Survival wine making

I was about 9 when I had my first home made wine....by accident

My Papa (just lost him and Gramma just before Mothersday) had some grapes on an arbor in the backyard.

It was summer and I came and looked in the fridge and asked Gramma if I could have some "juice".

Not thinking, she said of course (what grandparents are gonna refuse a healthy choice?).

I got the mason jar out and poured a nice glass.

5 min later I was sitting at the bar watching Gramma cook and then.....
WHAAAAAP!!

I was feeling weird and said "Gramma, I feel funny."

She stopped dead.

Where did you get that "juice".

Out of the mason jar in the fridge.

She smiled. Son, thats your papa's wine. Youll be fine.

A few years later I was at my other grandparents.

My other papa made beer...no kits for him!

We sat on the side of the road outside of Malakoff near Cedar Creek lake. He ran a veg stand forever under the shade of a MASSIVE oak! It was nice even on 100*days.

He would take a couple of bottles. One for at lunch and one for a little later. he let me have some of the second.

I've never had beer like that. Good German black beer but sweet!

I was the only grandkid to help with the crops or the stand and those memories for me are like gold.

Even the smell of tomato fields on a summer morning. awful but a good memory. I spent the time with my papa.

A couple of years later I would loose him when I was 13. Damn good man. I saw more men cry at his funeral than any other.

[edit on 23/7/10 by felonius]

I make mine the down n dirty way. Real simple but has a good taste.

DoomsBerry Wine

2 lbs blueberries
4 cups sugar
1 pack fleishmans yeast.

I use a 1 gallon glass apple cider jug. Fill halfway with warm water and mix in yeast for 20 minutes to dissolve. Add sugar and let dissolve for another 20 minutes. Add blueberries (after mashing them with a potato smasher) and top off with cool water. I still use the cap instead of a balloon. Tighten all the way and back out about a quarter turn to keep pressure, but allow CO2 bleedoff. Shake jar every other day (to swirl everything around) for 6 weeks.
I get 4 clean bottles and caps ready, along with a large funnel and some cheesecloth. Cut off a section of cheesecloth (about the size of a postcard)and roll it up and stuff it into the funnel for a good tight fit. This is how I filter my wine. Takes about half a day for 4 bottles but it's clean. I let them sit for a week and then filter them again. It comes out crystal clean and a nice light purple color, and packs a pretty good wallop.
I've also done the same thing with natural jelly (with no added sugar or artificial sweeteners) and also with cherries (with about 4 or 5 drops of spearmint oil). The only problem I had was running out of bottles

Never realized I wuz surrounded by fellow "wino's"

Funny thing is, except for a reisling, I'm not a wine guy. I'm more beer and bourbon.

Kostritzer and Old Charter for me.

The wine thing is fun. Kid enjoy's helping and she gets to learn some chemistry basics.

Use every teaching opportunity you can nowadays.

Anyone here have kin that ran shine or beer back in the day?

My Papa on my mothers side did some beer. My wife's ran shine.

Shine is a beautiful thing.

The dangerous part is when the feds got into it and people started cutting it to make it go further. Left to its own devices, you cant hardly even force it to go poison.

I had a pint of some North Carolina stuff a few years back. That pint lasted 3 years. I was very selective of who got it and only took a shot on occasion. It was like water...soooo smooth. No burn. Kick you in the head if you did too much though. Using the "bubble method" it was about 100%.

THAT man was an artist of the still!

reply to post by teapot
[mor

I've never tried making wine before, but we have lots of blackberries that grow wild around our property. I'm definitely going to try some making some this summer. Thanks for the recipe.

Originally posted by Mike Stivic
I dont go in for the mead, its a tad to sweet for my tastes.

Sweet, cloying and with a mild aphrodisiac affect and no hangover!

Does anyone have a recipe for natural fruit wines that use natural syrups (such as maple) in place of the sugar or honey?

reply to post by teapot


I think all you need to do is replace the sugar with syrup and check with a hydrometer to make sure the levels are the same.

reply to post by felonius


I know some old folks that "burn off" their wine...
A full shot glass of the result will mess a person right up.
the result makes an almost invisible blue flame.

Originally posted by hillbilly4rent
reply to post by boondock-saint

 

If I remember right a US citizen can make so much for their self., and not for sail sense 1978.
A single person can make 100 gals. per year.
To the op try making some out of blackberry's or Muscadines now your talkin.


[edit on 23-7-2010 by hillbilly4rent]

It is 250 gallons per household of beer and/or wine. So you can make 250 gallons of each per year for personal consumption.

Now, you realise that if you use plain old white table sugar you are adding "off flavors" and well end up getting a phenol issue (especially with beer) If you are using a fresh fruit and pressing it yourself, you generally do not need to add any sugar. You just use the natrual fructose in the fruit. If you need to bring the sugar up to have ample food for the yeast, use fructose not white table sugar. If you use grapes ( or in the south, muscadines) then all you really need is the grapes and water. Yeast is a naturally occuring critter. Most Belgian beers ( reffered to a abbey and trappist beers) use an open air fermentation and just use the yeast cells that are in the air to ferment.

If you wanted to ensure a good consistan result in acohol production, culture the yeast. Heres how ya do that. First thing is, get a high quality strain designed for what you are making, preferably a liquid suspension from White labs. After your first batch, you save the yeast cake that accumulates in your fermenter. Seal that yeast in a container with some of the liquid you just fermented and place it in a cool dry place. Now, you will have the same strain of yeast to use in your next batch. This is what all the commercial breweries and vineyards do to ensure consistant flavor. Yeast has a huge impact on the flavor of a fermented beverage.


The thing with bakers yeast is that it will have a low attenuation (low alcohol producing ability) leaving your wine somewhat short of your goal. It will also leave the wine cloudy. Finally when it goes through autolysis (a horrible yeast death that burst the yeast open when it dies) it releases bitter vitamins (B) into the wine. The dead yeast must be filtered as it is now food for spoilage organisms. Not all yeasts are created equally heh

There are a couple of other things you need to add to wine to make them traditional type wines, however, if you are looking to just produce some beverage to intoxicate you do not really need them. You will however find a much better end result and a much more enjoyable 9and less hangover) if you do not use table sugar and bread yeast. A good way to learn to make a traditional wine and learn the basics is to go to a homebrewing website such as www.austinhomebrew.com... and buy an equipment kit (generally not expensive all things considered) then buy a cheaper wine ingredient kit, also not too pricey considering most of the kits will make 30+ bottles of quality wine that generally turns out better then some $40 a bottle wines I have tried. They all come with detailed instructions on how to prepare and bottle the wine. After you learn all of those skills then you can experiment with any other fruits.

ps...the easist way to achieve an alcoholic beverage...go to a farmers market and purchase some fresh pressed aple cider that has not been processed..ie...no pasturizing etc.... pour into a clean glass jug, place a bung and airlock on it and let it sit in a closet for a week or two...boooom hard cider.

reply to post by SUICIDEHK45


Excellent thread SuicideHK45.

This is the kind of survival stuff everyone should be aware of. Not only that, but if you become good enough making some sort of wine, you could start your own commercial winery. There is lots of room for more commercial wine makers. Here is a good way to get started.

www.youtube.com...

www.youtube.com...

[edit on 24-7-2010 by RussianScientists]

Just finished mashing up strawberries and putting all of the ingredients into the fermenter. So far it smells great. Tomorrow I will add the yeast and in a week I will "rack" it. Hope it tastes as good as it smells.

Just an update, my mead is clearing up nicely and is ready to be bottled. The apple wine is starting to clear up and should be ready to bottle in about 2 weeks. The strawberry wine is just about done fermenting and it smells great, I will be siphoning it off into a gallon glass jug tomorrow.

jailhouse hooch- almost anything and a piece of bread.. sugar, rice, concentrated juice,
any fruit..dont let the air get to it. way back- my buddy had a small stovetop still.
and lordy you couldnt do a tablespoon without your throat closin up.

Since when does one need wine to survive? Seriously, isn't this thread suppose to be about what we can get by with if need be, not what we want. Read about tobacco on this forum also, we can do without that too, right? What about food, warmth, medicine,shelter, etc. I want to know about these things but everytime I visit here this is what I get.

Lots of good advice here, good recipes. Great thread.

Originally posted by Trexter Ziam
Moral, sometimes the best stuff is the easiest to make.

The complications are probably exactly what made the first batch so bad.

I don't even add yeast. There's no point if you let your fruity brew just sit outside a few days with a cloth drawn over it to keep anything larger than wild yeast out. It will start fermenting spontaneously from natural, local yeast. Maybe a variety of yeasts even, instead of just one store-bought strain.

They sell a beer imported from Belgium I think it is, that's brewed using the same spontaneous fermentation technique, and also using raspberries in a 2nd fermentation, and there's nothing like it. It's delicious like a cream slush.

Lindemans is the brand. I just looked them up.

Lambic, or spontaneously fermented beers, are the beers of this region and are among the world’s rarest: they are the only beers fermented via wild, airborne yeast - no yeast is added by the brewers. The unusual, demanding, and unique flavors that come from multiple yeast strains are unmatched in the world of beer.

www.merchantduvin.com...





I didn't even know they made so many flavors... After seeing their website my mouth is watering....



I'd even pay attention to the materials you keep your wine in while you're brewing it. Though I haven't tried all of them, I have an idea of how each material is going to inevitably leave a little of its own "essence" in your drink. So I consider brewing in metal or glass containers, or even stone bowls if you're so privileged, as superior choices to various kinds of plastic. I'd say it wouldn't really make much difference except some people apparently have some damned sensitive taste buds for wine, and I try to be a purist anyway.


Blackberry is delicious, so is plum wine. If anyone has access to a plum tree... there's one you should give a try.

This time of year blackberries are just starting to dry up and die back where I'm at, but I know only a couple of hours up into the mountains from here and the blackberries there are at least a week or two later in their seasons. Raspberries are already gone, as they come just before the blackberries. Black cherries are just starting to ripen on trees now, and I want to try those next.

reply to post by VirginiaRisesYetAgain


To your comments about a fermentation vessel. The thing with plastics are the porosity of the vessel. Plastics are fine, as long as they are food grade plastics. Metal can leave some essence depending on the material type. I would suggest using Glass for wine. if you must use metal, stainless steel is about the only choice to remain neutral and not give off undesirable flavors. I personally use large food grade plastic buckets for a primary fermenter (for beer and wine). Then rack into a glass carboy for the secondary fermentation and clearing process. Occasionally , i will then rack to a french oak barrel to age. This is just my two cents on the matter as each has their own methods.

wine will be a great item for barter in a world gone bad. I would imagine it would be worth its weight in gold. Who wouldnt trade their surplus chickens, eggs, wheat, etc for a nice bottle of Pinot Noir !

from what Ive learned, you can pretty much make a wine from any type of fruit. Ive made a few batches of huckleberry wine using a similiar recipe that the blackberry post used. Only difference, I poured a little bit of brandy into the mix to make it more like a port wine (and much stronger)

Originally posted by crazydaisy
Since when does one need wine to survive? Seriously, isn't this thread suppose to be about what we can get by with if need be, not what we want. Read about tobacco on this forum also, we can do without that too, right? What about food, warmth, medicine,shelter, etc. I want to know about these things but everytime I visit here this is what I get.

wine would be a great item for barter.

Ive noticed a lot of posters miss this key element to survival logic. You need more than just a package of dehydrated food and a shotgun.

a world gone bad will require a new means to barter. cash will be worthless. and in some scenarios so will gold (you cant eat gold).

cash in the future might just be sugar, vegetable oil, wine, and salt.

People with any kind of surplus will be looking to barter for luxuries, even in a post-appocolyptic nightmare.