It is fall again and the grapes are ripe! I tuned last year's crop into grape jelly but this year I wanted to try wine. I have been brewing mead for over a year so wine is an easier process though I found stemming and mashing the grapes tedious. We used the food grade pail I make sauerkraut in and lined it with a sterilized mesh bag, dropped in the stemmed grapes (about 14 pounds) and went to town on them with a potato masher.
I then pulverized a campden tablet with a mortar and pestle and stirred it in. Campden tablets kill any natural yeast or bacteria on the grapes then dissipates after about 24 hours. After the campden tablet did it's job I added a packet of wine yeast and covered the bucket with plastic wrap to keep anything out. After a few day the plastic wrap domed out with the carbon dioxide given off as the yeast happily lived out their existences. About two weeks after that I siphoned the liquid into a clean milk jug (actually distilled water came in it but you get the idea) and stretched a balloon with a pin hole in it over the top.
After that I added a can of frozen grape juice concentrate, a gallon of distilled water and 2 pounds of sugar to the bucket along with the mesh bag of the grape skins and seeds. This in theory should produce another 1-2 gallons of wine by using the tanins in the skins and seeds. It has only been a week into the second batch. I will let you know how it goes...
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