Tutorials - How to make wine

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Well this is the result of about 20 mins boredom, hopefully pictures should come soon :)

Any way, this will teach you how to about 3 gallons of decent tasting wine for roughly £5. Great eh? =D

So, let’s begin with what you will be needing;
 
- A Robinsons fruit squash bottle, you know the ones, the HUGE bottles, check out image if you don’t heh.

- About 2 or 3 litres of Apple Juice. This needs to be pure apple juice, you can buy it in cartons or squeeze your own. Feel free to experiment here, orange, mango, pear, the list goes on :)

- A packet of yeast. I just used the bread maker stuff, you can buy it in most supermarkets. Just look out for the “Ideal for hand baking bit”, if it doesn’t have that, don’t buy it.

- About 500g Sugar. Anything from 500g – 1kg is fine here

- A thin tube about 2 – 3 metres long

- Something to use a BIG funnel

Ok, time to start doing stuff!

First put the kettle on. You need to sterilise the inside of that big ol’ Robinsons bottle with boiling water. Just go a tad careful here as if you leave the boiling water in one place for to long, it melts a hole :)
Ok, next after the plastic has cooled a bit pour in all the apple juice.
Now, onto harder stuff.
Get the sugar and put it into a saucepan. Pour in just enough water so it goes to a sort of paste. Now crank up some heat!. You want to heat this stuff until it goes to syrup. This is massively hard and will require constant attention for about 20 mins or so. Keep stirring CONSTANTLY and if it starts to boil over quickly turn down the heat, stir rapidly until it calms down then turn the heat back up.
This is the hardest part by far.
Right, once you have your syrup, stick it somewhere cold (NOT the fridge, that’s to cold!). Leave it to cool for about 15 mins or so. After that has done, pour it in with the apple juice and stir round until it’s all nice and mixed.

Now take a coffee mug and fill it about half full with the mixture. Then fill it to the top with WARM water, not hot, WARM. Now take a tablespoon of your yeast, or the whole packet if you’re feeling lazy, it won’t make to much difference. And pour it into that cup of stuff. Pat it a bit with a spoon till it’s all wet.
Now cover it with cling-film and leave for about 15 mins.
Ok, once that’s done pour it the entire contents of the mug into the main bottle, with the apple juice and syrup.

Finally fill the whole thing up to about 2 inches under the top with water. Warm or cold, doesn’t matter, just NOT HOT!
Grab some more cling-film and stick it over the top of the bottle, Poke 5 or so holes in it with a needle and wrap an elastic band around it VERY tightly. It is extremely important that the band is very tight.
Now stick it somewhere it wont be disturbed. Leave it for about 4-6 weeks, id recommend 5 :P

*five weeks later*

 Welcome back! Ok, now grab your bottle taking great care not to disturb all the crap that has formed on the bottom and probably the top to.Get a load of little bottles or another big one and stick it on the floor.
Time to get that thing you could use as a funnel out, stick it in the top of the bottle.
Now get about 5 tea towels and fold each of them into quarters. Stick them ALL so they are blocking the mouth of the funnel. In other words, arrange it so the liquid will have to go through all the towels.
Congratulations, you’ve just made yourself a filter heh.

Stick the thin tube about half way down the main bottle about ½ inch – 1 inch away from the top AND crap on the bottom.
Hold the other one in your hand and make sure it is lower that the top bit. Now you have to suck the end in your hand until the liquid starts running, it wont hurt you if you get some in your mouth, but it wont taste great =/

Any way, filter all the brew off and do the whole elastic band + cling-film thing again and leave for another week or 2.

Filter again.

Congratulations, you’ve just made wine! If you liked this tutorial then please visit phrost.co.uk for more :)