I am a newbie not only to this group, but to wine making as well I was trapped into trying winemaking by the Mrs. who found a recipe in one of her favorite cookbooks, of all places. The recipe is called; "21 Day Wine"
The recipe is as follows for 5 gallons
1 Gal. Distilled water. 1 Gal Canned Grape Juice. 1 Gal Bottled Apple Juice. 1 Gal Bottle Cranberry Juice. 16 cups of Sugar. 2 cakes of fresh bread yeast.The recipe worked! It is not wine of the caliber that I see in the stores, but is is not too bad & We Made It At Home!!
I ran into a bit of trouble attempting to filter out the cloudiness. At first I ran it through coffee filters. That did not work to well, still cloudy.
I decided to go hi-tech & set up a filtering system using several filters &
1 lb of Activated Charcoal.The activated charcoal was the hot ticket, as the wine ran through the filtering agent & filters, then began filling up the bottle with a wonderful clear wine that went from a red to a blush! Wonderful clear wine from our own hands!!
We ran into a minor setback with my filtering system tho... the wine tasted exactly like water! No taste... probably not even alcohol left in the liquid. Hmmmm.
Do people make non-alcholic wine? Is that what I accomplished?
My question is, will cake yeast work ok for a kitchen wine-making operation? Is there a way to clear up the wine by filtering? I have been using a 5 gal water bottle with a 36 inch balloon over the neck for protection from unwanted bugs harming the wine while it is fermenting. Do I need to "rake" the wine into another container for it to clear?
Lastly, does Orange juice work for winemaking? I se no mention of it in the posts here.
Thanks for the time answering my questions. I am as dumb as a rock on this subject... ...I am afraid I am hooked tho!!
Dennis(Gee! I made Wine!)