Homemade wine recipes are a blessing for both the wine making newbie and the expert vintner. All recipes have the same key elements including the fruit or plant, the sugar and the yeast. I would like you to have a better understanding of the role of these elements and how they come together to produce the perfect bottle of wine.
If you think about it, wine making is chemistry and like any scientific project it sometimes takes a bit of experimentation to obtain successful results. Homemade wine recipes should be looked at as guides. Adjustments may have to be made based on the ingredients used. If anything is off you may have an undrinkable mess on your hands.
At the heart of all home wine recipes is the main flavor ingredient such as grapes, berries and apples or plants like dandelion and clover. Sugar and yeast are vital elements, plus acid, nutrients and water. There are also certain chemicals needed for wine.
Let’s take a look at the fruit, the sugar and the yeast.
One of my favorite blackberry wine recipes calls for 4 lbs. of blackberries. If the berries are exceptionally sweet and flavorful you may need less fruit. If the berries are lackluster you may need to add 1-2 lbs. of additional fruit. Using a larger quantity of fruit will produce a fruitier more flavorful wine and you may decide to modify the recipe even if the fruit is acceptable.
All fruit contains natural sugars and the sugar content is essentially dictated by how long the fruit remains on the vine. The content is expressed in percentages.
Typical supermarket fruit (4-8%) is picked long before it is vine-ripened in order to survive the trip to your grocers without rotting. Frozen fruit (10-13%) has more sugar because it is picked and frozen closer to ripening. Produce picked at a farm or purchased at a farm stand is usually fresh and fully ripened (15-18%) and has the highest sugar content. This is to say that the amount of sugar called for in a recipe may need to be adjusted up or down depending on the starting sugar content of your chosen fruit.
It should be noted that the sugar you add at the beginning of the fermentation process has nothing to do with how sweet the wine will turn out. This sugar is added simply for the wine yeast to turn into alcohol. If wish to have a sweet wine, you will add sugar (along with stabilizers) after the final fermentation.
Yeast is the true work horse of the whole wine making process. Yeast partners with the sugar to begin the fermentation process. Fermentation produces the alcohol. Isn’t that what we’re all here for? The right type of yeast is very important.
Make sure you have yeast that is specifically designed for wine making. No, you cannot use bread yeast. Like sugar, fruit has its own naturally present yeast. Yeast cultivated for wine making comes from the skin, seeds, etc of the spent fruit.
In using a homemade wine recipe you must be careful to consider these points. You will naturally find yourself adjusting ingredients to fit the condition of your fruit and the number of gallons you wish to produce. There are many sources for reliable recipes, but interpreting a recipe and knowing when to make adjustments comes after considerable experience, experimentation and unfortunately, a few dreadful batches of wine.
I’d like to share one of my favorite homemade wine recipes – blackberry. And while you’re there check out the Complete Illustrated Guide to Homemade Wine. This easy to follow book brought my wine making skills to a whole new level. Best of all it contains over 175 delicious recipes for making wine at home.
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