Wine Making
One of my latest hobbies is wine making, home made wine can be very strong and is very cheap to make. I started wine making inspired mainly by my sister as she made wine whilst she was a student (and still does).
Wine making is an age old pastime of for many people, its very popular with students due to the cheap source of alcohol! I hope this page inspires others to make wine also.
Wine can be made from almost anything. To make wine is very simple, first juice is extracted from a fruit or vegetable and sugar is added if required. Yeast is added to the sweet juice which then converts the sugar in the solution to carbon dioxide and alcohol. Once this initial stage of fermentation is complete you have wine which requires time to age and for the stuff suspended in the wine to clear.
What you end up with is a gallon of strong home made wine which, hopefully, tastes nice and gets you very drunk!
The first wine I made was with my sister a few years ago, she did most of the work and the result was a very strong sweet white wine which was consumed very quickly!
Around 2 months ago I decided to make some wine so I got some equipment from my sister and ordered a wine making kit off ebay. The kit contains all the equipment to make my first wine so was a very good place to start, the particular kit I bought was a Cabernet Sauvignon which has already finished fermenting and is now in the clearing stage.
When I last racked the wine (transferring from one jar to another to remove the sediment which forms at the bottom of the jar) it smelt very nice and fruity. I can't wait to try it but unfortunately I have to wait another 4 months before its ready.
My second wine which is currently fermenting is made from parsnip and raisin, the must smelt really nice and fruity before the yeast was added and promises to be a very strong wine due to the high sugar content. The recipe and instructions are available here
Here is a photo of my wines in their demijohns sitting in the bottom of my cupboard:
The wines in demijons from left to right are, parsnip, carrot and parsnip, and raspberry. The bucket is full of fermenting strawberries that are almost ready to go into the demijon.
On the far right you can see the tops of the bottles of the red wine kit which will be ready to drink in 9 months.
As I make different wines the recipes will be added to these pages with instructions and and a review of the wine afterwards.