My First Attempt At Wine

coolermaster · Aug 24, 2009

Hi folks, just thought I would put up a post about my first attempt at wine making. I am totally new to homebrew apart from a very dodgy go at making beer/lager about twenty odd years ago with a cheap kit from boots that didn't really go down too well. I've been wanting to have a go at wine for a wee while now and finally decided to buy some kit and get mesell set up after a relative came home a couple of months ago from a car boot sale with a with a couple of bottles of home made ginger wine. I bought a youngs country wine starter kit and a few demijohns and some other bits and bobs that never came with the kit and got started yesterday. First up was a ginger wine from a recipe that I had found somewhere on the net, at the moment its brewing up in one of the buckets that came with the youngs starter kit, the recipe used quite a bit of sugar and the sg reading is 1.135 so I gather that this will probably be quite sweet when finished.
Next up was a youngs definitive country wine kit, strawberry. Have made that up in a demijohn, forgot to take a reading for that but its bubbling away nicely, hopefully it will turn out ok and have heard a few folks saying that these are quite nice to drink.
Last of all I started 2 batches of ribena wine, a lot of people seem to talking about this so thought I would give it a go. SG reading for that was 1.090. All the mixtures a bubbbling away like like mad and I cant wait to see and taste how they turn out. Sorry there are no pictures at the moment, need to charge the batteries for my camera, but as soon as I have taken some I will post them. :thumb:

shadow47 · Aug 25, 2009

Youngs Strawberry is quite nice, made it a few times

TheCheekyMonkey · Aug 25, 2009

im in the process of doing the youngs strawberry wine at the moment, i followed the instructions to the letter and my SG was 1096 , might be useful to you to work out an around about ABV.

also quick tip, i started mine on 05/08/09 and only yesterday did i finally get peeved off thinking it was still fermenting, due to it still bubbling, but very very slowly (i could see a small amount of bubbles coming to the surface, anyway decided to rack it and degas it as i know this should really of finished by now, and indeed it had, it just needed degassing (alot) , i added the stabiliser and have now added the fineings today and give it a good shake.

from now i`ll just leave it for a good few days until its cleared, i`ll probably rack again and settle again before bottling!!

incidently i did the youngs black cherry as well at the same time, with the exact same degassing problem!

hope this helps.

falafael · Aug 25, 2009

Never had any problems with the youngs kits, never had to degass mine, i just let mine run its course, and then drink it...the elderflower is great!

Moley · Aug 25, 2009

Welcome to the forum, it sounds to me like your winemaking is going just fine :thumb:

I've never made any wines from kits myself but I've heard the Young's Strawberry is quick and good.

coolermaster said:
First up was a ginger wine from a recipe that I had found somewhere on the net, at the moment its brewing up in one of the buckets that came with the youngs starter kit, the recipe used quite a bit of sugar and the sg reading is 1.135 so I gather that this will probably be quite sweet when finished.

I wouldn't worry too much about that, I've accidentally over-sweetened a Wheat & Raisin to 1.135
If you've got a reasonable yeast you should find that it will probably still go to Medium. My Wheat & Raisin finished at 1.000, so that's 18.3% abv.

However, it's a rule of thumb that beer needs at least one week of maturation for every 10 points of starting gravity (1.040 = 40 = 4 weeks), so by the same token I'd be inclined to leave that Ginger for at least 3 months after bottling before you test one. If it's âalcohol hotâ and out of balance, it does need time.

By the way, I do practice what I preach, I bottled that W&R at the end of April and haven't touched it yet, but we're away next week on our narrowboat so at least one bottle is going onboard.

Best of luck with your brews, it's a great hobby : cheers: