"Hobo Wine" How To - Some Questions...

I use dry wiine yeast all the time. It works great. If you mean bread yeast, it will stick at a low alcohol level and will not clear easily. It will definately effect the taste

it is made from different grapes. Welch's read is condord which will make a clasic "foxy" wine. Some like it others do not. Welchs white is niagara and will make an excellent white wine. It is also excellent for blending with other fruit wines.

The balloon is from back in ancient times (pre 1950's) when good wine suplies were not available. They leak, they pop, they will add rubber flavor to your wine. Your wine will probably develope some level of oxidation using them. And they do not save you money. Plastic airlocks are cheap and work great.

If you want to make a cheap good wine where you buy all the ingredients, check Jack Keller's white Welch's. If you want to make even cheaper wine, find a fruit that you can get for free, maybe a friend with a fruit tree the produces more than he wants, and use a good country wine recipe and procedures. You can get the cost well below $0.50 a bottle.

Ray

"Ditto" to what Ray just posted. My 2nd batch of wine was made from Welches Niagara concentrate, and it received rave reviews from my friends. My 1st batch was made from Welches Concord; quite tasty, but it would have been better as a sweet or semi-sweet dessert wine. The extra sweetness in a Concord wine helps smooth out the foxiness of it's American heritage.

In some respects, the Welches concentrates are better than the wine concentrates. At least that's been my experience. The finished wine has a lot more fruit; the wine concentrates sometimes produce anemic wine.

Only use bread yeast if you want to make bad wine. Conversely, only use wine yeast in bread if you want to make bad bread.

Greg