Reddit reviews The Joy of Home Wine Making

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

The Joy of Home Winemaking

3 lbs. watermelon centers

1 lb blueberries

2 lb sugar or 2.5 lb light honey

3 3/4ths quarts of water

2 t acid blend

1/2 t tannin

1 t yeast nutrient

1 crushed campden tablet

1/2 t pecti enzyme

1 packet champagne yeast.

wash the berries, cube the watermelon. If you want to, get rid of the seeds by putting the melon through a straighnr or feed mill, but it isnt necessary. Put it all in a nylon straining bag and with very clean hands squish the fruit.

Boil the sugar or honey in the water and skim if necessary. Pour hot syrup over the fruit and cover. When cooled, add the yeast nutrient, acid, tannin, and include a campden tablet. Cover and fit with an air lock. 12 hours later, add pectic enzyme.

24 hours later check the potential alcohol and add the yeast.

Cover the must and stir daily for a week or so til the potential alcohol comes down to 3 or 5 percent. Rack the wine into a secondary fermenter. Bung and fit with an air lock. Rack twice in about 6 months til fermented out dry.

If you like use stabilizer, and sweeten it with 2 to 4 ounces of sugar in a syrup. Bottle, and keep it for 6 months at least.

From The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garey, which I recommend buying if you want to get into making wine. It's full of great advice and wonderful recipes.

I'm partial to this one: The Joy of Home Wine Making

It has many simple recipies and is a good book to start with.

My suggestion is The Joy of Home Wine Making

In re campden, one tab is around 1/16 tsp, which is 50ppm/gal must for the wild yeast knock back dose. So for every gallon of fruit stuff, you want one tablet. If using powder, dose accordingly. It takes 24 hours to fully offgas. In my experience, for berries, 20 lbs is around 2.5-3 gallons crushed. For rhubarb, I'd imagine with voids it will fill more. One method is to mix all ingredients to recipe volume (water, sugar, etc), and then dose the full amount (typically 6 or 6.5 gallons). I usually just do the fruit and add things after.

Regardless, if your crushed fruit isn't completely covered by it's own juices, add water to cover when doing campden.

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In re nutrients and yeast. First to note that a combined nutrient or "unlabeled generic wine nutrient" is DAP (Diamonium Phosphate), which is toxic to hydrating yeast, so you never add them at the same time. In re yeast, it's best to follow a yeast rehydration procedure. This has fallen out of favor for dry beer yeast manufacturers, but is still supported by dry wine yeast manufacturers. This typically uses a rehydration nutrient (e.g. GoFerm) which specifically omits DAP and has other minerals. If unavailable, you can rough it with just warm water. Most packets of lalvin yeast have this printed on the packet itself. After the yeast are established, calculate the correct dose of nutrient for your batch, and split it into two additions. One approximately 18-24 hours after yeast pitch, and the next one ~3 days after initial yeast pitch.

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If you just have a bunch of fruit in the fermentation bucket, you will need to punch down. CO2 causes all the fruit matter to rise up, and it will need to be returned under the surface of the liquid so it doesn't get moldy.

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Pectic enzyme is not strictly necessary but it is highly recommended. You will get more juice from plant matter and it will prevent haze. If you wait until the aging stage, it will require more fining agents (Kiesiol or Bentonite or pectic enzyme) to clear it than if you do it at the beginning.

Other recipe tweaks: you'll want to replace the vinegar with either equivalent of tartaric acid or acid blend. I would zest the lemons, and maybe incorporate the juice, but I would not ferment the pith; it will only extract bitter compounds.


Finally for fruit wine resources, I have 2.5 good sources. Jack Keller's website , The Complete Joy of Home Winemaking, and the E. C. Kraus blog, however, a lot of their articles disappeared when they redesigned their website.


For high caliber winemaking technique applicable to fruit and grape wines, Pambianchi can't be beat

This is a good book for someone just starting out making primarily non-grape fruit and vegetable wines. It's pretty high level and doesn't get bogged down in nitty gritty, but gives you a process to make solid wine and encourages experimentation:

https://www.amazon.com/Joy-Home-Wine-Making/dp/0380782278

I'm using the "Joy of Home Winemaking" by Terry Garey. Her website is here, and her book link is here.

She does a lot more of fruit wines as opposed to grape wines, which is what I'd rather do. You can always go and pick up a bottle of grape wine anywhere, but apple-mango...not so much. The process is pretty simple, I think it's a lot easier than making beer, just the aging process is much much longer.

Right now I have a strawberry apple, pineapple-cantaloupe-orange (In honour of Jack Layton) and a spiced mead bulk aging, and 20 L or so of Apfelwein, which I think is what is usually recommended for a first try at wines since it's pretty easy, and tastes delicious after 3 months.

The Joy of Home Winemaking by Terry Garrey.

Link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0380782278/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0

It's the best.

There are tons of books and online resources for how to make your own wine. I started with a book called Home Winemaking by Terry Garey (LOLOL), but there are tones of online resources for winemaking if you google it. A coworker of mine let me borrow the book. The key is getting good blackberries. The grocery store tends to sell lower quality berries, so if you can find a local source, that is best. I happen to live in Seattle, where that shit grows everywhere like a weed.

Edit: Here is a good place to start: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/blackbr2.asp
Feel free to experiment with the ingredients as you see fit. For example, instead of using just sugar, I use a bit of honey in the fermentation process. I find it helps create a smoother flavour.