A few days ago, we were given a tray of homegrown grapes. Time to have another go at homemade wine. Compared to last time, when we used heat to help extract the juice, this was all done manually, squeezing them inside the grain bag I use for my beer brewing (strong and with a fine mesh.

That got decanted into a sanitised demijohn and the bacteria killed off with a crushed campden tablet. This evening, I measured the gravity of the liquid, which came out at about 1.040. That would be good for a beer but is too low for wine. I think last year I didn’t pay enough attention to that aspect and so ended up with “wine” at about 7% ABV… nice enough but then it started to go fizzy. Sparkling red wine was interesting but I can see why it hasn’t caught on and the last few bottles were more about attempted ceiling decoration than drinkability!

It took me ages increasing the gravity by adding table sugar, dissolved in each sample. Next time, I think I ought to find a calculator for how much sugar would ramp it up. I decided that 1.080 would be enough and siphoned that into another demijohn, which I had prepared with rehydrated yeast (5g Lalvin EC-1118) and some raisins (apparently they help feed the yeast and kick it off). It is now set up with an airlock and I’ll see what happens to it over the next few weeks.