Waldo,
I was shown this way by my stepson. The "secret" I think is keeping it simple. No additives, just sugar, musc, & yeast. Yes, it's taking a risk, and I had one of four batches get an off taste last year, but was still good - just not great.
Start with 5.5 cups of ripe muscadines, crushed - I use your rolling pin trick, put them in a gallon jug. Add 5.5 cups of sugar, then fill a gallon jug with water towithin a couple of inches from top. AS long as you're at room temp, add yeast. You can use a stopper & ari airlock, but I prefer the old rubber glove secured aroung the neck of the jug. Come back ina month - you can shake it now & then if you want, I haven't noticed any difference between shaken or not. At the end of the month, rack and serve. Voila, muscadine wine, "simple" style
.
The biggest problem is: it never lasts long around here -the four gal I made at once last year allwent on Thanksgiving day, but with no additives, you know it won't last long anyway.
Thefour batches I did last year at one time, I varied the yeast- two with Cotes des Banc, one with Montrachet, one with Fleischmann's Active dry yeast (from bakery section- my preference). One of the Cotes des banc had the off taste but was ok. The others were bursting with muscadine flavor. You can vary the sugar to adjust dryness as you want.
When making larger batches, I use all the chemicals: fining agents, sulfites, etc. for a conventional recipe- in fact, I've use your formula
& it comes out like a very polished wine -but not as much muscadine flavor. I have a 6 gal batch and a 3 gal (2nd run from muscadine from the 6 gal batch) going now, both done the "conventional way."
If you've still got some muscadine in the freezer, try a batch the "simple" way. See how you llike it.
