First time making beer / wine. Hope it works.

[Banjo picker]

Lookin good.   banjo

[21incher]

While waiting for the beer to age my carboy was empty. So yesterday I picked about 50 pounds of Concord, Niagara, & Red grapes from vines I had planted 4 years ago.


 
I had no plans for them so I headed off to the brew store and picked up the chemicals and test kits to make wine. Ran all the grapes thru my wife's juicer and placed everything in a fermenter with some SO2 to kill the wild yeast.


 
I now have 6 gallons of must that I will adjust the sugar, acid, and PH tomorrow and start fermenting with wine yeast.

[LeeB]

Is that straight grape juice? I would have thought it would make more than that. I've made plenty of wine, but never any grape wine, always fruit wines.

[21incher]

Is that straight grape juice? I would have thought it would make more than that. I've made plenty of wine, but never any grape wine, always fruit wines.

It is the juice, pulp, chopped skins, and seeds from everything in the wheelbarrow. I was hoping for more to wind up with a 5 gallon batch, but after pressing there will most likely only be 4 gallons. I am starting to realize that making wine is a lot tougher then making beer. Next fall I will try using my elderberries for fruit wine. I also picked up another carboy and some yeast to start a batch of hard apple cider in a couple of weeks.

[LeeB]

By the time you add sugar it will likely be 5gal or more. If not top up with a little water. You might want to use a fruit bag next time so you have less pulp to settle out later when you start racking it off. You will lose some volume every time you rack it off. Someties I top it back up wtih a little water or maybe some juice, or some already finished wine. It will be better if you can stay out of it and rack several times, letting it age for a year or so. Some of mine makes it that long, some doesn't.  ;D

[21incher]

LeeB I added the sugar and a bottle of red wine and it is now at 7 gallons so that should be fine. I did get a giant nylon bag for the pulp

 
It was tied up and put inside the bucket while killing the natural yeast in the previous photo. I plan on putting the bag in a pot with a hole in the bottom and placing a piece of wood on top of it and put it in my 20 ton shop press to squeeze the juice out after a couple of days fermenting. Never make it a year if it is good.

[LeeB]

Let us know how the cider goes when you start on it. I've always wanted to try some.

[21incher]

LeeB a quick question for you. Today the brix went to 0.1 from the 25.0 that I started with. I pressed the skins and transferred it to a carboy. Tasted a little and it is extremely dry, tart, and I think it has enough alcohol to run my car on. Does the tartness go away as it ages and gets racked off a couple of times? My wife calls it pucker up wine. I used a test kit to adjust the acid before fermenting and it seems like the tartness must have come from the skins.
Thanks Ed

[LeeB]

I've never made grape wine. Can't help you on this one. If you like a tasting wine, you can put some non sugar sweetener in at he end. Or you can add sugar until it no longer restarts the ferment, but that is a tricky game. Think busted bottles. I've got some blueberry that restarted after setting for over a year. Now I have sparkling blueberry, and several busted bottles.

[21incher]

Well the pale ale is ready. Been tasting one each day for the last week with each one getting better tasting and more carbonated. Today it was just perfect and one of the best flavored ales I have ever had.


 
There was zero yeast in the bottom of the bottle and it has a little kick. Placed it all in the fridge to get it ready for tasters. @Banjo picker thanks for the temp control info. Got my control box built and hooked up to a chest freezer to ferment a Lager batch that I started yesterday and it is so nice to know it is at the proper fermentation temp as it uses a bottom fermenting yeast that requires cooler temps. One thing I am finding out is you can never have enough carboys as next week I will start the cider and the 5 gallons of wine are aging. I think I am hooked:)

[Banjo picker]

Looks like you got a nice head on those two.  I will have a batch ready to try by the week end, if I rush it a bit.....its hard to know just exacty when a brew is going to be at the absolute best.  A couple of weeks difference in the aging can make for a very different beer.  In rummaging around for bottles, I found two cases that were bottled in 1997....they were vastly over carbonated when they were fresh and got put aside and forgotten... when I put the batch up the other day, I opened all of them and put them in a carboy added some more sugar and put in a pound of dried apples ....poured all that in on top of the left over yeast in the bottom of the carboy I had just transferred the fresh brew into the secondary fermenter....I then let it set for two weeks and bottled it as well.....That may be an experience.....Another brewer told me not to waste my time, but I just had to see what it would do...I'll let you know...Banjo