Hello to all

jakefinley · Sep 14, 2014

My name is jake and i am from NY. i've been wanting to get into making wine for years now but never got the chance. But now is the time, i am going to pick the grapes of the vine today and was wondering if any one could give me some pointers. i will be making red wine and i'm not sure if i should use natural yeast or add my own. Also i have a lot of wine making supplies as the came with the house, like a press, jugs and carboys. the carboys are 5 gal but i don't think i will get 5 gal of wine can i still use them if they're not filled up all the way. Last can anyone point me to a full guide for what i am trying to achieve seems like every guide or video i read has all different step and additives.

Thanks for the help and happy wine making.

sour_grapes · Sep 14, 2014

Well, I'll take a stab at two of your questions.

Yeast: I highly recommend you use a yeast bred for making wine. It really seems silly to me to spend all that work, and then take a chance on what random yeast winds up fermenting your must. You are apt to get off flavors or a stuck fermentation.

Carboys: You can ferment your must in an oversized vessel. However, you cannot store your wine in vessels with significant amounts of air ("headspace") or else it will oxidize. Either use a smaller vessel or add a similar wine to top off the carboy when it comes time to store.

And welcome to WMT!

jakefinley · Sep 14, 2014

thank you for your reply i have a bunch of 1gal and 2 gal glass jugs that i can store in. also for adding yeast do i have to was the grapes before crushing them. or kill the natural yeast another way?

sour_grapes · Sep 14, 2014

Yes, you should incapacitate the native yeasts with some k-meta (potassium metabisulfite). Not sure how much -- can someone chime in?

oregondabbler · Sep 24, 2014

This is probably too late to benefit Jake, but here goes,

Get a small packet of campden tablets. Hopefully, a store nearby sells them. Look for a home brew supply store or perhaps a local farm supply store will carry them for making fruit wines. Ask lots of questions if a knowlegeable person is available at the store. Ask about sanitizing solutions, fermentation locks, specific gravity, pH, total acidity, adjusting sugar content. Look in the collection of gear that was left behind for some of the tools used to do these tests and procedures.

Campden tablets: Use 1 tablet for per gallon of juice or crushed grapes. Crush the tablet and dissolve in a small amount of juice before adding it to your batch. Allow the sulfited juice to sit for 24 hours before adding fresh yeast. The same place that sells campden tablets should also carry yeasts that are made for wine making. Ask for a yeast to ferment your juice based upon the color of the grape (green, yellow or red)

Jake didn't ask, but I'll go a little farther and suggest that he needs to measure specific gravity of the juice before pitching yeast. Also, pH. Total acidity is also nice to measure but specific gravity and pH would be the most important measurements to take first. There are tons of postings on this site that will fill Jake in on what these are and how to do these tests.