How to make wine at home? Step by step instruction about wine making.

For making sweet grape wine, typical wine recipes are used. But the fermentation in homemade wine preparations is briefer.

Traditionally, wine is prepared in a pale brown coloured ceramic jar called cheena bharani or simply bharani. Winemakers make use of different grape varieties for making wine. Some of these varieties are Bangalore Blue, Anab-e-Shahi, Gulabi and Bhokri. Any of the dark varieties will do.

The red colour of the wine is due to a red pigment in the grape skin. Grapes gives the required flavour, sugar makes it sweeter, yeast helps with fermentation and spices gives the much important aroma. The amount of wheat used determines the strength of the wine. We can add egg white to make the wine clear.

It’s important to have absolutely clean pieces of equipment and sanitary environment for the process of wine making. Used bottles should be sterilized before using again.

Ingredients

• Black or Red Grapes – 5kg
• Sugar – 2 1/2 kg
• Water – 2 1/2 litres
• Yeast – 1/2 of Baker`s Yeast or any good wine yeast

Preparation

Step 1: Make sure that the bharani or the container jar used for wine making is clean and sanitized. Earthen pots or Porcelain jars are ideal for making wine.

Step 2: Wash the grapes. Fresh grapes should be used to make good quality wine.

Step 3: Put these grapes in the jar and crush them well so that the fleshy part of the grapes are well seperated from the skin. This helps to extract the juice out of it.

Step 4: Once the grapes are well crushed, keep it closed for some time.

Step 5: Meantime, boil the water in a pan and add the sugar. Once the sugar is completely dissolved, stop boiling and keep it for cooling

Step 6: Add the sugar solution to the crushed grapes

Step 7: Add 1/2 a packet of good quality yeast, preferably wine yeast and stir the mixture well with a sanitized wooden spoon

Step 8: Close the bharani or conainer tightly and keep it for 3 weeks for fermentation.

Step 9: Stir the contents every alternate day and check if the sweetness of the solution has lessened.

Step 10: Once the sweetness is almost gone, sieve the contents using a muslin cloth. Make sure the sediments are not disturbed while straining out the contents.

Step 11: To the sieved solution, add 1/2 kg sugar caramel and let it set for another 2 weeks. Do not open the jar during this period. The sugar caramel solution is added for extra color.

Step 12: After 2 weeks, open the jar and transfer the contents to glass bottles with corks tops or air tight tops. This quantity can give you at least 5 liters of grape wine.