Should I start making wine too?

Greetings all I've been brewing beer and coming up with recipes for a while now and I really really enjoy it but some of my friends say I should give wine a try. I'm a big beer guy so I guess I'm just looking for some thoughts and comments from y'all

I was a winemaker long before starting to make beer, so of course I think wine is very worthwhile!

You can go a couple of different ways- making wine from kits if you like traditional commercial wines, or a country wine from other fruits. I make wine out of just about anything- dandelions, rhubarb, blueberries, chokecherries, crabapples, etc, and even a huge bucket of cranberry sauce once- and it's fun and enjoyable. I don't drink that much wine, but my husband does.

If you like wine, give it a try!

I've wanted to get into wine when I get some more space. I've always wonders how home made wine would compare to the stuff on the shelf? Is it similar to homebrew or more difficult to produce high quality?

I started making wine because I all ready had the Carboys.
I keep making wine because I am not a fan of the Artificially Dried out American wine market.
So, it's easy for me to make wine I like - sweet

my 2 cents
Steve

steveoatley said:

I started making wine because I all ready had the Carboys.
I keep making wine because I am not a fan of the Artificially Dried out American wine market.
So, it's easy for me to make wine I like - sweet

my 2 cents
Steve

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Pray tell, how does one "artifically dry out" a wine?? The yeast just does it's business, and depending on OG and yeast selected, ya get what ya get...you want dry, make it that way...you want sweet, do what ya gotta do with chems and backsweeten, if that's what you're into

Do you like wine? If yes, then yes.

Do you like wine? If no, then no.

I wouldn't brew anything I wouldn't want to drink... for the small amount of wine I consume (2 glasses/year?), I would never brew (do you brew wine?) it.

fuelish said:

Pray tell, how does one "artifically dry out" a wine?? The yeast just does it's business, and depending on OG and yeast selected, ya get what ya get...you want dry, make it that way...you want sweet, do what ya gotta do with chems and backsweeten, if that's what you're into

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Phosphates ( sometimes called Phosphoric acid )

Just like Pepsi uses phosphates to make it taste different than Coke.

The Wine industry was almost intact after probation, they had/have a very strong lobby in DC, there are no 'ingredient' labels on wine.

2 more cents

steveoatley said:

Phosphates ( sometimes called Phosphoric acid )

Just like Pepsi uses phosphates to make it taste different than Coke.

The Wine industry was almost intact after probation, they had/have a very strong lobby in DC, there are no 'ingredient' labels on wine.

2 more cents

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OK, fair enough Not a wine maker, not much of a wine drinker, but I do make and enjoy mead, which is kind of close in most respects, at least compared to beer brewing....I try to keep from using as many added chems as possible, although I do admit to using yeast nutrients due to honey being lacking. Sorry for the tone of my previous post, I just figured dry wines were dry due to the ferment going all the way 'til there's nothing left for the beasts to feed upon...like I alway say, "whatdoIknow???"

ram5ey said:

I've wanted to get into wine when I get some more space. I've always wonders how home made wine would compare to the stuff on the shelf? Is it similar to homebrew or more difficult to produce high quality?

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It depends alot on the skill of the winemaker and the grapes, to make a good grape that rivals commercial wines that are good.

But making kit wines can be rewarding and don't require acid adjustments and things like that. The cheapest kits (about $65) make 30 bottles of wine that make wine like Two Buck Chuck or one of that caliber. A $200 kit (also making 30 bottles) often makes a wine that rivals a $25 bottle or better.

For country wines, it depends on what you like. I like dry wines, and fruits like chokecherry make a very nice dark red dinner wine. Apple wines taste quite a bit like pinot grigio- fruity and light and dry, but not necessarily strongly "apple" at all. I don't make sweet wines, as I can't stand sweet things at all, but I have made them in the past for friends who like them.

I really like good wine so I do spent time and effort to make something wonderful. I do make an occasional cheap kit or a wine that is made out of juice, just to have some on hand for a cheap 'jug wine' type as well.

IMO, wine requires much more chemistry than brewing beer. It also takes MUCH longer before you enjoy your results. I learned that time will fly right by, so I don't worry about the interval between pitching and enjoying.

If you like wine and can be patient, give it a whirl; it's not difficult.

adiochiro3 said:

IMO, wine requires much more chemistry than brewing beer. It also takes MUCH longer before you enjoy your results. I learned that time will fly right by, so I don't worry about the interval between pitching and enjoying.



If you like wine and can be patient, give it a whirl; it's not difficult.

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Appreciate it

Making wine is an art, much like brewing a good beer, start simple to get your "feet wet" then dive into the best practices. I've been making wine that is as good if not better than many commercial wine, I'd be happy to walk you through making a decent wine, you just need to have patience.

steveoatley said:

Phosphates ( sometimes called Phosphoric acid )

Just like Pepsi uses phosphates to make it taste different than Coke.

The Wine industry was almost intact after probation, they had/have a very strong lobby in DC, there are no 'ingredient' labels on wine.

2 more cents

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Coke has phosphates too, I'm not sure which has more though. It does give it that dry or crisp flavor though. It's also used as a preservative of sorts to keep bacteria and mold from growing in the sugar in the soda.

steveoatley said:

Phosphates ( sometimes called Phosphoric acid )

Just like Pepsi uses phosphates to make it taste different than Coke.

The Wine industry was almost intact after probation, they had/have a very strong lobby in DC, there are no 'ingredient' labels on wine.

2 more cents

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This is utterly untrue, it is illegal for commercial wineries to add phosphoric acid to their wines. No one does.

I went the other way - I started out making wine, simply because I had a fruit tree that had gone absolutely mental last summer. I figured if I was going to be up on the ladder every evening after work picking fruit, I may as well be putting it to good use, so I ordered a winemaking starter kit and the rest is history. I now enjoy making both.

I find beer easier and faster than wine. Fair to say, however, that I make beer from kits and wine from fruit, so there's naturally more work involved in making wine. But after making three batches of beer over the past few months, it was quite enjoyable to go back to winemaking again recently. I will say, however, that it did stagger me just how slowly wine ferments compared to beer after taking an SG reading before racking my latest Loquat wine into secondary last week.

I wouldn't say there is any marked difference between the two, other than wine requires the additional step of racking several times before bottling, and at least 4 times the amount of aging time once bottled before becoming drinkable

I don't know much about it, but absolutely support you to do it! I hope the wine you made will appear tartaric acid.( It is said that this means great wine quality)

Twerp129 said:

This is utterly untrue, it is illegal for commercial wineries to add phosphoric acid to their wines. No one does.

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I'm no winemaker, but driven by the polarity of the original statement, I went and tried to do some research.

I believe he is referring to the addition of DAP (Diammonium Phosphate, so definitely not the straight up acid, but it is produced from phosphoric acid) to the must. From what I read though, this is a yeast nutrient that only helps the yeast ferment out to 1.000.

I can't speak to how if any the phosphates change the flavor or the perception thereof, but it appears the only reason to add these is to prevent stalled fermentations and produce a more consistent product.

DAP is simply a nitrogen supplement, and is one of the most benign things one can add to a wine. You would add it to prevent problems in the future from a must low in nitrogen, and if your must had an acceptable level you would certainly not add it. Hardly some secret winery chemical.

Yes, yes, and yes. If you enjoy wines it definitely gives you something else to do.

I'm super easily distracted so I like to have lots of projects going on at once. I just bottled my first non-beer fermented beverage, a strawberry cyser (picked strawberries in the summer, froze them and a friend has a bunch of apple trees on their farm in Michigan so I got 2 gallons of frozen cider for free), threw 5lbs of honey into this with a gallon of water, some campden tablets, waited till the next day, threw in some gold belgian candi sugar I made with some yeast nutrient and mixed it vigourously to degas, tossed a packet of 71B in and 4 months later I have them carbonating (I have the bottles in a containment bunker in heavy 750ml bottles).

It's definitely given me some insight into patience (actually waiting till something is ready). Its been very rewarding and a friend tried a bottle and got very very tanked on it (the texts were hilarious). I now have plans for a wild grape pyment (I only have 1.5 gallons of grape juice and its pretty low gravity so I'm gonna goose it with 4lbs of honey) and some water to bring it over 2 gallons. In a couple months I'll have another *wine like beverage. Gives me something to do in between brewing beer, I can make and drink a couple batches of beer in the time it takes to make and age a wine. In about 3-4 months I'll crack the first conditioned/aged bottles of that cyser right at the start of summer. I can't wait. Definitely try making wine, I'm very very very cheap so I will probably never buy a wine kit I will mooch off whoever is willing to give me fruit/grapes. Making wine doesn't have to be expensive, I went around my town on the bike paths and picked wild grapes completely for free (I assume its free, cops asked us if we were making booze, laughed when we answered, then they rode/drove off). If you like wild-crafting, making wine can be super cool.

Yes, you should make wine. At least twice, that way you have a chance to fix any mistakes you made the 1st time, or make 2 different wines. I started making wine because there are very few commercially produced wines that I like. For my own tastes, the wine I make is far superior to most commercially made wines. Wine experts worldwide would disagree, but I make wine for me, or for those who appreciate it. You can make wine that YOU like, the way YOU like it. That makes all the difference. I'd rather drink my own plum wine that is off-dry with a tart finish than the best Cabernet Sauvignon.
Regards, GF.

I started making wine and mead about 6 months after I started brewing beer, because I was curious how other stuff besides malted barley would ferment. Also, SWMBO is not much of a beer drinker, so making wine that she likes gets her more excited about my brewing hobby. In fact, now I've ruined most commercial grape wines for her, because she prefers the ones I make. I brew beer for me, and wine for us.

On a related note, the kinds of country wines you can make with all kinds of fruit are unlike anything you can buy, which is exciting to me, and feels like a more like a blank slate for recipe design than beer. I enjoy prowling the juice aisle of the grocery store for tasty fermentables. However, now that I make wines, i find that I can appreciate good grape wines more than I used to.

I mainly drink my homebrewed beer, but I do enjoy having wine aging and developing. Also, wine brew days are usually easier because there is no wort to boil. Its mainly just "dump and stir" as I like to call it. And wait. And wait. On the flip side, wine just sits there most of the time, so its easy to just forget about it while you have beer going, and then occasionally fiddle with it as needed.

I started my winemaking adventures out with Skeeter Pee aka Lemon wine because it was cheap to make in case i screwed it up, and am very glad I did. It has step-by-step instructions that really introduced me to many of the subtle differences in the wine-making process from beer, and can be bottled in under two months and is very drinkable on bottling day. Oh, and its delicious.

As a beer brewer, its tough to bottle several gallons of your first wine and have it sit there for a few months aging, wondering if it'll even be drinkable. Hard to refine your process for a second batch of wine if you still dont know how the first turned out. Thus those first few quick batches of SP helped me learn the ropes before I tried more involved, expensive wines. Also, a batch of wine is a really long-term commitment, and I didn't want to use my limited storage space for 6+ months with bottles of rocket fuel.

I should add as a disclaimer that I have never bought a wine kit or made wine from wine grapes. Mine have been Juice wines and pyments, some from whole fruits, and the Skeeter Pee I mentioned, so I never went into this winemaking thing with any intention of duplicating any commercial style, and thus my experience and goals may be different than most.

I think winemaking helped me be a better beer brewer as well, and I would recommend you try it if you have any interest in drinking wine at all.

I'm not a big wine drinker but my family and my wife's friends are. So I figured I would give it a try. I made 10 gallons have to bottle it yet. But my plan is to make about 10 gallons every year just to have around for company and to pass out.

I have a good friend who has been making wine for ever and pretty much out of anything so he helps me thru it.

So far I enjoy making it.

I'd say give it a try why not?