How to Make Your Own Wine from Common Household Items
Okay, so lets begin…
The Ingredients –
3 cans of 100% frozen grape juice. 144 ounces of juice in total. This will be the best type of juice to use but any other will work just fine.
1/2 a cup of sugar.
A 1 gallon container. A milk jug for example.
Balloons. Just normal balloons, only 1 required unless it breaks.
Water. As we’re keeping this as cheap as possible, just use tap water. NOT distilled.
A pin. You’ll need to make a few holes in the balloon.
Yeast, the most important ingredient. You can use bakers yeast or bread yeast for this, although wine yeast will be best. Bakers yeast however, is much more easily to obtain and certainly cheaper.
In addition to these items I also reccommend the following:
A measuring cup, a rubber band or string and a funnel. You don’t NEED these, but they will help.
Method –
Now, onto the wine making. The first thing you will need to do is pour your juice into the container. This is where the funnel comes in handy. If you don’t have a funnel, just be careful! It can get messy. Now, you should mix in 2 cans of water for each can of juice. When you have added the juice and water, put the cap on the container and shake it up. Shake it up real good.
Now you must add the sugar. Dump the whole lot (1/2 cup) in with the juice. Again, put the cap on and give it an even bigger shake! Don’t let the sugar settle at the bottom.
You now have to prepare and add the yeast. The yeast should come in 3 packets. You will only need to use one packet. For the yeast to work properly, you will need to hydrate it. Follow the directions on the packet in order to do this properly. Once you have hydrated the yeast, add this to your container. Replace the cap and once again, shake it up.
Quickly move on to the next step. This is adding the balloon. Get a pin and put a few holes in the top of a deflated balloon. (approx 5) Once you have done this, take the cap off of the container and place the balloon around the top. Keep the lid for later though. When placing the balloon on the conatiner, be sure to push the top of balloon into the container. It should not be sticking up.. YET. This is where the rubber band/string can be used to make the balloon doesn’t pop off during fermentation.
Alsmost done! Leave the container in a fairly warm place and leave it alone. Within 12 hours visible and audible signs of fermentation should appear. Small bubbles will be heard and the ballooon should have “popped up” from inside of the container. When the balloon inflates, you know the yesat is working. THis whole process could take a couple of weeks.
You’ll know when it is complete as the balloon will deflate again.
The final step is to transfer the WINE, (yes it is now wine, congratulations!) to another container, leaving the gunk at the bottom. This can then be put in the fridge and is ready to drink! There should be a fairly good alchohol content and certainly enough to give you a good buzz from the wine.
