Self Sufficient in Morden.. chickens and vegetables in a small space

Having recently had the urge to make my own wine from the grapes hanging over our fence, I decided to buy one of those typical winemaking starter sets off Amazon – from a company called Ballihoo I believe. It’s a great set, but there is absolutely zero explanation as to what the various bits actually are. If you’ve found yourself in the same position, this post is for you. I won’t get into recipes or the actual process today, but just wanted to go over what’s in a starter set.

Container 1 – Sealed, no airlock:

This is used in the initial vigorous fermentation process or just as a spare to rack into. Your containers may or may not have a plastic thermometer strip stuck on them. Here’s the various containers I use:

Container 2 – with Airlock:

Depending on the set you have, your  airlock may be a single cylinder type like the one pictured below. One of your buckets will have a hole in the lid, and this fits into that. When you actually use it, you need to half fill the bottom part with water, then place the top back on. This allows air to escape (and therefore prevents the container from exploding), and stops nasty bugs getting in which might turn your wine to vinegar.

Alternatively, you may have bought a demijohn – large glass 5l/gallon containers, which should be used with a rubber bung and this type of airlock:

Siphon Tube and U-bend:

The u-bend refers to the bit of the end of the giant ‘straw’ that means liquid is drawn from above rather than below, which is where all the nasty sediment settles. Attach this straw-like contraption on to the end of the siphon hose. You’ll use this to move the wine from container to container when you ‘rack’ it.

Glass trial jar and hygrometer:

These are to be used together. When it comes time to measure how much sugar to add to get the desired strength, you’ll ladle some juice out into the trial jar, then float the hygrometer in there to get a reading. Essentially, the more sugar in the juice at the start, the more the hygrometer will float, and the greater the final strength of alcohol you’ll have. A good hygrometer will have coloured markings to indicate a good starting strength for wine or beer, as well as a line that indicates when it’s good to bottle.

There’s also an assortment of chemicals in pots, so let’s examine those:

• Yeast and Yeast Nutrient: These will always be used together, and the nutrient will just give the yeast a little boost at the start. You need one teaspoon of each per gallon/5l of juice.
• Campden Tablet: This kills yeast. You may use it at the start to kill off any natural yeast first, or usually at the end of fermentation to ensure none is left. Failure to kill off the yeast when fermentation has mostly finished may result in your wine exploding as the yeast continues to work and air is trapped inside.
• Pectolase / Pectolytic Enzyme: These are the same thing – they break down the Pectin in your wines. Pectin is what makes jams sticky, basically. It’s like jelly. In wine, this is bad, because the wine ends of cloudy. Add it at the start.
• Steriliser: Kills germs. Don’t eat, drink, or get this stuff on your person. Basically just a cleaner, but you never add this to your wine. Instead, you only use this to clean out equipment before starting, and then make sure to rinse everything thoroughly. Makes things smell of chlorine (which it basically is).
• Finings: These didn’t come with my starter set, but they’re common in commercial DIY wine-packs and you may need to get some separately depending on what you’re fermenting. Finings are used to remove all the cloudy bits from wine when fermentation has finished. They stick to the cloudy bits, and drag them down to the bottom where the wine can then be safely ‘racked off’.

That’s it from me. I think you’ll be able to figure out the rest of the bits, like funnels and measuring jugs! These were the bits that troubled me, so I hope this may be of use to you too if you get one of these winemaking sets for Christmas. Next time I’ll detail a basic winemaking process / recipe.