What you'll need

This is all easy to get your hands on, even if you’re too intimidated to go to a homebrew store. There’s also a million homebrew websites that sell everything you need. You can even order a single kit that will have all of this stuff.

3.5 gallon plastic bucket. Like the big kind that paint comes in. Make sure all the paint has been thoroughly cleaned out though, or you might wind up with a more toxic buzz than you had in mind.

3 gallon water cooler bottle. But not the plastic kind. And never use a metal container, as this will screw up the flavor and, as with the unclean paint bucket, make you all brain-damaged.

Airlock. S-shaped plastic or glass tube with a rubber stopper to fit the water bottle. You put a little water into it, and its bend allows gas to bubble out while preventing contaminants (dust, bugs, hair gel) from getting into the wine. You can also use a balloon stretched over the mouth of the bottle. As it inflates, you can just let the gas out every now and then.

Siphon tube. About a yard of narrow plastic tubing to siphon wine into your bottles. If you buy a kit, it’ll probably come with a tap at the end, which will make stopping and starting between bottles easier.

Bottles and corks. Try to find an entire empty case of wine still in the box. That way, you’ll have uniform bottles and a box to store it all in. Just walk around on trash day or recycle day. There’s likely some wine snob or drunkass on your block who buys by the case. Your corks must be new though, and you’ll need a corker to put ‘em in. They make fancy kinds, but one of the $5 plastic jobs will work fine unless you’re a sissy girl or boy what don’t got it in the arms.

Funnel. Plastic, and the bigger the better. Smaller kinds require you to pour more slowly.

Pantyhose. For straining the juice into the fermentation jar. You can also use a clean, plain tea towel.



Home & Hearth

Winemaking: For the Kids

By: Daniel Janoff

Homemade hooch backyard style: keep an eye on your little brother

On the day that I found out, I think I was about 9 years old. Callie, my older sister by about 3 years, burst into my room, ripped the comic book out of my hands, grabbed me by the shirt, and exclaimed, “Dude with, like, grapes you can, like, make wine!”

I think her scheme at the time had been to make wine with raisins
instead of grapes, the logic being that this would somehow take a stage out of the fermentation process and therefore yield booze that much faster. (I think it was Monday, and she had wanted to have the stuff ready to go for a party on Saturday.) I don’t recall now whether her bathtub winery got busted or she simply realized shoplifting a bottle was much quicker and easier. Whatever the case, the wine never got made, and this valley kid never caught his preteen buzz.

And maybe that’s why when I moved into the apartment I live in now and saw the grapevines growing in the backyard, I exclaimed, “Dude,
there’s, like, grapes. I’m gonna make some, like, wine!”

While grownups are welcome to try out the following approach to winemaking, it’s really intended more for the underage set, the kids who want to make the stuff on an allowance-driven budget, need a low-profile method that will avoid detection, and want the vino ASAP. This, little Callie, is for you.

Sweet. Now let’s make some hooch.

Indgredients

8-10 pounds of grapes. You can use any kind of fruit really, but grapes are the best bet for the teen, presenting fewer variables. You can also skip the fruit altogether and just buy a comparable amount of juice, so long as it’s pure, with no sugars or additives mixed in.

6 pounds of sugar. The sugar is turned into alcohol and carbon dioxide by the yeast. The gas is allowed to escape while the alcohol remains. It’s, like, science, but not that lame kind. Normal household granulated sugar is fine.

6 lemons or oranges. The juice will ensure that the acid level is high enough for the fermentation to work properly.

Yeast. Winemaking yeast is cheap, and you only use 3 teaspoons per batch. Specialty yeasts are available for different types of wine, but a general purpose wine yeast is fine. Baking yeast can be used, but its inconsistency can be risky.

Campden tablets. They’ve got something called sodium metabisulphite in them that works as a sterilizer on your fruit through the various stages. They can also be used for sterilizing equipment, but you’re better off using…

Sterilizing powder or liquid. It’s cheap and a little goes a long way. Which is good, because you have to sterilize the shit out of just about everything that touches your wine at each stage. You can also use bleach, but be careful, especially if you’re a moron.

How you make it

First, sterilize everything. Everything that touches your grapes and wine at each stage will have to be sterilized before you use it. Follow the directions on the container of whatever sterilizing product you bought.

Once everything is sterile, put the grapes into a (sterilized) sink
and pour over 12 pints of water that has been boiled and allowed to
cool. Then, drop the grapes into the pantyhose and squeeze the shit out of them, letting the juice fall into the plastic bucket while the pulp remains in the pantyhose.

Once you’ve de-juiced all of your grapes, it’s time to sterilize your juice, to rid it of whatever wild yeasts, molds, or bacteria your fruit might have been carrying. Dissolve 3 campden tablets in a little warm water and mix this into the juice. Cover with some plastic wrap and hide it for 24 hours.

The next day, boil 9 pints of water and remove from the heat. Add the sugar and the juice from the lemons or oranges. Stir well to ensure the sugar is fully dissolved and allow to cool to room temperature.

Once cooled, mix this into the bucket containing the grape juice. Then sprinkle in 3 teaspoons of yeast.

Re-cover the bucket and hide it for five or six days, stirring well
each day. After the first day you should see a foam forming on the top of the mix. This means that the fermentation has begun. This is going to stink for a little while, so you might want to throw on a few extra plug-ins or comparable air-fresheners to throw off the folks.

After the five or six days, use the funnel and pour the juice into the water cooler bottle. Fit the airlock onto the bottle and leave it in a place that has a reasonably constant temperature around 70°F, but not in direct sunlight.

Choose this place thoughtfully kids, because it’s going to need to
stay hidden there over the course of the next few months. Your best bet is the basement, if it doesn’t get too cold down there and doesn’t get too much traffic. Your closet is also a good choice too, especially if it stinks, which will help to mask the heady bouquet of mid-stage fermentation.

Right away, you’ll notice the bubbling gas from the wine escaping
through the airlock. In some cases, the force of the gas is enough to pop out the cork for your airlock. To be safe, I’d secure the cork in place with some duct tape.

After a few months the bubbling will gradually slow and eventually
stop altogether. Which means it’s time to get rid of the sediment
that’s been forming at the bottom of the bottle. Funnel (or siphon for better results) the wine into your bucket, being careful not to disturb the sediment.

Rinse the sediment out of the bottle, re-sterilize the bottle, and
pour the wine back in. Leave it for another couple of weeks to be sure that it has finished fermenting. Because it’s possible for the wine to start fermenting again some time later, avoid this by adding another two dissolved campden tablets to the wine as you transfer it back to the bottle.

After the couple of weeks are up (the pros would probably wait for a whole month, but I know you’re getting antsy), and everything looks stable, you’re ready to bottle the wine. Once the bottles are
sterilized, siphon or funnel the wine into the bottles, all the way up to the middle of the bottle necks. Cork ‘em!

You can now label your bottles with some picture that’d piss off your parents (if only they knew, dude) and then store the bottles away in a cool place. And make sure to store them on their sides, to keep the corks from getting dry.

The wine will be ready for drinking after a couple of weeks and will improve with age. It’s best to give it between three and twelve months to mature. But you and I both know that ain’t gonna happen. So go ahead and drink up, youngster! You’ve earned it.

At age 17, Daniel Janoff got his first paid writing job as a ghost
writer for America’s Most Wanted. After that, he decided he definitely wanted to write for a living. He lives in New York and is a hell of a good listener. This article has been provided through the generosity of the Church of Craft.

See Also

Review: Kids in the Garden
Dyed Fungus: a Tutorial
Seeds of Inspiration