Wine - Red or White - How to Make 130 Litres

By Michael Russell

Wine is great, made for centuries all over the world; from the days of the ancient Greeks up to the modern day; versions we now can buy in cardboard boxes to very shapely bottles, produced to sell what is inside.

However, making your own wine can be even more rewarding and very pleasurable, if it turns out the way it is supposed to.

The biggest secret to anything produced at home is sterilisation. There is absolutely no point in spending time and money producing something that could turn out tasting like vinegar, so everything must be sterile. Use hot water mixed with a sterilising agent, which can be purchased at any home brew shop.

So you will need a 150 litre drum with an airtight removable lid, those blue ones we see all over the place are ideal and not expensive. Sterilise and place in a nice cool, quiet section of your garage or house or shed and set it in place because once you start it will be to heavy to move.

Put 130 litres of grape juice, red or white, into the drum.

Add one heaped tablespoon of bakers' yeast, put on the lid (but not tightly) or cover with muslin cloth or stockinet.

After 8 or 9 days measure the specific gravity, trying to get .98 or .99 if you can. You can purchase a hydrometer from any home brew shop for this purpose.

When the correct specific gravity has been achieved add one heaped tablespoon of Ssodium metabysulphide (a white powder which will make the mix go white and bubbly as it is killing the yeast).

Close the airtight lid tightly and leave for 4 days, meanwhile acquire 10 x 30 litre water drums and sterilise them. Then get ready 5 x 30 litre containers, sterilised and siphon off the brew or if a tap is installed in your drum even better.

Leave to stand for 2 days, lids on tight at 75 to 79 degrees F. Get the other 5 x 30 litre drums ready.

Use filter pads, rags or cotton to siphon back into the other 5 clean 30 litre drums.

Do this at least 5 more times, until you can see that the wine is clear and by tasting, that the wine is ready.

Now this could be refined even further as long as the formula remains the same. For instance if your 150 litre drum has a tap then make sure it is high enough off the floor for movement of the smaller drums beneath the tap.

You could take it to the next step by gathering together a large collection of empty wine bottle that are not that hard to get, restaurants, hotels, clubs, just ask and you can usually receive because they are generally broken and recycled anyway so you are just adding your little bit to preserving the environment. This works, but I can not stress enough the importance of sterilisation for you to succeed.

If you feel that 130 litres to start off with is a bit daunting then you could scale it down making sure that whatever percentage you do go down to is correct in relation to the formula as a whole.

As the world wide prices for wine tends to climb and climb this is a great alternative and a lot of fun to do.

I wish you well in your endeavour.

Michael RussellYour Independent guide to Wine