Making Table Wine at Home Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Making Table Wine at Home - Article Example Sometimes, you think that it is always easier to purchase wine than to make it. Think again. If your ancestors made them in their own homes centuries ago, there is no reason why you cannot make it when it is already the twenty-first century. You have the technology to make wine in your own homes without having to stomp on your grapes as ancient winemakers did. My grandmother has been making wines for our families for the past forty years. I recently learned how to do it, and I am happy to say that homemade wine can taste just as good as other high-quality branded wines. I will explain three steps in making wine: preparing all materials, fermenting and racking the wine, and bottling the wine. Let us start with the first step of making wine, which is preparing all materials and ingredients. The first step is to prepare all the materials and ingredients needed. You will need standard and intermediate winemaking pieces of equipment and raw materials. The standard winemaking pieces of equ ipment are carboy, iris jaw type floor corker, wine press, and thermometer (Great Homemade Wine). The intermediate materials are corks, empty glass bottles, oak, brush, clamp, tubing, and siphon (Great Homemade Wine). The raw materials or ingredients you need are grapes, wine yeast, and sugar, as well as sulfite tablets. (Wineintro.com). I recommend fresh grapes instead of grape juice because the former can provide high-quality wine (Cooke 4). I further suggest that you select Cabernet Sauvignon grapes if you have those in your area because it is the â€Å"king among wine grapes† (Warrick 14). Or, you can choose any type of grapes from the species of Vitis vinifera, because they tend to ripen with the right amounts of sugar, acids, and flavor compounds (Warrick 14). For water, spring water is suggested, because it has the right amount of minerals, but no chlorine (Peragine 40). For sugar, you can experiment with any kind of sugars, although you can use invert sugar. For yeast , choose the yeast specifically used for wines, called wine yeast, to produce a better tasting wine (Warrick 14). You also have to sanitize the area and types of equipment. You have to clean your work area and make sure that there is no clutter that will intervene with your winemaking. You also have to wash your equipment. You can use commercial winemaking cleansers that can be bought from many winemaking shops, or you can use bleach (Wineintro.com). You should be able to clean your carboys and other equipment as meticulously as possible (Wineintro.com). Part of the preparation is making sure that the grapes are crushed already. You can rent a crusher from small wineries or shops, or you can buy one. Before the primary fermentation can start, the grapes have to be crushed to produce the juice, pulp and skins, which are also called must (Great Homemade Wine). After preparing your ingredients and cleaning your materials, it is now time to ferment and rack the wine. Your second step is to ferment and rack the wine (Wineintro.com). There are two ways for fermentation that can be used (Great Homemade Wine).