Homemade wine

B

Brigadier

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Not too difficult, and not too shabby.

Would like to try beer, but carbonation might be a step too far!

Not so much a hobby, as a means to reduce the shopping bill :wink:
 
i made pear wine once......tasted disgusting.....but absolutley blew your head off :P :P
 
ive just never heard of apple wine......pear wine yes.....apple no...
 
Made apple wine before , it does not surprisingly depend on the variety of apple to produce a decent wine though, much better to add some blackberries to the mix.
I've made wine out of apples ,pears , gooseberries , blackberries , elderberries , flowers , sugarbeet , parsnips , beetroots and a load more things to boot . Mostly it has all come out drinkable.
At the moment I have a few dozen bottles of something that I either forgot to label or the labels have come off and am slowly working my way through them. They vary from a dry white which I'm fairly sure is rhubarb to what I think is a mixed berry wine that resembles a port :D
Beer making is in my opinion more difficult and I've not dabbled much but have sampled some pretty foul brews from other people. A friend recently gave me some of his homebrewed beer and it wasn't good at all but on leaving he pressed a 4 pint bottle into my hands. This went straight into the garage for a few weeks until I decided to risk it again but in those few weeks it had conditioned itsself in the bottle to become quite pleasant.
I've also tried making sloe gin and last year tried crab apple vodka, all very nice.
 
I am avoiding carbonation - a step too far, for the time being.
My grandad used to make his own beer, but it stunk the flat out.
Currently drinking apple wine, which had lemons squeezed into the mix. A nice, citrus white :D

Oh, and just got a fruit press from Germany, so will be leaving zero apples for the wasps this year :D
 
Latest experiment is orange (juice) wine. With a squeezed lemon in it.
Might end up rank, but nothing ventured..........
 
Keep us informed as to what happens.
I did try orange wine once , from a kit, but can't say it was totally to my taste, perfectly drinkable but nothing to write home about.
 
Update on the orange (juice) wine -
Had to rack twice, as it was like ditch water. Cleared up nicely though, with quite a rich colour.
Not being really fair to it, as it is probably not even a month old. I'll not tip it away, but stick the demi-john somewhere cool and dark, and forget it for a few months. This may round the flavour off a bit.

Best that I can describe it with my unrefined and blunt palate is.........a bit like slightly watered-down whisky, in that it has that has that slight "burn" on the back of the throat. We'll see what a few months does to level it out a bit.
 
I started making wine about 2 years ago when my mate gave me a bottle he'd made and I thought it was as good as anything you can get in the supermarkets in the £5 - £10 range. Instead of buying the kits which tend to be regimented and boring, I get the grape juice and fruit juices from the supermarket, that way you can vary it according to your taste. 4 weeks is all it takes from start to finish and works out about 60p a bottle.
Currently I have 15 litres of dry white wine @ 17%alc ready for bottling and 28 litres of strawberry Ribena fermenting away in a bucket.
Happy days :D *hic
 
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