I haven't ventured into making any yet but I've been surfing the forum for a while and have found some recipes I'm going to try. I've been talking to a few people about wine making and 1 person said his gramps made wine and he added raw rice to his batches to raise the abv. Is this true and has someone tried it. As I get into making wine ill be asking a few more ?s. thanks.

Raw rice alone will not increase the S.G. in a basic wine.

Ok thanks.

Several people I work with makes wine and they say they use a yeast packet that you make bread with. A guy my father in law knows makes an awesome strawberry wine but I'm not sure what he uses. How much of a change in taste will regular yeast have.

Bread yeast is used to make the bread nice and fluffy. It will not give you 10-12% alcohol.

Most wines will require sugar and the right wine yeast to reach it's potential.

Good to know thanks. I don't have a home brew store around me and I am unable to buy the proper stuff online for now. I'm wanting to make a small batch just to have some till I can get the stuff I need.

Lalvin D47 has been my choice of late. I like to smell airlocks (that sounds weird) and choose my "yeast of the day" based purely on that. As long as the yeast you choose is style wise in the ballpark of the type of wine you are making then I haven't noticed an appreciable difference in them.

Ok. I'll be using apple juice concentrate to make a gallon for my first try, something simple. My wife likes the hard lemonade and stuff like that. The ones i make for her I'll be carbonating it. I saw the hard ice tea and the coffee vanilla recipes that I will be trying later on.

I saw a recipe a while back for blackberry wine. In the directions he said to split the sugar into 1/3's and put 1/3 in to start then after it stopped bubbling until all sugar was used. Is there any difference from that an putting all in at 1 time.

Yes, I think it has to do with the yeast and the yeast health. I don't do it that way, though. I have a great blackberry wine recipe posted that is probably my favorite wine and I think you'd find it easy to follow.