Preparing Concord Grapes for Wine Making

Mike,

First buy i of these :

and 1 of these:

When you get them, add 1/4 teaspoon of the Potassium metabisulfate to a clean container that can hold about 10 gallons ( a clean plastic rubbermaid garbage can will do). Throw the grapes in the can and crush them with your feet or some other clean utensil. Add the yeast when done. Next day stir the stuff , once in the morning and once at night. Be sure to make sure that the crushed grapes that may be floating on the top are submerged in the juice. Soon it'll be bubbling and it'll smell great. After about 5 days of doing this every day press the "wine" off the skins and stems into a carboy with an airlock on it.

This:

and this:

and this:

That's the basics.

For general information on wine making:

In particular for Concord:

The recipes are for one gallon. Scale to what you have (except for the yeast). If you use a recipe that does not add water, you probably only need a 3 gallon carboy. Campden tablets are a more economical form of metabisulfite for small batches.

NO. Rubbermaid trash containers are NOT food grade. They will leach into your wine. I just called yesterday to see if they are suitable for winemaking and I was told they are NOT.

I buy HDPE fermenters from Unites States Plastic Corp.

US plastics sells the Rubbermaid Brute containers along with all kinds of plastics products.

The price is right so I talked to technical support at US plastics. They told me that they were not safe for winemaking. To confirm this they called Rubbermaid and verified that they are NOT SAFE for this purpose.

I like to wait 18 to 24 hours before adding the yeast. The metabisulphate or campton tablets release sulfite gas to keep off any wild yeast or bacteria and it then slows down after 18 hours. It won't kill your good yeast, but it will certainly inhibit it from growing, so let the chemical do it's job first

Tom