Wine making at home is a simple process. For some, it is a lucrative hobby.  While wine can be made from fruit concentrates, it is wine made from fresh fruits, i.e., grapes, apple, plums or any fruit you choose, which makes it a delightful experience. The best fruit to choose would be the fruit of the season, as it is likely to be available at competitive prices and also in large quantities.

The equipment required for making wine at home is:

A large plastic or stainless steel vessel with lid

1. A juicer
2. A glass fermentation jug with airlock.
3. Siphon
4. Yeast
5. Sugar

All the above equipment needs to be sterilized in boiling water.

Now are you ready to try wine making at home?

If yes, then squeeze the fruit using your hands or a juicer into the container. For hard fruits, a juicer is necessary, but for grapes, the traditional method of trampling can also be used.

If you wish your wine to be sweet, add sugar at this stage. A good ratio would be 2 pounds of sugar to one gallon of fruit juice.  The drier the wine, the lesser the sugar content.  Stir the sugar until it dissolves.

Transfer the sugared fruit juice into a vessel and add powdered yeast which has been dissolved in warm water.  After a few minutes, the vessel needs to be shut tight or air locked. Fermentation begins and your made at home wine will start frothing.  You can actually see bubbles in the air lock and know that your experiment has been successful!

Keep your made at home wine in a warm place and leave it for a long period of time – at least a year! You can even drink it after a month, but it may not taste all that great. 

Some time during the fermentation process, a white layer may form in the vessel. The wine then needs to be siphoned into a new container.  This process can be repeated monthly to prevent a yeasty taste tarnishing the wine’s flavor.

Well, at this stage your home made wine is almost ready, and you will know this when you notice that the air bubbles have stopped coming out.  This really means that fermentation is over and the wine can now be transferred into clean, dry bottles. 

Remember to label the wine as you may get batches mixed up, especially if your wine has left you with a heady mixed up feeling!

Wine making at home is thus a great hobby and can be turned into a business plan.  Keep at it! There is nothing like drinking wine at home and enjoying the fact that your wine making at home experiment has been successful.

It does not matter if you choose a grape trellis that is decorative in its appearance or if it is one that is only meant for its functional use. The only important fact is that you have one for your grapes to be able to have enough support to grow properly. A trellis can conveniently be found in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, making it an easy accomplishment to find the one to suit your individual needs. They are also available in several different materials such as pre-treated wood, iron, stainless steel, aluminum and PVC pipe. You can either purchase an already made trellis or you will be able to construct one very easily by yourself.

For areas that have a short growing season it is best to use a shorter trellis that includes posts that are approximately three feet high. This is because they are able to withstand the long cold winter months much easier and the shorter ones are also much more convenient to prepare the vine for the winter season. A taller grape trellis works the best in areas that have a warmer climate and they require posts that are approximately eight feet in height.

Before beginning to dig the holes for the placement of the grape trellis, you should first consider where you would like to place it. Using the shorter trellis, you will want to plant the posts approximately two feet into the ground, and for more durability it is best to pour cement around the posts. Since this is a process that can take many years, the trellis will be in place for a long time to come. Other ways to anchor a trellis would be to use wiring that is anchored into the ground or you can simply place a shorter post next to the main post you have already placed. As you are putting each post into the ground for the trellis, be sure to place them about eight feet apart and you will want to use two rows of galvanized steel running between each post. You should place the first row towards the bottom of the post, approximately three inches above the ground. The second row should be placed towards the top of the posts. A staple gun works quite well to hold the wires into place.

There are several different varieties of unique styles, shapes and sizes in a grape trellis that you can purchase, or you can simply choose to build your own. Either way you must always be sure to incorporate planning that is done well and take notes of the proper measurements for the size you will need.

You will be able to coax the vine to grow around the main two trellis wires as it begins to start growing. It can also be very useful to use either cloth or some string to secure the vines carefully to the wires of the grape trellis being very careful not to cause any damage to the shoot itself.

As the vines begin to grow, you will want to allow the growth to form out of one strong shoot that will need to be tied to the trellis vertically, and the rest that begin to grow out of the roots will need to be cut away in the process that is called pruning grapes. As the next dormant time begins you will want to begin developing the arms of the grapevine. Taking two shoots on each end that are to be tied horizontally onto the trellis can achieve this and it will then serve as the arms or a base where the fruit can grow.

Once you have achieved the basic shape you will want to continue the process of pruning. This is the important process that can be done during the dormant period. Making sure to continue doing this important task during the dormant periods and all throughout the entire life of the grapevine is a very critical aspect to achieving successful grape production. 

Pruning grapes will greatly depend on the specific type of grapes that are growing on the vine. Many of the hybrid varieties are much hardier plants and they are much more capable of resisting disease. They also with generally produce a lot less foliage than the European varieties in grapevines. Pruning annually will help a great deal in removing the spurs or fruiting canes from the previous years growing. New canes that are healthy will have to be produced each year because the fruit will only produce on the shoots that grow from the one year old canes. You will find that you can easily manipulate the crop production by varying with the specific amounts you prune back. Creating too much foliage can end up disastrous, as it will provide a canopy like shade area for the fruits and this is not a very good environment for them to ripen in. Your main goal during the pruning process is to make sure that you do not damage the plant with the tools that you will be using such as hand pruners, loppers, or handsaws. These types of equipment can cause damage very easily.

The extra amount of time that you spend in becoming educated on the proper process of pruning grapes can end up resulting in a plentiful and healthy crop that you will be able to enjoy for a long time to come.

So what exactly is wine making yeast?

While most living creatures live on oxygen, the yeast stands apart due to its amazing ability to live without oxygen. So the yeast, a tiny organism which is merely 8/25,000ths of an inch long, can double its number every two hours when dropped in fermenting juice.  So if a single drop contains five million yeast cells and this number keeps doubling every two hours, emanating carbon dioxide, a microscopic x-ray peep into a wine jar will probably show a lot of buzzing activity. The noise this produces can actually be disquieting.

The wine yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae is good yeast and is used in the making of wine.  In fact, one does not need to go hunting for this yeast, as it almost naturally inhabits crushed fruit, which is why some rotten fruits give off a tangy, wine like smell.

Today, one does not need to search natures hideouts for the simple yeast.  The world of medical science has brought the yeast to the chemist shop, and scientists have made it easy for home winemakers to select the yeast of their choice without too much trouble.  Depending on the country and its climatic conditions, one can choose different kinds of yeasts. Thus, one can choose yeasts which tolerate high and low temperatures, those which foam and don’t foam, and even control the flavor of the wine by choosing the appropriate yeast.

Most cultured yeasts are available in varying quantities but the highly recommended one, especially for home wine making processes, is the Active Dry Yeast (ADY) form, which is dehydrated, dormant, and yet very much alive.  A five gram packet can produce five gallons of wine, and that’s the power of these creatures.

To make good wine, adding a yeast starter is a good step.  This would entail that the yeast is introduced to a liquid medium a day before it is added to the wine.  This ensures that fermentation is not delayed and starts off almost immediately.  This method is highly preferred as the fermentation process, because if delayed, it can result in the fruit juice losing its original taste and flavor. Ideally, fermentation should begin immediately and this process enables the same.

A simple and smart approach to producing great wine is to keep the containers sanitized and fresh. This way, the only strain which gets to work when the yeast is introduced is the one which helps to make wine.  Not following the process can result in other bacteria creeping in and corrupting the fermentation process.  Caution is therefore required. Let the wine making yeast do its work without interruptions or competition.

Most people associate wine with grapes and this is not at all a bad association, seeing that grapes lend their glossy, rich red color to wines making it shimmer with secret depths when poured into a glass.

Wine making recipes abound the Internet and any amateur wine maker can siphon a recipe and turn it into a bottle or two of wine.  To sparkle up the process and add a bit of jest to the age old process, let us look at a unique fruit’s wine making recipe.

For a lark, let us look at Quince wine.

Ingredients required for this wine making recipe are:

Quinces – 25

Lemons – 2

Quarter kilo raisins

3 pounds of sugar

Water – nearly a gallon

Yeast nutrient and Wine yeast.

Grind the quinces, leaving out its interiors and then boil it for some time.  Suggested boil time is approximately 15 minutes or till the quinces are cooked.  Strain the boiled quinces and pour the juice into a fermentation bucket. Add the sugar and stir till it is dissolved.  At this stage add the raisins and the lemon juice.  Let the mixture cool.

Once it is cool, add the yeast nutrient and wine yeast.

Cover the jar with an airtight lid and keep it in a moderately warm place for a period of two weeks. 

After two weeks, run the wine through a sieve to remove debris and then move it back into a air sealed jar.

The bubbles forming on the jar lid indicate fermentation.  Once the bubbles have stopped, the wine can be transferred to bottles, labeled and stored.

For white wine, the skin and stems are removed as they add a tannic flavor. 

Sweet wine does not attain its sweetness from the sugar added at the beginning. The added sugar or the sugar content in the fruit when mixed with wine yeast turns the fruit juice into alcohol.

To sweeten your wine, after the wine ferments, sugar can be added and this sugar will solely provide sweetening to the wine. Similarly, in the beginning, if you add more sugar than necessary for fermentation, then the remaining sugar contributes to the wine’s sweetness.

Cane sugar is a good choice as a sweetener, but corn sugar, while not quite as sweet as cane sugar, gives wine a clean flavor and is a good option especially for white wines.  Adding honey gives its own unique flavor to wine and similarly juice concentrates enhance the flavor while adding to the sweetness quotient.

Thus sweet or dry, wine making is an art which needs to be acquired, cultivate and honed to produce the best.  That does not mean it is out of the reach of the amateur.  Everyone can be a wine maker and experiment with different wine making recipes. and over time we can become pros in wine making and may be even add our own comments and suggestions to improvise a tried and tested process.