Home brew? Homebrew? Winemaking

Wild yeasts can be great. They use them in Lambics as the key ingredient and that's why Lambics can only be brewed in that one small region. Same with San Francisco sourdough bread. But generally speaking you don't want to introduce the variables.

Pretty much all commercial wine is fermented with wild yeast....they are present on the skins of the grapes....also the traditional method for our UK ciders.

San Fran sourdough? Is it really that special.....it's ben made in France. Germany and most of Eastern Europe for centuries...even in my flat!

Pretty much all commercial wine is fermented with wild yeast....they are present on the skins of the grapes....also the traditional method for our UK ciders.

San Fran sourdough? Is it really that special.....it's ben made in France. Germany and most of Eastern Europe for centuries...even in my flat!

Yeah but the wild yeasts on the skins of grapes/apples is different to the other wild bacteria you getting ripping around the air in your basement, stair well or brew room. At the very least you need to cover a brew bucket with a clean tea towel to allow CO2 out, and stop other shit getting in. Sealed brewing containers are far better controlling your brew and will lead to a more consistent product.

Anyone know if its legal to own a private still in this country? Used to use small stills purchased under the guise of "essential oil refiners" when I was at uni to produce 90-95% ethanol blends from bags of sugar and some bakers yeast. Great for mixing with soft drinks to get smashed super fast.

"Used to use small stills purchased under the guise of "essential oil refiners" when I was at uni "

That's how they are sold in Australia.

No idea about winemaking but most of the flavour in beer comes from the yeast. I made 10 gallon batches and would use one yeast in 5 and another in the other 5 and the differences were huge. If wild yeasts get in there and do the fermenting the flavour could be anything, but generally is a bit unpleasant.

SF sourdough is just a specific kind of sourdough made in SF because of the wild yeast. I like it, but it's not earth shatteringly different from other sourdough.

Pretty much all commercial wine is fermented with wild yeast....

You sure about that? Surely they'd lose too much control with wild yeast and it takes longer to start fermenting. I would imagine (I don't know) that this would be the last thing wine producers would want, save for perhaps more boutique producers.
I should've taken my mate up on his winery tour offer..

You sure about that? Surely they'd lose too much control with wild yeast and it takes longer to start fermenting. I would imagine (I don't know) that this would be the last thing wine producers would want, save for perhaps more boutique producers.
I should've taken my mate up on his winery tour offer..

I can't remeber where but I read about a brewer who had problems when the moved factory, as they were no longer getting the same wild yeast in their drink altering the taste.

Pretty much all commercial wine is fermented with wild yeast....they are present on the skins of the grapes....also the traditional method for our UK ciders.

San Fran sourdough? Is it really that special.....it's ben made in France. Germany and most of Eastern Europe for centuries...even in my flat!

Most commercial wine makers will add yeast to get slow fermenting wines going and enhance depth of flavour, aromas etc.
This is where the majority of your floral notes etc. in wines come from.
I'd say 90% of "new world" wines get made this way.

"Used to use small stills purchased under the guise of "essential oil refiners" when I was at uni "

That's how they are sold in Australia.

Yup, and max capacity was 5l, would take the best part of a day to get through a 25l brew barrel, but you would end up with a few bottles of ethanol, and we where at uni so time rich and cash poor.

Mate back home has got the full home brew set-up going these days with 3 kegs, a chilling fridge, gas bottles and proper tapping equipment. Its amazing how much more popular home brew is when its served ice cold out of a beer tap as opposed to cloudy and flat from a long neck.

winston- id say 95% of all modern commercial wine is made with adding cultured yeasts. if your growing on a large scale its impossible to judge how the wine is going to turn out, or even whether it will ferment at all. if your growing for profit you want every bottle to be exactly the same and finish in the same period of time, this is never going to happen unless you grow in an area which is very ecologically secure, which is most unlikely.

with that said, it is the traditional method, and does work somtimes. ive done it with cyder with success, but it was unreliable, took ages and not any better so i wouldn't bother again.

So I have eventually got my elderberry wine working!
I picked 4 kilos of berries last weekend and was determined to make wine until I realised that in Poland they have a different idea on what is necessary to make wine. Nowhere can I find sterilising powder - Not with the homebrew equipment, not in the cleaning sections not even in the baby section. I also cannot find any additives except for yeast and nutrient. Strange considering that they have a fantiastic array of demijohns, testing equipment, labels, shrink caps, even some still parts.

So, returning from the shop with a wholly unacceptable quantity of equipment I started.

So how do you sterilise a 25L bottle with no powder. Boiling water is not such a good idea and it won't fit into the oven so (CRINGE) I poured a bit of bleach (yup, pine scented. Apparently you can't buy plain old bleach any more) into the bottle and filled it with water. After about 3 hours of rinsing I filled it up with my beautiful berry sugar mixture. About 18L.

Monday morning I pitched the yeast and waited.......nothing.

I put it down to dead yeast(Summer is scorching here, sometimes 40 degrees) and so I went and chose a different yeast, dried instead of the solution in the hope that it would help. I also checked the specific gravity to check that the sugar wasn't inhibiting the yeast. It was borderline but I left it.

So I mix up a new batch of yeast and check it is thoroughly fermenting before pitching it.

Nothing.

So after a lot of checking recipes I figured that the one thing missing from the recipe I was using that was in most of the others was citric acid and that the problem could only be that or the sugar level. The homebrew section of the shops here has no citric acid.

So a beg my wife to visit the supermarket on her way home and buy me 5 lemons.

In went the juice last night.

I woke up this morning to that wonderful sound - bloop, bloop. There it was bubbling away.

I knew that citric acid helped the yeast but I didn't realise that the must could be so alkaline that it prevents ALL activity. So that is one more thing I have learnt about brewing.

Has anybody tried to fortify elderberry wine by throwing in some brandy or spirit before fermentation has finished? Did it work? I am tempted to try it with a small amount.

I double brewed my elderflower wine.

The alcohol content was too low, so I mixed up a batch of sugar, water and yeast and bunged it in.
I should have added extra lemon, in hindsight, but the brew took off like a good'un!
brewed for ten days until activity ceased, racked and bottled it - it's about 13% alcohol, light and grassy with floral notes. Only five bottles left! SAving them for Xmas.

I've got 3 gallons of plum wine on the go at the moment. I'm adding the sugar and yeast tomorrow. The smell and colour is incredible!

I haven't tried plums, but elderflower is my favourite. I prefer it to grape wine. The first batch I did also came out rather weak - about 7 percent, but it tasted so good that I couldn't resist. I spent a weekend drinking it like lemonade regretting the fact tha I had only made 1 gallon.

This is my first elderberry, so I am wondering what it will come out like.

My gf's dad (Polish) makes things like raspberry wine. Do you want me to see if I can get his recipe?
Sterilisation? Wassat? :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tees/7598614.stm

she deserved that for having such bad taste in drinks, what kind of depraved individual actually thinks Baileys, chilli, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, cider and gin. would make a good cocktail.

I look like that every morning.

It's normal.

Isn't it?

she deserved that for having such bad taste in drinks, what kind of depraved individual actually thinks Baileys, chilli, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, cider and gin. would make a good cocktail.

I should imagine, given that it has Bailey's in it, that mmccarthy wouldn't be averse to giving it a try.

she deserved that for having such bad taste in drinks, what kind of depraved individual actually thinks Baileys, chilli, tequila, absinthe, ouzo, vodka, cider and gin. would make a good cocktail.

What's the garnish?

I've been making my own brews for, ummm....25ish years. And I even still have some of my original eyesight left. Just.

Beer and wine only though, on account of HM Customs and Excise's wholly warranted intrusion into my private home life and quiet enjoyment. And if I did make anything stronger, which I wouldn't, I certainly wouldn't be using one of these. No Sir, no way, Jose.

I really miss brewing beer. Distilling has me quite intrigued as I'm quite the [strike]alchoholic[/strike] whisky aficionado. I'm just too much of a pussy to give it a go yet.

i made nettle wine on sunday. very easy just need a bucket full of young nettle tops, simmer for 45 minutes in a gallon of water with rind of one lemon then strain onto 3lb of sugar and juice of 1 lemon. wait for it to go lukewarm then add yeast. leave for a couple of days to settle down fermenting then siphon to a demijon. bottle and ready to drink after 4-6 weeks.

i will report how it goes. it smelt good, a bit like dandelion and burdock or root beer. recipe is from the little book tommy posted about earlier in the thread

That sounds pretty good! Nettles will be nice and young now. I've got a couple of demijons going begging at the mo - I'll have a pop at that!

great i'll put up the full recipe tomorrow mate. It was the most straight forward one in the book

Good man!

The plum wine I made last year is almost ready, but when I took a gravity reading from it, it came out with a similar gravity to Vermouth.

I'm worried...

I want to get into home brewing ale, going to start with the kits. Is it better to condition the beer in bottles or barrels. Also how well do the bottled conditioned beers travel, do they need hours to settle if the sediment gets disturbed?