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    Any wine makers on here?

    Been thinking lately of trying some homemade wine. My grandfather made lots of it, but passed to soon for him to pass down his knowledge to me. Seems pretty simple. Any tips?? With the abundance of dew berries this year, has me pretty excited to give it a try.

    #2
    Originally posted by buzzbait View Post
    Been thinking lately of trying some homemade wine. My grandfather made lots of it, but passed to soon for him to pass down his knowledge to me. Seems pretty simple. Any tips?? With the abundance of dew berries this year, has me pretty excited to give it a try.
    I'm doing the whole grapes to wine thing for the last 5 years. Vines yielded 54 gallons last year. My wine is OK but not great. I'm thinking of getting professional help this year. There are so many tiny tweaks to tuning the finished product that I don't know. Reasonably good table wine has gotten so cheap in the stores I'm beginning to think it's not worth the trouble.

    If you want to put up small quantities of berry wine search Jack Keller for recipes.

    Heres your link:

    http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/wineblognew.asp

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      #3
      How do you know the fruit to sugar to water ratio? Say I want to make five gallons. How many pounds of fruit would I use?

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        #4
        I've been making muscadine wine for the past 4 years. I started for the exact same reason you want to. My Papa used to make it and all I've ever wanted to do is follow in his foot steps. We have wild mustang (muscadine) grapes growing on our property that I harvest each July/August. I really have it down to a science and it is amazing! Every time I bottle a batch everyone in my family is begging for a bottle. But I make em wait another 3-6 months after it's been bottled. I'll help you out. I've got the recipe and list of all the chemicals and supplies you will need to get started typed up at my office. I will scan it and post it here for you.
        Here's some pics of mine and the custom labels I made.





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          #5
          Man. That looks awesome

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            #6
            That's awesome!

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              #7
              Mustang grapes and muscadine grapes aren't the same.....

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                #8
                been making beer and wine for a while now, for your first wine google "Apfelwein" a very easy, hard to screw up, not overly complicated wine you can do and have bottled inside 6 weeks or less. Here's the entire ingredient list.

                Apple juice
                Corn sugar
                Montrachet yeast

                No need to rack to secondary, just let it ferment dry and then clear in primary for a while then it's ready to bottle if you want to leave it dry or you can kill the yeast and backsweeten. You could even sweeten and then pasteurize to kill the yeast and you'll end up with a sweet sparkling wine.

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                  #9
                  Making a good batch of berry or prickly pear is little different than mess'n with grapes.

                  Hit up Heinsohn's in Frelsburg. They're a great source of info & supplies.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by TxBrokenTine View Post
                    Mustang grapes and muscadine grapes aren't the same.....

                    Hybrid muscadines are descended from the wild mustang grapes that grow all over East Texas. The recipe I use works for any of these type grapes; hence the "mustang (muscadine)" reference. They have a tough, bitter skin which makes them unpleasant to eat out of hand but they are perfect for wine making.

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                      #11
                      I made some in my closet out of minute maid once. Terrible stuff

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                        #12
                        Went to heinsohns yesterday.

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                          #13
                          Atta boy...lol, now you're walk'n lil taller with a lighter wallet!! Can't ever seem to walk outta there w/ just what i "need" or walked in there for.

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                            #14
                            Been making wine off an on since college. It seems every 2 years I get the itch to make another batch of dessert wine. If I had any property, I'd grow some "wild" grapes and take whatever the critters didn't and make a batch a year.

                            My favorite to make is still mead, a semi sweet or dry mead is hard to beat and is really easy to make.

                            Tips:

                            Start with a kit from concentrate and get a handle on the process. Then graduate to fresh fruits. Fresh fruits have thier own problems of keeping the must from getting spoiled during the initial fermentation, etc. With concentrate, you can ferment directly in the carboy.

                            Which brings me to carboys. You need more than one. For meads, ciders, or anything I am doing direct from juice, I am using a 6.5 gallon carboy as my primary, and a 5 gallon as my secondary (or 5 gal primary, 3 gal secondary.) It can be addicting... I had up to six 3gal carboys at one time. Now I have two 6s, four 5s and a couple 3s.

                            When you get to actual fresh fruit, you will want to score yourself some big food grade buckets.

                            Find a good brew store in your area of you can. Most are run by beerheads, but mention mead and chances are you can bond at some level.

                            Get a good book on wine making so you can start to understand the concepts. In those books or at least on the internet, you will find things about how much additional sugar you may need for certain alcohol content, etc.

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                              #15
                              BTW, my favorite wine consists of only the following:

                              HEB organic apple cider (no preservatives!!!.) I buy 6 when they go on sale real cheap.
                              Sugar
                              Campden tablets (sulfur)
                              McCormicks Apple Pie Seasoning

                              I run the sugar up to about 15% alcohol by volume potential knowing the limits of my yeast will put me somewhere around 13.5% with enough residual sugar to make it sweet, but not too sweet.

                              Final product is a wine that reminds you of apple pie, but warms you up. 2 cases worth that probably sets me back about $25. Cheaper than 3 buck chuck.

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