Just finished bottling up a batch yesterday and it came out so well I thought I'd share my experience. If you are interested in fine wine you can stop wasting your time right now and move on to the next thread. I specialize in cheap, strong wines that are ready to drink within weeks. This latest batch is different because I actually used a hydrometer to check the progress. Normally I just go by a chart and judge the accuracy by how easy it is to get off the couch after a couple of glasses 
My juice this batch was Welch's Smooth 100% juice, Red Grape flavor. It's actually a blend of white, concord and red grapes with 36 grams of sugar per 8 oz glass. I picked this because it was on sale at my local market for less that $2 per 64oz bottle. I buy 10 bottles to make a 5 gallon batch. I already had a mess of sugar that I bought on sale several months ago at 99 cents per 4 pound bag and my yeast that I'm using right now is Red Star Premier Cuvee. I don't use any other chemicals in any part of the process.
I started the wine on January 3rd. While proofing the yeast I took 2 bottles of juice and heated them in a stock pot until hot but not boiling. I then added 6 pounds of sugar, which is 1 cup per 64 oz bottle, and stirred until dissolved. I have a chart which shows that if you have X amount of sugar per liter you will have Y amount of ABV. So I already had a known amount of sugar in the juice and adding the extra sugar brings it up to a potential of 13-14% ABV.
I dumped my juice/sugar mix into a fermentation bucket then added more bottles of juice to cool it down. Once it got to a safe temperature I added the yeast and used more juice to wash out the proofing cup, making sure all of the yeast ended up in the bucket. I measured the temperature of the mix (it was about 68 degrees), checked with a hydrometer and used another chart to adjust for the calibration of the hydrometer to get a starting SG of 1.104. I covered the top of the bucket with a white T-shirt and let nature take its course.
After 4 days of letting it foam away I put a regular lid with an airlock on top of the bucked and left it for another 3 days before switching over to a carboy. When I first started doing it this way I had a lot of trouble siphoning the wine from the bucket into the carboy but then I figured out a better way. I sit the bucket on top of a table and have my carboy on the floor. I then attach a length of hose to the spigot on the bucket, run it down to the carboy, open the valve and gravity does the rest as easy as can be
After 7 days in the carboy I noticed the airlock activity had slowed to almost nothing and I didn't see much activity on the surface so it was time to do the bottling. My bottling method is just as elaborate as the rest of the process: I put it right back into the original bottles, labels and all. This has 3 advantages. 1, The bottles are already paid for. 2. They are plastic and won't blow up on me if I forget to release excess gases every couple of days. 3. I never forget what the wine was made from so if I really like it I know what to watch for when the sales are on.
Once my wine was bottled I again broke out my thermometer, hydrometer and conversion chart. My FG was 0.996, which translates into a healthy 14.18% ABV. Tastes pretty darn good too. I won't actually start drinking it for a few weeks because I rotate new wine to the back of the fridge and drink older batches so it has time to settle.
I'll never win any awards but people like it. I actually have enough people willing to reimburse me for ingredients in exchange for a couple of bottles that I could have my share for free if I wanted to. But normally I just keep it for myself and give some away every now and then. It sounds crude and primitive but I do make sure everything is properly sterilized and I try and check the accuracy of my recipes, which is why I used the hydrometer. Who knows, maybe someone who was sitting on the fence will see how easy this is and try a batch of their own.
My juice this batch was Welch's Smooth 100% juice, Red Grape flavor. It's actually a blend of white, concord and red grapes with 36 grams of sugar per 8 oz glass. I picked this because it was on sale at my local market for less that $2 per 64oz bottle. I buy 10 bottles to make a 5 gallon batch. I already had a mess of sugar that I bought on sale several months ago at 99 cents per 4 pound bag and my yeast that I'm using right now is Red Star Premier Cuvee. I don't use any other chemicals in any part of the process.
I started the wine on January 3rd. While proofing the yeast I took 2 bottles of juice and heated them in a stock pot until hot but not boiling. I then added 6 pounds of sugar, which is 1 cup per 64 oz bottle, and stirred until dissolved. I have a chart which shows that if you have X amount of sugar per liter you will have Y amount of ABV. So I already had a known amount of sugar in the juice and adding the extra sugar brings it up to a potential of 13-14% ABV.
I dumped my juice/sugar mix into a fermentation bucket then added more bottles of juice to cool it down. Once it got to a safe temperature I added the yeast and used more juice to wash out the proofing cup, making sure all of the yeast ended up in the bucket. I measured the temperature of the mix (it was about 68 degrees), checked with a hydrometer and used another chart to adjust for the calibration of the hydrometer to get a starting SG of 1.104. I covered the top of the bucket with a white T-shirt and let nature take its course.
After 4 days of letting it foam away I put a regular lid with an airlock on top of the bucked and left it for another 3 days before switching over to a carboy. When I first started doing it this way I had a lot of trouble siphoning the wine from the bucket into the carboy but then I figured out a better way. I sit the bucket on top of a table and have my carboy on the floor. I then attach a length of hose to the spigot on the bucket, run it down to the carboy, open the valve and gravity does the rest as easy as can be
After 7 days in the carboy I noticed the airlock activity had slowed to almost nothing and I didn't see much activity on the surface so it was time to do the bottling. My bottling method is just as elaborate as the rest of the process: I put it right back into the original bottles, labels and all. This has 3 advantages. 1, The bottles are already paid for. 2. They are plastic and won't blow up on me if I forget to release excess gases every couple of days. 3. I never forget what the wine was made from so if I really like it I know what to watch for when the sales are on.
Once my wine was bottled I again broke out my thermometer, hydrometer and conversion chart. My FG was 0.996, which translates into a healthy 14.18% ABV. Tastes pretty darn good too. I won't actually start drinking it for a few weeks because I rotate new wine to the back of the fridge and drink older batches so it has time to settle.
I'll never win any awards but people like it. I actually have enough people willing to reimburse me for ingredients in exchange for a couple of bottles that I could have my share for free if I wanted to. But normally I just keep it for myself and give some away every now and then. It sounds crude and primitive but I do make sure everything is properly sterilized and I try and check the accuracy of my recipes, which is why I used the hydrometer. Who knows, maybe someone who was sitting on the fence will see how easy this is and try a batch of their own.
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