black grape wine

[Craig57]

Good evening, I have just been given approx 2 1/2 pounds of black grapes. Is this amount enough to make a demi john of wine? If so is there a decent recipe to make this?
Thanks
Craig

 

[johncrobinson]

Yes go for it.

I made a wine from black grapes grown in a greenhouse back in 1978.I had a lot less than 21lb to work with,
So from the quantities you are talking about I think you will get a lot more than 1 demijohn.

Dont hang about though they need to be fresh.

 

[Craig57]

The amount is only 2.5 pounds not 21
Thats why i asked is this a sufficient amount to make a demi john full?

 

[johncrobinson]

You will be lucky to get 1ltr of juice from that.

If you buy some cartons of pure grape juice to make it up to 4.5ltrs the skins on your grapes should help to give a good colour.

 

[Stevieboy]

You'll deffo have to add juice or sugar or both. I doubt if they are Wine Grapes - probably table grapes, which have relatively speaking, small amounts of fermentables in them.

As Sir Robinson said, leave the skins in for as long as possible for colour and Tannin.

And just to make you jealous, here's a picture of my Gamay grape vine, which took me 7 years to get to this stage and crop successfully to make a gallon...yep British Beaujolais!!

 

[Craig57]

Good morning, thanks for your input on this. I will go and get some red grape juice to make up the quantity later. I was going to put what grapes i have into a juicer to extract all the juices but im not sure if this is the correct way to go? With you saying leave the skins on im not entirely sure what this means, can you explain please (as im a novice at this).
Thanks (good profile photo by the way)

 

[Stevieboy]

Good morning, thanks for your input on this. I will go and get some red grape juice to make up the quantity later. I was going to put what grapes i have into a juicer to extract all the juices but im not sure if this is the correct way to go? With you saying leave the skins on im not entirely sure what this means, can you explain please (as im a novice at this).
Thanks (good profile photo by the way)

Ideally, you need to be crushing the grapes, and squeezing the juice out of them (I don't know know how a juicer works.) If you didn't know already, most red grapes have white juice. The colour in red wine comes from the colour leaching out of the skins. So your skins need to go into your fermenter along with the juice. The skins will also add Tannins. Leave em in the FV for week, then strain into DJ for secondary.

I assume they are table grapes, and don't have pips, which is good, as the pips contain LOADS of tannins, which if crushed will give you too much tannin.


Motorhead for Life!

 

[Craig57]

Hello again, these little grapes do have pips in em. Just bought some blackberry grape juice to hopefully add to the juice i get from these little bleeders. going to be difficult to remove every pip from these blighters so may just have to throw the lot in and then strain off on the first rack, whats your thoughts as im clueless.
ps, try ad catch motorheadache if you havent already seen em, awesome tribute

 

[Stevieboy]

No need to remove pips - they can go in the brew - just don't crush too many of em.

I do love a good tribute band - Limehouse Lizzy, Dirty DC etc. I used to know the guy that ran the Motorheadbangers fan club - we grew up on the same estate.

 

[Craig57]

No need to remove pips - they can go in the brew - just don't crush too many of em.

I do love a good tribute band - Limehouse Lizzy, Dirty DC etc. I used to know the guy that ran the Motorheadbangers fan club - we grew up on the same estate.

Lucky you, slightly jealous. When all this s**t has died down im off to the Rainbow in LA to visit his statue.

 

[Stevieboy]

And weirdly

Lucky you, slightly jealous. When all this s**t has died down im off to the Rainbow in LA to visit his statue.

- That would be awesome - I also happen to share the same birthday as Lemmy - Dec 24th....