Basic Wine Making Instructions

We all understand the theory behind how grapes turn into wine. After grapes are crushed and fermented for a certain period of time, they become wine. Although the theory is easy, the process of making wine does require a good amount of effort.

First of all you need to know how much wine can be produce from your grapes. Roughly fifty pounds of good quality grapes can produce about five gallons of good wine. Plastic vats are commonly used for wine making. They are available from local wine supply shops. The first step of making wine is easy and can even be fun. It is simply to place your grape clusters into the vat and crush them. Do not put too many grapes into the vat. Keep in mind that it needs to be no more than two-thirds full when all of the grapes are crushed. The traditional way of crushing grapes by foot, as you may have seen in movies, is still the best. If your vats are small, you can use your hands instead or use a potato masher.

Unwanted yeast growth will cause premature fermentation. To stop it, you need to add proper amount of Campden tablets. Read the instructions on the packet carefully. Campden tablets contains fixed amount of potassium metabisulfite which stops the unwanted yeast growth. After adding the tablets, use a towel to cover your vat and then put it aside for a day.

At this stage the crushed grapes are call the must. One day after your grape crushing, you need to add a packet of wine yeast into the vat. Make sure you use wine yeast and NOT bread yeast. They are two different types of yeasts and cannot be replaced by each other. Common types of wine yeasts are Montrachet and prix de mousse. Use your hands to mix the yeast into the must and remove the cluster of stems and at the same time make sure all the cherries are off the stems. When you finish, you should only have a few stems left in the must. Now use the towel to cover the vat again and set it aside. Within a day or two, the must will start to be bubbly. Within three days, the must will look like boiling.

When the fizzing slows down which normally happens within one week time, you need to get rid of the seeds, grape skins and pulp in the mixture. An easy way is to pour the mixture into mesh bags or cheese clothes and squeeze the liquid out into a glass carboy or into an empty clean wine barrel. Carboys can be purchased from winemaking shops. From now on, please make sure the wine does not contact the air by using an airlock on the carboy or barrel. An airlock can stop the air getting into the carboy or barrel but allows the gas to escape.

In about two to three weeks time, all the fizzing in the wine will subside. Now it is the time to rack the wine. The purpose of the racking process is to remove the lees from the wine. Lees are the spent yeast and grape bits at the bottom of the container. Three times of racking is required to clear all the lees out. A hose can be used to suck the clear wine into a carboy or a wine barrel and clear out the lees in the old carboy or barrel. Then pour the wine back into the original carboy or barrel. Your wine will then be ready for the second racking in two or three months. Three or four months after the second racking, it is the time for the third and also final racking.

After the third racking, leave your wine in a cool and completely dark place. One important step at this point is to top off the barrel. You can do this using a similar wine. Now your wine is ready to be tasted. However, remember the longer a wine ages, the better it tastes.