Looking for winemaking suggestions...

[hornpipe2]

I've got a large collection of empty bottles now, which means it's time to make another batch and hopefully give away the results as small gifts to friends and relatives. I don't have a lot of experience with different ingredients - mostly apfelwein and also concord grape using frozen concentrate. I like the apfelwein a lot but people turned up their noses at it, and I would not give my concord grape results to anyone (lol)...

So I'm wondering, has anyone got some good suggestions of what to make that would
* go over well enough as a gift
* easy to source! - there's not a HBS near me, and I tend to just use grocery store frozen concentrates, but I'd be fine to order yeast online etc

Does niagara grape wine taste OK? Maybe I could do some fruit punch mix but backsweeten later? Maybe something more exotic, like mead?

 

[Rish]

Maybe take a look at this thread from a well-known and respected member:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/welchs-grape-juice-wine.21093/

 

[Srimmey]

What is your budget and desired batch size?

I’ve had great experience with the winexpert kits. You can pick them up off Amazon easily enough.

If you are looking for other kinds of wine, cherry is a great place to start. Using a 50-50 mix of sour and sweet black cherry juice makes a damn fine wine.

 

[Miraculix]

Surprisingly, my best wine ever was store bought passion fruit nectar fermented with sugar till the yeast gave up and then back sweetened with sugar.

 

[hornpipe2]

Maybe take a look at this thread from a well-known and respected member:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/threads/welchs-grape-juice-wine.21093/

Hmm, that's a concord wine... mine turned out really, really sour when I made it. Yooper said to add acid blend, but I think that's a mistake

I'd be willing to do another batch with this recipe though and age it longer, maybe it'll taste better. It's certainly cheap enough

What is your budget and desired batch size?

I’ve had great experience with the winexpert kits. You can pick them up off Amazon easily enough.

If you are looking for other kinds of wine, cherry is a great place to start. Using a 50-50 mix of sour and sweet black cherry juice makes a damn fine wine.

probably 5 gallons of something, maybe two different brews so I could give out two bottles to people. Kits are OK but I feel kinda bad just buying a kit rather than trying something from scratch... Love the cherry idea, that sounds excellent! I think I'll give that a good look.

 

[Maylar]

Where are you? There are grape juice suppliers that can ship you pretty much anything you want.

 

[Closet Fermenter]

Store bought Cranberry juice makes a great wine. You can even carbonate it if you’re set up for it and serve it as a sparkling wine.
Just check the sugar content and add enough to get you to about 2#/gal and use premier classique yeast.

 

[bernardsmith]

A tricky but easy wine to make is Skeeter Pee. This is essentially an alcoholic lemonade made using 3 bottles of supermarket lemon juice (Real Lemon, for example) to make 5 gallons. The tricky part is that almost all reputable store bought lemon juice is made with preservatives that prevent the juice from fermenting. The original version of Skeeter Pee suggests using a yeast slurry but in my opinion, the easiest go around is to simply ferment the sugar (perhaps 2 lbs per gallon if you are looking for an ABV for a wine or 1lb or so per gallon for the equivalent of a cider or heavy beer. You will want to add nutrients (Fermaid O, or even Wyeast's beer nutrient), and then when the SG has hit 1.000 or lower , you then add all the lemon juice. The original recipe for SP calls for a very sweet beverage, but you might aim your version for a semi -sweet drink: perhaps about 4 oz of sugar per gallon (raising the gravity about 10 points). This is a fun drink and a great thirst quencher after yard work in the summer. You can use your preferred yeast. I like D47 for this.