally you should mash the fruit for about a week and then collect all of the liquid in a boiling pot. Boil this and allow to cool. I usually start in plastic and rack to glass. When the juice mixture reaches pitching temperature add yeast and nutrient.

12/2/98 Update: Well it has been a couple of months since the top part of this was written. I am learning as I go. I found that if you freeze the fruit it is much easier to work with. After the first week of stirring just the fruit and water, I crushed the Crab Apples and got as much juice as I could. I ended up with about 3 gallons of juice and water mixture after I added the rest of the ingredients. I used some champagne yeast and a little nutrient and we were rolling. Like I said that was a couple of months ago. The wine is aging in a five gallon carboy right now. I plan on bottling this weekend. Oh yes, I tried it at bottling time and it is GOOD. I can hardly wait for about three months to see how it is going to age.