Okay - this is an article for MAtt-W and Schwuk. Its a re-post of a "real time" blog I did - covering producing fruit wines. Its blackcurrant but I can offer you recipes on anything you like within reason (or sometimes without) 
I hope its useful - its very long so I've split it into chunks
Day 1 - 17/07/06
A workmate gave me a large bucket of blackcurrants today - heres what I got
They are fantastically ripe and plump - great for wine, but they won't last too long, so first job tonight will be to sort them out and get them going
In wine making terms the "must" is the mushed up grapes or whatever we are going to make wine out of. Its the first stage in our process.
To prepare the must, I will need a couple of large buckets. Everything I use is either food grade white plastic of glass. Don't be tempted to use dustbins etc. - the colour and other nasties can leach out and spoil the wine.
I weighed the bucket of blackcurrants and found I have about seven pounds in weight. I need about 3lbs of fruit for each gallon of wine so i'll make two gallons (12 bottles). I'll need for the first part a brewing container at least twice that volume. I have some 5 gallon beer brewing containers, so I'll use one of those.
First thing is to sterilise everything I use - one bit of nasty will ruin the whole batch. There are proprietary sterilisers, or you can use baby bottle sterilising fluid. I use a cup of plain unscented bleach in 5 gallons of water. I'll leave that in the brewing container for half an hour and wash it out well (twice) before using it
Next stage is to pick over the black currants and remove any bad ones, stalks, leaves etc. - I ended up with a bit over 6lbs of fruit so I weigh out 6 lbs and eat the rest. They should look like this
I put all those berries into a large, sterilised fine mesh straining bag that looked like this
We tie up the top of the bag with plain white cooking string
Now if we were dealing with grapes, that would be our main ingredients sorted. But we aren't. Grapes are high in tannin (that gives the wine bite), various natural products that yeast lives on and sugar. Grapes are also high in acid.
For each fruit you need to adjust the recipe for whats needed. In this case, we will add 6lbs of sugar. Blackcurrants are high in tannin so none is neded (if it was we could add grape tannin from a home brew shop or a cup of strong tea or a couple of oak leaves). Blackcurrants are also high in acid (which the mix needs to be for the yeast to work). If we needed to increase acidity, we could add brewers acid blend or orange juice. We do need to add some nutrients for the yeast to live on - thats a matter for brewers yeast nutrient or chopped apple.
Now we crush up the berries using our hands or a sterilised potato masher (inside the bag).
Next we add 6 pints of boiling water and make sure the sugar all dissolves
Now another 10 pints of cold water to bring the temperature down
Finally we are going to kill off any wild yeast present (which can ferment oddly and leave a funny taste). To do this we will add a crushed Campden tablet (available from brew shops). We'll then leave it for 24 hours. You can skip this stage if you want - it just minimises the risk of a bad brew.
More after 24 hours
I hope its useful - its very long so I've split it into chunks
Day 1 - 17/07/06
A workmate gave me a large bucket of blackcurrants today - heres what I got
They are fantastically ripe and plump - great for wine, but they won't last too long, so first job tonight will be to sort them out and get them going
In wine making terms the "must" is the mushed up grapes or whatever we are going to make wine out of. Its the first stage in our process.
To prepare the must, I will need a couple of large buckets. Everything I use is either food grade white plastic of glass. Don't be tempted to use dustbins etc. - the colour and other nasties can leach out and spoil the wine.
I weighed the bucket of blackcurrants and found I have about seven pounds in weight. I need about 3lbs of fruit for each gallon of wine so i'll make two gallons (12 bottles). I'll need for the first part a brewing container at least twice that volume. I have some 5 gallon beer brewing containers, so I'll use one of those.
First thing is to sterilise everything I use - one bit of nasty will ruin the whole batch. There are proprietary sterilisers, or you can use baby bottle sterilising fluid. I use a cup of plain unscented bleach in 5 gallons of water. I'll leave that in the brewing container for half an hour and wash it out well (twice) before using it
Next stage is to pick over the black currants and remove any bad ones, stalks, leaves etc. - I ended up with a bit over 6lbs of fruit so I weigh out 6 lbs and eat the rest. They should look like this
I put all those berries into a large, sterilised fine mesh straining bag that looked like this
We tie up the top of the bag with plain white cooking string
Now if we were dealing with grapes, that would be our main ingredients sorted. But we aren't. Grapes are high in tannin (that gives the wine bite), various natural products that yeast lives on and sugar. Grapes are also high in acid.
For each fruit you need to adjust the recipe for whats needed. In this case, we will add 6lbs of sugar. Blackcurrants are high in tannin so none is neded (if it was we could add grape tannin from a home brew shop or a cup of strong tea or a couple of oak leaves). Blackcurrants are also high in acid (which the mix needs to be for the yeast to work). If we needed to increase acidity, we could add brewers acid blend or orange juice. We do need to add some nutrients for the yeast to live on - thats a matter for brewers yeast nutrient or chopped apple.
Now we crush up the berries using our hands or a sterilised potato masher (inside the bag).
Next we add 6 pints of boiling water and make sure the sugar all dissolves
Now another 10 pints of cold water to bring the temperature down
Finally we are going to kill off any wild yeast present (which can ferment oddly and leave a funny taste). To do this we will add a crushed Campden tablet (available from brew shops). We'll then leave it for 24 hours. You can skip this stage if you want - it just minimises the risk of a bad brew.
More after 24 hours
