(Part 2) Best wine making equipment according to redditors

A true god would not be caught with plastic or even thin metal cups.
http://www.amazon.com/Wine-Barrel-Solid-Valley-Creations/dp/B004Q2AUTO/ref=sr_1_3?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1312611271&sr=1-3

It's not difficult, but it requires a fruit press or something similar (you could probably do it with a #10 can and a very heavy weight of some sort). All you do is cook an octopus or two in almost boiling water, like 97C, until it is fully cooked and tender (about an hour) and let it cool in the same water. Take the octopus, season as desired, chop into large chunks (or don't, it's not a critical step) then wrap in cheese cloth, put it in the press, and tighten that sucker down (my first reddit pun!). Leave it at least over night to congeal, take it out of the press, cut thin sheets out of it by rolling it while you cut a thin layer with a large, sharp knife (look up daikon sheets to get the idea). Then wrap your salmon with the sheets, roll tight with plastic wrap or a sushi mat, and cut it like sashimi and brush it with some kind of shiny glaze.

For the record, I've never used that method for sushi, but during my time in Italy we made octopus carpaccio like that.

I think it’s a press. Or a juicer. It’s missing a piece.

Old ol timey version of this - https://www.amazon.com/E-C-Kraus-Table-Top-Fruit-Press/dp/B00838WJBO

Fruit press.

For the older bottles you may want to invest in a Bilame Bottle opener because old corks tend to crumble. You should decant carefully to avoid sediment and be sure to cut away all of the foil because bottles that old's foil tends to have lead

Hell, Amazon sells a simple pot still: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01A4EVWYY

Since I actually find the links in the sidebar to be fairly unhelpful, at least for someone as detail oriented as me as a beginner, and I'm still enough of a beginner to remember how hard it was to get started, I'll go ahead and give you a start here.

Equipment needed

• Primary Bucket
  
• Carboy
  
• Airlock (x2 to make your life easier) + rubber stopper(bung) + vodka for sterile agent, could use water instead. I like vodka. Also, you could use balloon here instead of all this.
  
• Hydrometer, so you can measure your starting gravity and estimate the strength of your brew.
  
• Racking Cane
  
• Siphon Hose
  
• Bleach or some other sanitizer
  
• You can get everything up till this point with a homebrew kit, here's one for a 3 gallon batch, plus a few extras that aren't necessary but are nice to have. Like a bottle filler.
  
• Large (can hold several gallons of water) Stockpot
  
• Large metal spoon for stirring
  
• Small bowl for starting your yeast
  
• Small spoon for stirring your yeast
  
  Equipment Wanted If you think you'll get really into this, here's some equipment that I have that I feel makes life a lot easier.
  
  
• Auto Siphon so you don't have to use your mouth to get things started. You don't need a racking cane if you have this.
  
• Fermentation Sampler. Is an easy place to read your hydrometer (don't drop your hydrometer into your carboy by accident, regret!!) and makes it real easy to get a small glass for sampling without having to risk the mess of siphoning into a glass.
  
• Cloth bag to hold primary ingredients to lessen particles in your mead during racking.
  
  Ingredients Needed
  
  
• D-47 Lalvin is a type of Yeast specifically used for brewing. I don't know if I can speak very well to the differences in yeasts, but I like this one because in my limited experience it propagates and dies quickly so you have less time in the brewing stage and more time in the ageing stage which is what makes Mead delicious.
  
• Honey! See amount listed in recipe. I personally like to purchase locally. Some recipes will indicate a specific type of honey. Others that are heavily flavored won't matter as much. I believe I used a clover honey in this, but I don't think you can tell with all the other flavors.
  
• Molasses. Regular in the store molasses works fine.This is acting as my nutrient (to feed the yeast) and additional sweetener because I knew I wanted a very sweet mead. Bonus, I'm pretty sure this is what gave it most of it's color.
  
• Pumpkin mash. You could use Libby's pumpkin mash here, but I wanted to be as "from scratch" as possible so I roasted 4 pie/sweet pumpkins.
  
• 1 bottle cinnamon sticks. This is the size I used.
  
• For the spices - really just put in the spices you feel appropriate for pumpkin pie. I ended up with the ratios I did because that's what smelled nice in the primary bucket. Ha!
  
• Spring water. You know the water you can buy at the store in jugs? That's the stuff. The reason you want to use this instead of tap is there's no fluoride or chlorine to possibly taint the taste of your mead.
  
  To Brew a Mead
  
  

1. Sanitize all of your equipment. First wash everything with soap and water. If this is new equipment, you can probably skip that part and move on to sanitation. To do this, you can use the sanitation packets (if you bought the kit and have them) or you can use bleach. (There are other methods too, but these are the ones I'm familiar with. If you use bleach, it's 1 Tbl/1gallon of water to make a sanitary solution to wash things in. Soak all your equipment in your sanitary solution for 20 minutes. Then rinse. If you used bleach, you will need to rinse a lot. Over and over again till you can't smell any more bleach. In my experience, 4x rinse has worked for my bleach solution.
   
2. Prepare your primary. This is only necessary for a recipe like this one where you have a lot of ingredients that don't go into the Must. In this case, you'll put pumpkin mash directly into the primary (assuming you've already roasted and cooled your pumpkins or are using canned pumpkin mash) or into a cloth bag so you don't have to worry about mush particles getting into your siphon later.... Pour in molasses, orange peels (which you've also washed) and all your spices.
   
3. Prepare your Must. The must is your heated honey-water mixture. You use your large stockpot, put in all your honey (you might want to melt it some by placing the bottles/jugs into a hot water bath in your sink or in a different pot on your stove, this makes it easier to pour and use all the honey), and as much spring water as you can fit in the stockpot on top of the honey without over flowing. (Unless you're making a 1 gallon batch - then make sure you don't use more than 1/2 a gallon- 3/4 gallon.) Note: you don't have to heat the honey for any kind of sanitizing purpose. I heat my honey/water mixture just enough so the honey dissolves nicely in the water. I feel like this makes it easier to mix everything, but you don't have to! There's a whole bunch of hubub about it killing flavor and whatnot. I only feel this is true if you accidentally boil it. DO NOT BOIL your Must!
   
4. Cool your Must to about room temperature. To do this, you can put your stockpot into a cold bath and track the temperature fall, you can add it to your primary bucket and add in chilled spring water till almost your goal volume (not quite), or put it covered in your freezer/fridge till it reaches around 70degrees. Don't let it get below 65degrees though, that's too cold. Whichever way, add the must to your Primary bucket after and bring your volume up to goal by adding spring water.
   
5. Prepare your yeast. Follow the directions on the back of your yeast packet to bring your yeast to life. Typically, this means heating a couple cups of water to 109degrees in that small bowl you sanitized, adding your yeast, stirring vigorously with the small spoon you sanitized, and letting your yeast propagate for 15 minutes.
   
6. Pitch your yeast! While the yeast is propagating in it's small bowl, give your primary a couple stirs to mix everything up. After the time has passed, upend or pitch your water/yeast mixture into your primery bucket.
   
7. Stir vigorously! This is my SO's favorite part. We play crazy music and stir like crazy (using that big metal spoon you sanitized) for 5-7 minutes. This get everything mixed up good and adds the oxygen the yeast needs for fermentation. So the more bubbles the better!
   
8. Take your starting gravity. Either stick your hydrometer straight into your primary bucket or use a sampler. Write it down and use one of the links on the side to figure out your potential alcohol content, or use the chart that came with your hydrometer.
   
9. Put your lid on your primary bucket and add your airlock to the bunghole (hehehe) aka that rubber surrounded hole in the top. Add vodka (or water) to the airlock to create an airtight seal. Place your primary vat into a cool dark place for a week or two.
   
   NOTE If you're making a 1 gallon batch, you can put your batch directly into your jug carboy and shake instead of stir. You can also use a balloon instead of an airlock. I recommend sanitizing a food-grade funnel to put all your ingredients in if that's the case. To make smaller batches - just divide everything in my recipe (except the yeast, always just use 1 packet of that regardless of the batch size) by 6.5x. For example - for a 1 gallon batch you would use 1.5 cups of pumpkin mash instead of 10.5 cups. etc etc etc.
   
   As time goes by
   
   

• Several weeks down the line you'll want to rack your mead. What this does is several things. You move your mead from Primary to Secondary. Secondary should be a glass carboy for long-term storage. This reduces the chance of plastic tainting the taste of your mead and reduces the chance of your mead alcohol slowly degrading your plastic primary. The reason it's nice to start in a plastic primary is for easy mixing and it leaves a lot of head space for your vigorous yeast activity. When you transfer to secondary (glass carboy) you reduce the amount of mead exposed to air, thus reducing the chance of infection. Also, every time you rack it cleans your mead of sediment, making it that much more drinkable.
  
• You'll want to rack several times before you consider bottling.
  
• The longer your mead sits, the better it gets. Unlike beer, plan for the long term.
  
• Keep your mead cool and dark. At one point I had access to cool but not dark, so I put a blanket over my mead.

they make screw top wine bottles these days. They work just fine.

https://www.amazon.com/North-Mountain-Supply-Flat-Bottomed-Screw-Top/dp/B07NDVXG1N

​

Though for a red, perhaps cork is better. My local homebrew store rents them out for $5.00/day.

​

https://www.tastingtable.com/drinks/national/screw-top-wine-vs-cork

It will start to denature at 149F. What I did was add this stuff to the mash tun after mashing for 20 minutes at 144-146F and then did an hour long rest.

Some people use it in the fermenter, some add it while transferring from mash tun to boil kettle and do a 30 minutes stand (provided you stay under 149F). Adding it to the mash was easy enough and I got good results (1.058 —> 1.000).

edit: Here's a tip! Check your local winery or meadery and ask what they do with their bottles from the tasting room. You might be able to grab a few at a time for free! It might vary by state, but in Michigan at least the establishments are unable to re-use bottles they empty in their tasting rooms. So they will end up tossing them in recycling for lack of a better option.

I've always used wine bottles previously, but just recently I've come into a large hoard of baby bellissima bottles which I've really come to love. A 750ml wine bottle is great for when you're sharing with friends, but sometimes I just want a glass or two to myself or share with my fiancee. The 375 bellissima is perfect for two glasses, and the petite bottles are beautiful. They are extremely sturdy, with thick bases, and the clear ones show color very well.

it looks like the ones pictured on amazon don't appear to have the thick sturdy bases like the ones I have. I didn't buy my bottles from amazon, and instead picked them up from my local meadery.

I got 100 for $12 on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B005IQW2A2/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XxaNDbSVSACBB

I've made some slight modifications to this, mostly to make it easier to follow. I've also included steps that should be quite obvious to someone who's done any homebrewing before, but I wish someone had told me when I first started.

I'd link to the original, for the sake of attribution, but the user who posted this deleted their account not long after I wrote everything down.

This will produce a sweet fruit-mead (or melomel). WARNING this will be far more alcoholic than it tastes, and should not be consumed if you've recently taken antibiotics, or suffered gastric distress, as the yeast culture will still be alive, and will happily colonize your intestines if your gut microbiome is too fucked up.

Equipment: Most of this stuff will be a good deal cheaper at your local homebrew store, but I've included amazon links (also to the yeast).

At least 2 (3 is better, for reasons we'll get to) 1-gallon jugs (I don't recommend scaling this up), glass preferred. Add an extra jug for each additional batch. This one includes a drilled stopper and airlock

Drilled stoppers (or carboy bungs) and airlocks, non-drilled rubber stoppers.

An autosiphon and food-safe tubing.

Food-safe sanitizing solution (I recommend StarSan).

An electric kettle with temperature selector is useful, but not needed.

If you want to bottle it rather than just keeping a jug in your fridge:

Empty beer or wine bottles (just save your empties), capping or corking equipment, caps or corks, and a bottling wand.

Ingredients:

2.5 lbs (1130g) honey, clover recommended.

A cup (approximately 250ml) or so of fruit (I recommend blackberries, and I strongly recommend against cherries, other recipes have worked for me, but this yields a very medical flavor with cherries).

1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 yeast (a champagne yeast notable for its hardiness, its ability to out-compete other microorganisms, and its high alcohol tolerance).

Optional: potassium sorbate (to reduce yeast activity when our ferment is done), pectic enzyme (aka pectinase - for aesthetic purposes). Both are also available in bulk.

Process:

Day 1:

Mix sanitizing solution with clean water at specified proportions in one of your jugs, filling the jug most of the way. Stopper it, shake it. Remove stopper, set it down wet-side-up (to keep it sterile), pour the fluid to another jug. There will be foam left behind, this is fine, don't bother to rinse it or anything. At low concentrations this stuff is totally fine to drink, and won't ruin your fermentation or flavor.

Add honey to jug, all of it.

If you have a kettle, and your jug is glass, heat water to around 160F (71 Celsius), pour a volume into your jug roughly equal to the amount of honey present. Fix sterile stopper to jug. Shake until honey and water are thoroughly combined. The heat will make it FAR easier to dissolve the honey. Set aside for an hour or so while it cools. Add clean water 'til mostly full, leaving some room for fruit and headspace.

If you're missing a kettle, or using a plastic jug, this is gonna be a little harder. Fill most of the way with clean water (I recommend using a filter) leaving some room for fruit and headspace. Fix sterile stopper, shake 'til honey and water are thoroughly combined. This will take a while, and you will need to shake VERY vigorously.

At this point, you should have a jug mostly-full of combined honey and water. To this, add fruit (inspecting thoroughly for mold, don't want to add that). Then dump in a single packet of the Lalvin EC-1118 yeast, don't bother rehydrating it first or anything, it'll be fine going straight in. Add pectic enzyme if you have it (this does nothing to the flavor, it just makes the end product less cloudy). Stopper it up, shake it again. This jug now contains your "must" (pre-ferment mead).

Pour some sterilizing fluid in a bowl, put a carboy bung/drilled stopper in the bowl, with an airlock. Ensure full immersion. Let sit for a minute. Replace stopper with your bung/drilled stopper, affix airlock. Fill airlock with clean water, sanitizing fluid, or vodka. Rinse the stopper, fix it to your jug of sanitizing fluid.

Place must-jug in a dark place, I recommend a cabinet or closet.

Days 2-7:

Retrieve jug, give it a little jostle. Nothing so vigorous as to get your mead into the airlock, but enough to upset it. This is to release CO2 buildup, and to keep any part of the fruit from drying out. The foaming from the CO2 release may be very vigorous. Do this over a towel for your first batch. If the foam gets into your airlock, clean your airlock and reaffix it. Perform this jostling procedure at least once per day, more is better.

Day 8:

Final jostling, I recommend doing this in the morning.

Day 9:

let it sit, we want the sediment to settle.

Day 10: Time to get it off the sediment

Shake sterilizing fluid jug. Affix tubing to siphon. Put the siphon in the sterilizing fluid, shake the jug a little just to get the whole siphon wet. Siphon fluid into either a third container or a large bowl. This is all to sterilize both the inside and outside of your siphoning system.

Remove siphon from jug. Give it a couple pumps to empty it of any remaining fluid. Place siphon in your mead jug, leaving the end of the tubing in sterilizing fluid while you do this.

Take the jug that you just siphoned the sterilizing fluid from. Dump what fluid remains in it. Place the end of the tubing in this jug, then siphon the mead into it. Make no attempt to get the last bit of mead into your fresh container, it's mostly dead yeast and decomposing fruit.

Add potassium sorbate if you have it, stopper the jug, place it in your fridge.

Clean the jug you started in. Clean your siphon and tubing.

Day 11:

Let it sit

Day 12 or later: time to transfer again, or bottle it.

If you no longer have a jug full of sterilizing fluid, make one.

Repeat the earlier steps to sterilize the siphoning system, with a bottling wand attached to the end of the tubing if you want to bottle.

Sterilize your bottles or a clean jug, either with fluid or heat.

Siphon mead either into your bottles or jug. Stopper/cap/cork when done.

Put your jug/bottles in the fridge.

The yeast culture is still alive, and will continue to ferment. The fridge, and optional potassium sorbate, will merely slow this down. I recommend drinking any bottles within two months, to avoid a risk of bursting bottles. The mead should already be tasty at this point, but usually tastes much better after a couple more weeks.

EDIT: Fixed the formatting up a bit.

I don't see why you would need 2 coolers. Also those cylindrical coolers are more expensive than the rectangular ones by quite a bit. The stir plate is overkill even though it's "free".

Make your own mash tun! This is all stainless unlike the one you linked. Brass sucks.

52 quart cooler $39

Stainless spigot with bulkhead and bushing $29

6" stainless screen $10

1/2" stainless barb adapter $7

And some 1/2" foodsafe silicone tubing, maybe 3 feet

Assembly is super easy, just remove the plastic spigot and put on the stainless one.

https://www.amazon.com/Distiller-Moonshine-Alcohol-Stainless-Thumper/dp/B00XZ381F0

You can order ultra ferm from White Labs, or amyloglucosidase/gluco-amylase online or from Amazon, but that won't solve your problem for tomorrow :(

This is what I used. The first barrel they sent me didn't seal so they sent me another free of charge and that worked great.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B009K5DSJG

Here you go!

An entire Amazon search of them!

Hahah. I did recently order one of these but not sure it will help.

Cut the apples up and use something like electric cheese grater and then a press

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J5AMV98/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

> Essential oil stills

Will this work?

https://www.amazon.com/Distiller-Moonshine-Alcohol-Stainless-Thumper/dp/B00XZ381F0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1494693460&sr=8-1&keywords=essential+oil+still

this should work then, right?

http://www.amazon.com/Dickson-Homebrew-Bazooka-Kettle-Screen/dp/B00RI8R24O/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1427747921&sr=8-3&keywords=kettle+screen****

https://www.amazon.com/North-Mountain-Supply-Bordeaux-Flat-Bottomed/dp/B07NDYN3JF/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?adgrpid=61587280768&gclid=CjwKCAjwsIbpBRBNEiwAZF8-zxbTVQdPAQI0HKOqCGTfBXDLxdhdmsD3eY75XpG0urQcdEmbFEMRJhoCffUQAvD_BwE&hvadid=274687827300&hvdev=m&hvlocphy=9005871&hvnetw=g&hvpos=1t1&hvqmt=e&hvrand=3094460036716751752&hvtargid=kwd-314510425886&hydadcr=14888_10218910&keywords=750ml+glass+bottle&qid=1562538958&s=gateway&sr=8-3

My friend uses these, he inspired me to make my first mead which I got fermenting now. I plan on bottling into old scotch and bourbon bottles myself for now though.

I got them off Amazon. It’s about the only place where I can find supplies where I am.
Here’s a link.

Hi there!

Thank you soooo much for the tip. She is just getting into tinctures, glycerin extractions etc. The hydraulic tincture press is out of my price range, but would this be the manual version of that?

https://www.amazon.com/Fruit-Press-Italian-Liter-Stainless/dp/B00K6OSUDO/ref=sr_1_27?s=kitchen&ie=UTF8&qid=1480872077&sr=1-27-spons&keywords=tincture+press&psc=1&smid=A3VDBPE82S43CG

Thank you! I got my stuff of Amazon. It's pretty basic but $15 for the carboy and the airlock and yeast and nutrients, I thought it was a steal!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K5Z78SC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_rgE1Db6491NPK

Do you need an airlock for the secondary? My impression is primary w/ airlock then you essentially transfer to smaller bottles and this is "racking?" Please correct me if I'm wrong but I'm trying to figure out what I need.

Right now I'm looking at this starter kit from Amazon + $12 for Starsan of Amazon

Is there any majorly wrong doing this for starting out?

I just ordered some of these stoppers, they should get here today or tomorrow.

Tasting Corks-25 Count https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B5DVMAI/ref=cm_sw_r_awd_paSVub1YGEVPZ

I'll be using them this weekend. I'll report back my experience. I've never used them so hopefully they work as well as the vacuum stoppers.

Edit: added link.

These should come in handy precisely for incidents like these.

Buy a super cheap bottle of wine, drink or dump it. Fill it with booze, put the cork back in, and then use this to seal it. If you use a dark bottle they have no way of knowing without opening your wine, which they won't do.

Try these

Amazon

I want to get into wine making / brewing. At the moment I'm thinking about getting this but other than that I don't really know what to do.

> 375 ml bottles

http://www.amazon.com/375-Clear-Bellissima-Bottles-case/dp/B0064OG1RW/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1451098516&sr=8-2&keywords=375+ml+bottles

thanks!

I use a Vinbrite gravity based filter, essentially pulls the mead into a filter body with a filter pad in there, usually takes a couple of hours for a 1 gal batch to filter since it's pretty slow but it does the job really well.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Vinbrite-Mk3-Wine-Filter-Kit/dp/B004NXSPLG/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=vinbrite+filter&qid=1574555889&sr=8-2

This is the one I use.. It's kinda spendy to start up, $50, but then the pads are about $7-$10 a pack and I can run 6 gallons (biggest batches I make) with no noticeable slowing and no pump needed. But, I DO make sure I'm pretty clear before I filter it.

Yes you can lol


https://www.amazon.com/Suteck-Moonshine-Spirits-Distiller-Stainless/dp/B01A4EVWYY/ref=mp_s_a_1_3?keywords=liquor+still&qid=1570686802&sr=8-3