Wine Making is Northern Brewer has everything to make life easier for its own winemaker. We are often asked to create complete home wineries that allow the novice or newbie to start with everything they need to produce high quality wine at home. If you make a lot of wine, you can rent a fruit press from a liquor store.
If you want to make a sweet wine, add the desired amount of sugar to taste just before bottling (drinking). For red wine, let the juice ferment for three to five days, stirring the pulp thoroughly twice a day. This fermentation process continues until all the sugar has been converted to alcohol, resulting in a dry wine.
If sweet wine is to be produced, the winemakers stop the process to prevent the conversion of the whole sugar. Usually water is added, fermentation is completed and the low-alcohol wine is drained. Dried pomace (residual crushed mass after extraction of must from grapes), obtained as a result of white or red fermentation, can be used to obtain distillation material for the production of wine spirits.
After fermentation is complete, most of the red wines are transferred to barrels to complete their maturation. Winemakers usually check the aging in red wine barrels at regular intervals and refill them as some of the wine evaporates during aging. Sometimes it is necessary to transfer wine from one barrel to another or from a barrel to a stainless steel container.
This wine hand uses nitrogen to move the wine without exposing it to large amounts of oxygen. Here, the wine is transferred from one barrel to another, deliberately exposing it to oxygen to help the maturation process. Some wines do not contain oak at all, but are kept in stainless steel containers to maintain their fresh fruit characteristics.
When fermentation has completely stopped, the wine should be clear and ready to be bottled. After about nine months, fermentation should stop, bubbles should stop and the wine should be clear.
Now you are ready to add yeast-the miracle that makes wine work. Then squeeze the wort and continue to ferment, just like the winemaker is making white wine. This is the beginning of the process of turning grapes into juice and then into wine.
To make some wines, the grapes are passed through a crusher and then poured into open fermentation vats. The difference is that these grapes, along with the peel, go directly to the vat, where the peel begins to ferment.
The sweetness, taste and acidity of the wine is determined by the moment the grapes are harvested in the vineyard. Depending on the grape variety, region and type of wine the grower wants to produce, the exact stages of the harvesting process depend on time, technique and technology. Here is a photo guide to every step of wine production, from harvesting to bottling.
Harvest Fresh and fully ripe wine grapes are preferred as raw materials for winemaking. In traditional and small-scale winemaking, harvested grapes are sometimes crushed by barefoot stepping on them or using small, inexpensive oil mills. Grinding In modern mechanized wine production, grapes are usually ground and stalked at the same time using a crusher-cleaner, usually consisting of a perforated cylinder with blades that rotate between 600 and 1200 rpm.
For red and rosé wines, the crushed grapes (top right), along with the skins, are sent directly to the fermentation vats. Juice separation When processing the juice of white grapes or white wine, the juice is usually separated from the skins and seeds immediately after grinding. This minimizes contact between the grape juice and the skin (as in the production of Blanc de noirs sparkling wine, which comes from the red Pinot Noir grape).
For red vinification, grape stems are usually removed prior to fermentation, as they have a relatively high tannin content; Besides tannin, they can also impart a vegetable aroma to wine (by extracting 3-isobutyl-2-methoxypyrazine, which has a scent reminiscent of green pepper). In other cases, the winemaker may retain some of the sweet grape juice and add it to the wine after fermentation is complete, a method known in Germany as sussreserve. Filtration is often used to keep the wine bright and clear and to eliminate any risk of microbial degradation.
The idea is to add oxygen to wine to help yeast grow. In other stages of winemaking, care needs to be taken to protect the wine from oxygen, but it is necessary at this stage. The wine can be bottled immediately, or the winemaker can mature further.
One disadvantage of this process is that the wine must be produced from a 60 gallon batch. If you are growing and / or processing raw fruit into a raw liquid from which wine is made, additional equipment will be required. The equipment needed to make wine depends a lot on the amount that needs to be processed over a given period of time.
You can start from scratch and make a 6 gallon batch of wine (which makes about 30 bottles) from concentrate or fresh juice. Here is a recipe for making wine that requires frozen juice concentrate and another recipe that turns pesky dandelions into a delicious drink. Below are some select fruit recipes to liven up both dry and sweet wines.
In order to obtain consistent results when producing high-quality dry wines, a hydrometer should be used to measure the critical sugar requirements; sweet wines produce much more sugar than the critical amount.
For vinification of fruit or floral wines, there is less control over the acidity level. The optimum acidity for your wine is around 4.5-5.5 pH, so some fruits may require adding citric acid in the form of lemons (up to three for low acid fruits) or tartaric acid from raisins. Since citric acid is partially consumed during fermentation, tartaric acid will be a beneficial addition for fruits with very low acidity; it is also a good yeast nutrient.
In the production of white wine, it can be added before fermentation and immediately after the end of alcoholic fermentation. Used together with metabisulphites, it really stabilizes wines effectively and is indispensable when you want to sweeten your wine by adding sugar again before bottling, otherwise this sugar will ferment after packaging. Metabisulphites are used in winemaking for the disinfection of fruits and wine must, as well as equipment. Gelatin is most commonly found in cooking, but is also used as a clarifier in wine and beer production.