Failed home brewer, what are my odds at succeding with fruit wine

[ohchiz]

I tried beer brewing for awhile and made probably 6-8 batches and only came out with one i liked and even then there was plenty of stuff in the store that was a lot better. I liked the experimenting aspect of it but then must of my stuff just sat in the basement and collected dust because it wasnt that good. im not a huge wine drinker, more of a beer guy but ive liked some fruit wines like cranberry and dandelion ive tried in the past but havent been as much of a run of the mill grape wine fan. i guess my grandpa used to make wine when he was younger, a few years back we were cleaning out their basement and found a cache of wine that had probably been down there for decades and it was really good, that was pretty much the only grape wine ive ever tried that i really liked but most other grape wines ive bought have been $5-10/bottle stuff so maybe im just too cheap to buy good stuff. i dont know what kind it was but they had a lot of concord or similar variety growing on their fences so im guessing it was from those.

anyway, ive heard wine making is a little easier than beer since there are less variables and my wife might not yell at me as much for boiling and burning sticky goop all over the stove so ive been thinking of giving it a try. what are my odds of making good quality wine out of the chute, and are most home wines near as a good as stuff in the stores? im mainly interested in fruit wines since ive had more of a taste for those but will probably try some grape too.

also, does it work well to just buy those bulk bags of frozen fruits you see at costco and grocery stores or do you have to use fresh fruit? any good suggestions for a first fruit wine if i do decide to try it?

 

[heatherd]

I think you could give wine a try. Check the Dragon's Blood thread for a good fruit wine recipe that can be made quickly and cheaply. There is plenty there about "how to" and there are forum members to help you out.

 

[NorCal]

I would definitely start with a batch of "Dragon Blood". Very well documented process and difficult to mess up, unless the steps are not followed. The result is a sweet, fruity wine, which is not my cup of tea, but many like it. From there, you can adjust the process to make it your own with other fresh fruit.

.....Heather can type faster than me

 

[avatar]

As long as you maintain good sanitation practices, wine-making should be a breeze for you. I've made home-brewed all-grain beer recipes for a number of years, and switched to wine. Wine-making is a LOT easier, and you don't hog the kitchen for 4-6 hours. But, you need to wait months, instead of weeks to enjoy.

 

[Turock]

We make a lot of fruit wines and the best way to have good success with most fruit is not to dilute with water. That way, the wine tastes exactly like the fruit. Some fruits, like cranberry,blueberry, raspberry, elderberry need SOME water dilution to bring out their flavors and a standard recipe is the best.

Frozen fruit will work fine but when fruit is in season, it is cheaper than bags of fruit in the store. We often get trash fruit or seconds from the local fruit growers and then it is very cheap.

If you freeze your fruit first, then it yields a lot of juice once it's thawed and there's no need for water. Cool weather grapes like Concord and Niagara also do not need water dilution.

The difference in making wine over beer is that you'll need to get used to nutrient regimes with wine fermentation--something you don't need to do with beer.

 

[Bergmann]

First Off let me Welcome you to the forum.
Making wine is fairly simple, and one can make a rather nice wine with no experience, Dragons blood is a good starter because it is fairly inexpensive to make. for a first timer I would recommend cutting the lemon juice in half, that way you may find it less tart if a sweet wine is not to your liking. And believe me the acid in the lemon does translate to tartness when fermented.
If your budget permits, A kit is always a great way to go for the first timer. Enjoy!

 

[Kraffty]

Welcome Ohchiz, there are also a number of fruit based/flavored wine kits that you could start with like the Island Mist or Orchard Breezin kits. There are also cans of Fruit base concentrates. Frozen fruits are perfectly fine to make your wine from too.
Best of Luck, lots of help available here once you start one up.
Mike

 

[bkisel]

Welcome to the forum!

The following is the link to the Dragon Blood recipe... http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f2/dangerdaves-dragon-blood-wine-41825/

All new members are required to read and memorize the entire thread.

 

[ohchiz]

Welcome to the forum!

The following is the link to the Dragon Blood recipe... http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/f2/dangerdaves-dragon-blood-wine-41825/

All new members are required to read and memorize the entire thread.

thanks for the recipe everyone I think ill give that one a try if end up doing this. I guess my biggest question is just conistancy of quality with wine, do most batches come out tasting pretty good? are off flavors or other issues common? do most homemade wines taste similar to commercial stuff or is there a noticeable difference in flavor and body? seems like you don't have to worry as much about balance of hops and different grains and stuff, most of my beers just weren't balanced well or had off flavors and just felt kind of thick so they were drinkable but I just kept finding myself reaching for commercial stuff over the homebrew

 

[DoctorCAD]

Going to be very difficult to answer your question about home wine vs. store bought wine if you are leaning towards non-grape wines. You really can't buy many non-grape wines at the local corner store, all you will find are traditional grape wines.

That said, a middle-of-the-road "traditional" grape wine KIT can easily beat some store-bought wines.

Notice the bold word kit, not a fruit wine or dragon blood/skeeter pee or a Welches juice wine, but a real wine kit made from real wine making grapes. There is nothiong wrong with the other types of wines, many will turn out very good (/[flame-proof suit ON]well, except for Welches/[flame-proof suit OFF]), however you will not be able to compair them to anything else.

Wine kits come with everything you need to make the wine, all you need to do is follow the directions and extend the times out. Don't worry, we'll help you with times when you get ready. Just be aware that wine takes a long time.

 

[BernardSmith]

Hi Ohchiz, and welcome. If you are interested in grape wines I would agree with those suggesting kits as your first wines but in truth, Turock's point is really very important if you are going to be making wines from fruit (including grapes) , then you don't want to add water. Wine ain't beer. Water dilutes flavor. In my opinion, the wine you make should be made from the same concentration of fruit juice that you would drink if you were to drink the juice for pleasure unfermented. If it is too diluted to enjoy as juice it is too diluted to make wine.
What you might think about doing - and this is incredibly inexpensive - is to go to your local supermarket and look for bottles of fruit juice - Anything from apple to papaya. Avoid anything with preservatives (particularly sorbate). You've made beer so you know about specific gravity. Most fruit juices will be around 1.050. You want to add enough sugar (could be honey, could be table sugar) to bring the gravity up to about 1.090.
If you are fermenting fruit juices you want to add pectic enzymes to help break down the pectins (that helps clear the wine ). About an hour or more after adding the pectic enzymes you pitch the yeast - I don't make grape wines and so I assume that all other fruit (and especially honey) lack enough nitrogen and organic compounds for the yeast so I generally add yeast nutrient to avoid stressing the yeast and I generally try to ferment at the coolest temperatures preferred by the wine yeast I am using. Brewers tend to aerate their wort before they pitch their yeast. Wine makers typically aerate throughout the first few days (until the gravity drops to about 1.010 or 1.005 when they rack from the primary to a carboy). This aeration is achieved in part through using a bucket kept loosely covered (I use a towel) and by stirring the wine several times a day - to keep any fruit well-moistened and to incorporate air into the wine.
All that said, I do think that buying a gallon of sweet cider (again preservative free - pasteurized is OK) , for example, adding sugar, pectic enzyme, yeast (71B is a good choice) and nutrient is a great way to get your feet wet (if you don't add sugar you will produce hard cider and hard cider can be enjoyed after a month or two - wine generally takes another few months if not longer)...
Good luck!

 

[SBWs]

Agree with a lot of what has been said, however I'd add pH as being very important when making wine from fruit. You want to get the pH of the must right before starting.

I try and get my must to a pH of 3.5 to 3.7. Some will say that is high, but I find it's usually about right and it's a lot easier to up the acid level later then it is to try and lower it.

Very ripe fruit (what you want) will get the pH close to what you need, under ripe fruit will get you high acid and low pH.

 

[PhilDarby]

Don't give up on brewing and fruit wine is fairly easy to make, originally when I began making ale, my friends mum was a wine drinker as was most of the women we knew, my friend had more money than me and he was entrusted with making beer for the guys, I was entrusted with making wine for the ladies, because, I showed a better aptitude for the task, while my friend made the beers.

Looking back, ive been making wine for 32 years or so, on and off, the benefits of making wine are simply this, in general it preserves itself if its over 10% which beers don't, you don't need special equipment such as beer kegs or special bottles to hold the gas, its shelf life isn't limited which beers are, all the serious beers I ever made had a yeasty taste because I couldn't afford expensive filtration systems, beer has to be drunk within a time frame, on the contrary wine actually improves with age.

Initially these were things I never realised and im so glad I got the short straw of making the wine ;-)

 

[heatherd]

So lots of options for you to make something tasty.

Wine kits have step-by-step instructions and very predictable results, and you'll end up with something better than what you might normally spring for in the store. Mid-range wine kits are in the $50-90 range and yield 30 bottles.

Dragon's Blood is similar; folks have perfected that after about a million gallons.

Cider is another option; I found a really easy recipe online that has few steps and will be ready in about eight weeks.

 

[Dhaynes]

Welcome! Yet another option is a "mist" style wine kit. These are something of a hybrid between a grape wine and a fruit wine. You start by making a traditional wine as the base and once that ferments to dry you add a flavor pack or "fpack" that typically contains fruit flavors and sugar. The result is a wine cocktail style beverage that is very good. These kits are a little less expensive that a low end wine kit. They can be made in about 4 weeks and can be consumed a shortly after bottling. They are pretty much foolproof and quite tasty. These are low alcohol kits that have about the same ABV as beer. A lot of people will add 2-4 lbs of sugar before casting the yeast to increase the final ABV otherwise the wine can taste a little thin. We usually go with 2 lbs. You're looking for the brand names "Island Mist" or Orchard Breezin". Our favorites are the IM White Cranberry Pinot Gris, Exotic Fruit White Zin and the Pomegranate Zin. The OB "Strawberry Sensation" is very nice as well. We have an OB "Peach Perfection" that we are about to start. Had a bottle of it from a local winery that makes the kits and sells it by the bottle. It was very good. If you keep everything clean and sanitized, follow the instructions and protect it from too oxygen exposure you are pretty much guaranteed to make a good wine.


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[Turock]

Consistency is something you get with fruit wines when you use good techniques time after time. Everyone loves our fruit wines, and is mostly what they ask for even tho we make a number of various grape wines. It's very difficult to find commercial fruit wines--and when you do, many of them have flavors added to them. So people really appreciate finding a good fruit wine.

We never have "off" flavors. And some of that comes by using good technique and good nutrient management so that you don't get H2S issues. Our fruit wines taste exactly like the fruit. They're REALLY good. One of the first fruits will be strawberries. Strawberry wine is really nice. Use very good fruit--very sweet and VERY red. There are many varieties of strawberries--and many of them are not the best for wine. Many have high acid and don't get red enough which will give you an orange-colored wine instead of the expected red. We like to go to the Amish Auctions for our strawberries. They grow a variety I've never seen before that they call a "jam berry." It's medium size, VERY sweet, and VERY red. It makes the BEST strawberry wine.

I can walk you thru a fruit ferment that will give you a good result, if you want, when you get around to it. It's best to plan ahead so you have the chemicals you need, and it's more than helpful to also own a PH meter because you should test the juice and adjust BEFORE beginning the ferment so that you get a nicely balanced wine.

It's good to start off with good technique so that you don't have failed ferments and all kinds of problems. Having too many problems just makes you want to give up on a hobby.

 

[winotut]

Wine makers typically aerate throughout the first few days (until the gravity drops to about 1.010 or 1.005 when they rack from the primary to a carboy). This aeration is achieved in part through using a bucket kept loosely covered (I use a towel) and by stirring the wine several times a day

Here's a "senior member" who believes in stirring must for oxygenation of the must for the yeast. Is that correct?

Another senior member just recommended to opposite to me, or at least stated he doesn't stir with the exception of the stirring that occurs to push fruit down...

Hmm, I 'spose ya can't go wrong!

 

[SBWs]

What is important is why you stir. I have a short article Yeast for Beginners on my BLOG that may answer some of your questions.

 

[ceeaton]

Here's a "senior member" who believes in stirring must for oxygenation of the must for the yeast. Is that correct?

Another senior member just recommended to opposite to me, or at least stated he doesn't stir with the exception of the stirring that occurs to push fruit down...

Hmm, I 'spose ya can't go wrong!

There are many different routes to making a good quality wine. I just try and keep my preconceived notions of what I think I should be doing on the table for questioning. I come from a brewing background and hence am a little more cautious with oxygenation and keeping a ferment under airlock. That being said I'm doing a batch in a 20 gallon brute trash can, which is not air tight, and watching and smelling what appears to be one of my best batches fermenting yet.

So just keep an open mind!

 

[winotut]

There are many different routes to making a good quality wine. I just try and keep my preconceived notions of what I think I should be doing on the table for questioning. I come from a brewing background and hence am a little more cautious with oxygenation and keeping a ferment under airlock. That being said I'm doing a batch in a 20 gallon brute trash can, which is not air tight, and watching and smelling what appears to be one of my best batches fermenting yet.

So just keep an open mind!

No doubt! Winemaking is a very new thing to me, and am looking forward to learning a lot here from you guys. One of the more difficult aspects regarding wine making, in my opinion as a noobie, is deciding which avenue to go when there are differing opinions from a wide range of knowledgeable people!

So, yes I will keep an open mind and I do appreciate your experience. Hope your "brute can batch" turns out very enjoyable, I have no doubts it will.

Cheers!