Hi guys,

I am toying with the idea of making my own wine. I love eating grapes, so might be fun to drink fermented grape juice.

Is it difficult to do?

Thanks.

I did...years ago. I did not find it a food product that was very vital or sustaining to me (not in the same class as an apple! ha! ha!)....so I gave up drinking for good.

-In any event, wine is a little more difficult than beer, but certainly do-able.

These two books are your standard reference and are quite good:

[www.amazon.com]

[www.amazon.com]

-I hope this is helpful.

-David Z. Mason

WWW.RawFoodFarm.com

Hi. This is pakd4fun's husband. I started making wine this past summer when the blackberries on and around our property were ripening. Since nothing is heated (except I boil the water and let it cool), I considerate it raw. The first batch I made got rave reviews from friends and family, so I now am broadening my wine horizons. Currently I have a batch of blueberry port (using hand-picked berries), watermelon, mead (honey) and a second batch of blackberry from frozen berries bought at the store. It is relatively easy and inexpensive. I have a friend who owns a restaurant and he gives me all the bottles I need. But even if you buy the bottles, they're only about $1.50 to $2.00 each and of course, will be reused forever. We love drinking wine, but my wife is allergic to sulfites so it was hard to find a wine that she could enjoy without sneezing attacks. The advantages of home wine making is you can choose to have it sulfite free, it's less than half the price of buying it (we made 4 gallons or 20 bottles of hand picked blackberry for a total of about $40, which includes the bottles we bought. The other wines we're making, we purchased the fruit and honey, so they're about 1 1/2 times the cost, about $3 per bottle), and you can make a wide variety of wines. I did have to purchase a corker for $40, a 5 gallon plastic bucket for $5.00, and various supplies and ingredients, all of which are inexpensive and easily found on the web. Here's a couple sites that I used to get started.

[www.eckraus.com]
[www.familyherbalremedies.com]

The E.C. Kraus site has supplies and great, easy recipes for wine that will be ready to drink within 7 weeks. The blackberry recipe from the Family Herbal Remedies site is the one I used and it is wonderful. I hope you find this useful. I highly recommend giving it a try. I'll be glad to help with sharing what I have learned in my short time as a winemaker.

Cheers!

Danny

i think i'd like to try making some to give as gifts. my mama made mulberry wine when i was little, i remember all the steps and how fun it seemed to do.

Thanks Danny. Why do you need to boil the water? Can't you just filter?

Hi coco. Giving wine as gifts is one of our plans. A basket with 3 different homemade wines is a great gift and cheap. pakd4fun and I have been planning to tone down the Christmas gift giving and this is one way that will help.

And Hello dinesh75. You boil the water to kill any unwanted yeast that could hurt the fermentation. It may not be necessary to boil it if your filter system takes care of the "bad" yeast or if you use additives such as Campden Tablets that kill all bacteria, but add sulfites.

i like the idea of useful gifts. i try to get my family to tone it down a bit but le sigh, they load the kids up with so much stuff and there are just so many of them that we end up with a truck load of new plastic junk. gah.
so if i can reduce the impact and landfil of what we give at least i'll be so happy. wine and other edibles is a great idea. i'm not about to force a bunch of raw cookies on my very non-raw rellies but jam and wine and chutney and the like will all be so well received i'm sure.

i have some photocopies of this crazy old book that had recipes and instructions on making wine from everything from elderberries to carrots to oak leaves (maybe it was another kind of leaf though, oak may be poisonous). the instructions call for a piece of bread, i assume this was before you could buy active yeast in packages. interesting book, very cool. i always wanted to make dandelion and lilac wines. berry, peach, plum and apple are high on my list as well.

All right. I have placed holds on a few books at the public library.

What I would like is an off dry wine (not as sweet as port) with around 20% alcohol content . I like the warm feeling. Would I be able to find this specific kind of wine in the books?

pakd husband:

where are U???

i'd buy a bottle of watermelon wine
if for sale

: )





would love to see pics of your fun project

Hi dinesh75. You can buy a hydrometer fairly cheap ($10-20) to keep up with the specific gravity of your batch. That way you can also manipulate the alcohol content. The books should tell how to do that, as well as many internet sites. It's all about the sugar content I believe. So far I haven't bothered with it because the wine that has finished so far, 2 batches of blackberry, were so good that I'm just going to stay with the recipe.

And hello fruitgirl. If I sold it to you I may be breaking a law, so I'd rather just give it to you. The watermelon will be ready to bottle and enjoy on October 11 and the Mead on October 30, just in time for Holloween festivities! The blueberry port wine I'm fermenting takes 2 years and will be ready August 2010. Next year, during blueberry season, as I start another batch of port, I'll have to make a standard blueberry that will only take about 7 weeks as well. I'll let you guys know how each has turned out and you do the same dinesh.

By the way, pakd4fun is one incredible lady and mother and I am the luckiest man on Earth.

Peace,

pakd4fun's lucky man, Danny

oct 11. . . i am so there!

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btw, where are you???

looks like packd4 is a lucky one as well

We are in southwest Louisiana. AKA the Boonies, LOL!!

Hi. pakd4fun's hubby back. Well we tried the watermelon wine a week early. I didn't care for the flavor, but it was definitely potent. Pakd4fun and cyclopsale thought the flavor was OK, and that the wine was smooth and "to the point". So I am hopeful that with a little aging the flavor will improve. We did start a batch of Organic Apple Juice wine made with raw organic sugar last night. In about 6-7 weeks we'll see how that turns out. We believe it will be exceptional, and why wouldn't it be?, lol.

2066 miles berkeley, ca --> so louisana
if i down a big cacao smoothie
and drive straight through..
maybe 3 days

oh well, how about some pics?

thanks for your fun posts

Hi. pakd4fun's man back. I got my own account. The watermelon wine is growing on me. I guess it was an aquired taste, lol.

you are so funny
really, i'd love to see a pic of that wine
did the fermentation change the watermelon color?

our taste buds are fascinating
so adaptable
in a matter of days they conform
to the "good" or "bad"

i recently had the same experience with cacao nibs
the first taste was like bitter dirt
after a few days of tastings i thought maybe i should buy more
ha

Thanks fruitgirl. Pakd4fun and I are funny in many ways, lol, just ask our many SAD family members. One of my aunts, who's in her 70s, described my wife as "different". Pakd4fun took it as a compliment! The watermelon wine color is a lager beer color, so the fermentation did discolor it and it even foamed a little, which may have been caused by the Champagne yeast I used. I plan to take pics and post them when I start the next batch. I strained the apple juice wine last night and it had a wonderful apple aroma. It will be ready to enjoy by Thanksgiving.
I had the same experience with cocoa nibs as you. But at the Raw Spirit Fest '07 I learned to appreciate them and after the Fest, developed quite a liking.

Hey dinesh75, how is your winemaking coming along?

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