Let's make wine!!

Well were off, and running. Today I started on the first of my plain living experiments. Winemaking. Honestly I didnt really want to start with winemaking. There was another more famous liquor making related experiment that sounded like alot more fun. That however on doing some research is going to take alot more preparation, and studying. Winemaking will get my feet wet in that direction without the threat of blinding myself, or blowing up my house. Making homemade wine is pretty simple. Take fruit, water and yeast....combine, and wait.  Yes it really is that easy...Sort of.  This time of year complicates winemaking. fruit must be bought rather than grown, and its expensive. A 4 pound bag of apples costs almost as much as a bottle of cheap decent wine making it cost prohibitive. In this case I had apples, and pears already in the house. Which simulated the idea that maybe I would have grown them. So apple and pear wine is what were making. Using what you have to get what you want is the name of the game after all. We have a local homebrew store here in town so today I went for a visit. I told the woman in the store my plan, and at first she was pretty positive about it, but as we browsed shelves of equipment, and I kept trying to think of homemade versions of every piece of technology she showed me she got less so. She was very concerned about sanitizing things which is nice, but how many of these folks made wine in sanitary conditions?  Im sure they kept things as clean as possible, but theyre making this stuff in unsealed buckets in their yard. The laboratory conditions the shopkeeper was talking about really felt like it went it went against the spirit of the experiment, and it would have cost a fortune. in the end I purchased wine specific yeast. Olden timers wouldnt have had this, they would have experimented with growing a local yeast, or used store bought bread yeast. The wine yeast however from a cost standpoint was comparable to bread yeast, and it is more hardy surviving longer in an alcoholic environment, and producing stronger, and better wine. I used Lalvin K1-v1116. A yeast designed for fruit wines.......cost 1.50 an envelope. I bought 2.

The only other bit of modern tech I let her talk me into was a couple airlocks. At 2.00 each these were an affordable compromise. Cheating? Maybe a little, but I would like to be able to safely drink this stuff. I feel like Im meeting pretty well in the middle. Keeping the old timey spirit, at the same time insuring I won't need my stomach pumped when I drink it. The only other purchases I made was 2 bottles of Walmart spring water, and a 4 pound bag of sugar.

The recipe was something I cobbled together from a million different websites. Most home winemakers, even ones that make hillbilly junk wine are pretty anal retentive about process. Everyones recipe is different, complicated. For my purposes complicated does not work. I worked out that most folks will use 2 pounds of sugar per gallon give or take so I went with that. Fruit? just cored a shitload of it and dumped it in..... total guess.Went with about half the bottle full. I prepped the yeast according to the package 15 minutes in 2 ounces of warm water and dumped it in. punched the airlocks through the tops and sealed them with tape. The reaction was pretty immediate with the apple, and less violent with the pear, but it seems to be coming along. So now comes the waiting. When the bubbles in the airlock stop well be ready to strain this stuff out, bottle, and age it. Probably about a week or so. Stay tuned.......

While this stuff is brewing Im going to start soap making from scratch........So this weekend its time to make some lye!