Small Batch Winemaking

My husband and I have recently gotten into small batch beer making with a one gallon set up. I've made wine on a larger scale in five gallon batches before so I'm well acquainted with that process. I'm intrigued to know if you can make wine on a smaller scale. I've seen it referenced once or twice, but I guess I'm looking for some how to instructions - quantities of ingredients and whatnot. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/

All the recipes on his site are tailored for 1 gallon batches (unless otherwise stated). Awesome reference to have. Years worth of wine recipes and other notes. Browse through the site... loads of information in there.

All of my wine recipes (except for the chokecherry wine recipe) are 1 gallon recipes. They are just scaled up for larger batches. If you have a recipe for 5 gallons, and you want to have a 1 gallon batch, just divide by 5 (except for yeast- one package of yeast is good for 1-6 gallons).

Thanks!

I've got some young grape vines and it looks like I'll only have 2-4 lbs of grapes this year. I'd rather make a tiny batch of wine rather than blend with something else since I'm eager to find out what flavor this grape will have.
Has anyone made a tiny batch like this? This will be my first wine.
I have some various sized glass carboys that I can use. Any other thoughts?

jonnojohnson said:

I've got some young grape vines and it looks like I'll only have 2-4 lbs of grapes this year. I'd rather make a tiny batch of wine rather than blend with something else since I'm eager to find out what flavor this grape will have.
Has anyone made a tiny batch like this? This will be my first wine.
I have some various sized glass carboys that I can use. Any other thoughts?

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For a 1/2 gallon of wine, you could use growlers like they have for beer to take out. But I don't think you'd even get 1/2 gallon with 2-4 pounds of grapes.

Thanks Yooper. I've seen various estimates for the quantity of grapes required per batch size of wine. Most seem to come out at around 14-16 lbs/gallon. My grapes turned out kind of small which means I'll get less juice /lb than larger grapes. Using the ratio above looks like about 3 lbs/wine bottle so maybe I can make a single bottle batch! Looks like I need to work on my grape vines for sure

I used 72lbs of malbec grapes and my yield was 5.25 gallons after racking and pressing. I'd say I'm going to throw another .25 gallons out because of sediment. I also estimate I tossed out 2 lbs of moldy grapes as well. So 14lbs of grapes to a gallon (5 bottles), or 3 lbs per bottle is about right.

You might have to baby it when racking off so you don't lose much. Peraonally with that little of product I'd just eat them or make jam