Racking Your Homemade Wine

Racking your homemade wine is vital to producing a high quality product. Don't be put off by the term, though. When winemakers rack their wine, they are simply transferring it from one vessel to another. A typical batch of homemade wine will be racked at least 2 times, and can sometimes need to be racked up to 4 times.

The most important aspect of racking wine is to leave the sediment behind. This will help the wine clarify and can also prevent the wine from picking up unwanted flavors and odors that can come from sitting too long on the sediment.

Wine

When to rack your wine is an important consideration. When you start a batch of wine, the initial fermentation will be very vigorous as the yeast consume the sugar in your must and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide. This is called primary fermentation and usually takes 5-7 days. Approximately 70 percent of the wine's fermentation will take place during this stage.

Racking Your Homemade Wine

After primary fermentation slows down, your wine can no longer protect itself from contamination and needs to be protected by an airlock. This is the first racking, and a simple siphon method through a flexible food grade plastic tube will accomplish it. Gravity does all the work, so carefully place your primary fermenter a couple feet off the ground and start the siphon process.

There are items available to assist with racking. One is called a racking cane. This is a rigid piece of plastic about 2 feet long. One end is specially made to sit on the bottom of the vessel while not drawing excess sediment into the tube. You can get by without one, but it's a great tool to have in your wine making toolbox.

For the first racking, try to leave as much sediment behind as possible. If a little is transferred into your secondary fermenter, don't panic. It's not as important on the first racking, so get as much liquid as you can.

The second racking should take place after your fermentation is complete. This can be a week or two or even 6 or 8 weeks, depending on how your fermentation progresses. This time you can be a little more careful about leaving sediment behind, even if it means losing a little liquid. Again, the same procedure as above applies. Start a suction and let gravity do the work for you. Don't forget to put the airlock right back on the wine, as exposure to air will oxidize your wine.

The third racking should take place after your wine has completely cleared. Remember, it will not clear in the bottles so be patient with this step and don't rack until you're sure it's as clear as it can be. Leave every bit of sediment behind during this racking. This is also the time you can add Sodium Bisulfite to the wine. This will drive off any excess oxygen that was created during racking.

Racking is an important step in homemade wine making. The better you understand and perform this vital step, the better your finished product will be.

Racking Your Homemade Wine

Have you ever wondered what it takes to make your own wine at home? Before you try it yourself, grab my free report that shows you what's involved and reveals some genuine secrets to making great wine at home. Visit http://www.homemadewinemaker.com and grab my FREE report to see how easy it can be! I can have you making delicious homemade wine in the shortest time possible with my e-book, Complete Step by Step Guide to Making Wine at Home.

Ted Begnoche

How to Make Wine - Adding Flavor to Your Homemade Wine

Whether you are already making your own wine or just pondering jumping into the rapidly growing hobby, one thing that you will want to experiment with is adding or changing the flavor of your wine.

Sometimes, just fermenting the fruit or grape juice doesn't produce a taste that seems "full". There seems to be something missing.

Wine

What can you do? How can you round out the taste?

How to Make Wine - Adding Flavor to Your Homemade Wine

Here's 3 different things you can do that will improve the fullness of the taste of your homemade wines.

Oaking

You can give your wine an aok flavor very easily. There are two ways to do this. You can add oak chips before the fermentation or after the fermentation. There are even 3 different flavors of oak chips.

Oak chip manufacturers try to duplicate the charring found inside the big barrels that are used to age wine in. There are light toast, medium toast and heavy toast chips. The toast part simply means how much charring from a flame there is on the chips.

You just add these chips directly to your must or your wine and let them soak.

Another oaking method preferred by a lot of home winemakers is to flavor some vodka with oak chips and then just pour some of the oaked vodka into the wine to add and oaky flavor.

Sugar

Some people prefer their wines a little less than dry. Some like their wine downright sweet.

The secret to sweetening wines is this: you have to make sure the wine is stabilized before adding any sugar or sugar water. You can stabilize your wine using potassium sorbate, a common food preservative. This takes place after all of the fermentation is complete and the wine has mostly cleared.

How much do you add? Just sweeten to taste. Add a little sugar water, and taste. That's all there is to it.

Glycerin

If your wine seems a little thin, you can thicken it up by adding glycerin. Glycerin will give your wine "legs" and a somewhat better mouthfeel. Legs don't really have anything to do with the taste as much as the ability of the wine to cling to the sides of a wine glass.

Glycerin will give your wine a more rounded and smoother feel in your mouth when you are drinking the wine.

Try these 3 winemaking tips on your next batch of wine. You could surprise yourself!

How to Make Wine - Adding Flavor to Your Homemade Wine

Want more information on how to make your own wine? Hop over to http://www.how-to-make-wine.net/free_book.html and download the free 24 page winemaking book. For a complete online winemaking library, go to http://www.how-to-make-wine.net

How to Make Homemade Wine - It's Simple!

Want to know how to make homemade wine? It's really easy. Here I will share with you a simple wine recipe that anyone can do. Try your hand - there are many other methods you can use, but I think you will enjoy this one.

Here are a few things you will need:

Wine

1 qt. of fruit, any kind
1 package of active yeast
2 cups of sugar
1 gallon of water (separated as 1 cup hot water, 2 cups warm water and 13 cups)
Colander or cheese cloth
Container with tight-fitting lid

How to Make Homemade Wine - It's Simple!

How to Make Homemade Wine

Using the fruit of your choice, crush the fruit with a masher or fork, any kind of utensil that will give you a smooth consistency. Put the fruit into a clean 1 gallon container.

Combine the 2 cups of sugar into 1 cup of hot water. Dissolve the sugar completely, and let this set until it cools to room temperature. After the mixture is cool, add it to the fruit and stir.

In 2 cups of warm water, dissolve the package of active yeast and mix thoroughly. As you mix, you may notice foaming. This is completely normal. Add this mixture to the fruit and sugar mixture.

Pour the other 13 cups of water into the container and stir everything together. Place a lid on this and place it in a dark, cool place for a couple of weeks to let the fermentation take place.

Once the mixture has fermented, strain it through a cheese cloth or colander to insure a smooth consistency. Pour your wine into a container, and it's ready for use! Use it yourself for a relaxing after dinner drink, or show it off when company comes.

There are many other flavors of wines you can make yourself. There are also other methods you can use. Once you learn how to make this basic wine, you will soon be a wine connoisseur!

Well, now you know how to make homemade wine - enjoy!

How to Make Homemade Wine - It's Simple!

Find more tips on how to make homemade wine, and turn your wine making passion into a money saving hobby! Your friends and family will love it.

How To Make Homemade Wine With Simple Household Utensils

To make homemade wines with the recipes and ingredients here
all one needs is a gallon-size glass bottle, a saucepan and
a polyethylene pail. Make certain to use polyethylene as
some plastics are not suitable. Do not use aluminum, copper,
or enamel vessels to make your homemade wine with.

Sterilization is mandatory for all utensils, bottles and
corks, especially corks. One should use commercialy
available plastic corks until you know how to properly
sterilize natural corks.

Wine

Ordinarily, baker's yeast and white granulated sugar are
used by the average homemade wine maker. A special wine
yeast and invert sugar makes the best wine possible.

How To Make Homemade Wine With Simple Household Utensils

Wine yeast is capable of producing eighteen per cent of
alcohol by volume (32 proof), against the fourteen per cent
of bakers' yeast.

Starting what is called a 'nucleus ferment'or nutrient. A
small jar will do for this. About a 1/2 cup of water
and a teaspoonful of sugar are boiled together for a minute
and then allowed to cool. This is then put into a
sterilized jar and the yeast added in whatever form it is
obtained. Allow to set for 3 days covered with plastic wrap
and rubberband.

Preparing the fruit: Various types of wild yeast and
bacteria are on the fruit naturally and must be dealt with.
Our method, known as the 'sulphiting' method, does
this. For more detailed information on "sulphiting" go to
==>http://www.make-homemade-wine.info/sulphiting.html

How to make homemade wine:

Crush the fruit by hand in the poly pail and pour on one
quart of distilled water. Mix well. Crush one campden tablet
and dissolve the power in 1/2 cup of warm water and
mix with pulp. Leave the mixture for 1 or 2 hours. A little
discoloring may happen. After this, take 1/3 of the sugar
to be used and boil this for 1 minute in 3 pints of
water. Allow this syrup to cool and then stir into the
pulp. Then add the yeast (or nutrient) and ferment for 7
days.

After 7 days, strain the pulp through fine cloth and wring
out as dry as you can. Put the strained homemade wine into a
gallon jar and discard pulp. Then boil another 1/3
of the sugar in one pint of water for 1 minute and when
cooled add it to the rest. Plug the neck of the jar with
cotton wool or fit a fermentation lock and continue to
ferment the homemade wine in a warm place for a further 10
days.

At this stage, pour the homemade wine into the poly pail
leaving as much deposit in the jar as you can. Clean
out the jar, sterilize it and return the homemade wine to
this. Boil the remaining 1/3 of the sugar for 1 minute
in 1 pint of water. When this has cooled, add it to the
rest. Refit the lock or plug the neck of the jar with
fresh cotton wool.

After this, the homemade wine should be left in a warm place
until all fermentation has ceased.

Clearing: it is usual to have a brilliantly clear homemade
wine a month before fermentation has ceased so
patience is required here. After all fermentation has
ceased, siphon the clear homemade wine (if not yet crystal
clear) into another jar leaving the deposit behind. Then
when the homemade wine is finally crystal clear it should
be siphoned into bottles and corked.

To get the maximum alcohol and to get total fermentation the
ideal temperature at which to keep a 'must' is
between 65-70 degrees F.

Fully ripe fruit is essential if we hope to make the best
homemade wine.

CHERRY WINE (A Delightful Sweet Wine):

8lb. black cherries, 7pts. water, 3 1/2lb. sugar (or 4lb.
invert), all-purpose wine yeast or Bordeaux yeast, nutrient.

PLUM WINE (Port Style):

Dark red, fully ripe fruits must be used. 10lb. plums,
7pts. water, 3 1/2lb. sugar (or 4lb. invert), port yeast,
nutrient.

GRAPE WINE

Homemade grape wine is much more difficult and requires 20
pounds of grapes so unless you own a vineyard it is
not cost effective to make homemade grape wine.

After several batches you will get the rhythm of making
homemade wine down to a tee. With further knowledge you
will be able to make homemade wines with a strength,
clarity, flavour and bouquet of which you will be justly proud.

How To Make Homemade Wine With Simple Household Utensils

If You Think This Was Helpful Click On The Link Below To Get A Great Collection Of Resources That Will Further Your Knowledge And Understanding In Wine Making. Go To.... Over 90 Recipes And The Technical Training To Boot! [http://www.make-homemade-wine.info] Now!

**Attn Ezine Editors / Site Owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your website as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content & include our resource box as listed above. Thanks! 746 words

How To Make Homemade Wine With Simple Household Utensils

To make homemade wines with the recipes and ingredients here
all one needs is a gallon-size glass bottle, a saucepan and
a polyethylene pail. Make certain to use polyethylene as
some plastics are not suitable. Do not use aluminum, copper,
or enamel vessels to make your homemade wine with.

Sterilization is mandatory for all utensils, bottles and
corks, especially corks. One should use commercialy
available plastic corks until you know how to properly
sterilize natural corks.

Wine

Ordinarily, baker's yeast and white granulated sugar are
used by the average homemade wine maker. A special wine
yeast and invert sugar makes the best wine possible.

Wine yeast is capable of producing eighteen per cent of
alcohol by volume (32 proof), against the fourteen per cent
of bakers' yeast.

Starting what is called a 'nucleus ferment'or nutrient. A
small jar will do for this. About a 1/2 cup of water
and a teaspoonful of sugar are boiled together for a minute
and then allowed to cool. This is then put into a
sterilized jar and the yeast added in whatever form it is
obtained. Allow to set for 3 days covered with plastic wrap
and rubberband.

Preparing the fruit: Various types of wild yeast and
bacteria are on the fruit naturally and must be dealt with.
Our method, known as the 'sulphiting' method, does
this. For more detailed information on "sulphiting" go to
==>http://www.make-homemade-wine.info/sulphiting.html

How to make homemade wine:

Crush the fruit by hand in the poly pail and pour on one
quart of distilled water. Mix well. Crush one campden tablet
and dissolve the power in 1/2 cup of warm water and
mix with pulp. Leave the mixture for 1 or 2 hours. A little
discoloring may happen. After this, take 1/3 of the sugar
to be used and boil this for 1 minute in 3 pints of
water. Allow this syrup to cool and then stir into the
pulp. Then add the yeast (or nutrient) and ferment for 7
days.

After 7 days, strain the pulp through fine cloth and wring
out as dry as you can. Put the strained homemade wine into a
gallon jar and discard pulp. Then boil another 1/3
of the sugar in one pint of water for 1 minute and when
cooled add it to the rest. Plug the neck of the jar with
cotton wool or fit a fermentation lock and continue to
ferment the homemade wine in a warm place for a further 10
days.

At this stage, pour the homemade wine into the poly pail
leaving as much deposit in the jar as you can. Clean
out the jar, sterilize it and return the homemade wine to
this. Boil the remaining 1/3 of the sugar for 1 minute
in 1 pint of water. When this has cooled, add it to the
rest. Refit the lock or plug the neck of the jar with
fresh cotton wool.

After this, the homemade wine should be left in a warm place
until all fermentation has ceased.

Clearing: it is usual to have a brilliantly clear homemade
wine a month before fermentation has ceased so
patience is required here. After all fermentation has
ceased, siphon the clear homemade wine (if not yet crystal
clear) into another jar leaving the deposit behind. Then
when the homemade wine is finally crystal clear it should
be siphoned into bottles and corked.

To get the maximum alcohol and to get total fermentation the
ideal temperature at which to keep a 'must' is
between 65-70 degrees F.

Fully ripe fruit is essential if we hope to make the best
homemade wine.

CHERRY WINE (A Delightful Sweet Wine):

8lb. black cherries, 7pts. water, 3 1/2lb. sugar (or 4lb.
invert), all-purpose wine yeast or Bordeaux yeast, nutrient.

PLUM WINE (Port Style):

Dark red, fully ripe fruits must be used. 10lb. plums,
7pts. water, 3 1/2lb. sugar (or 4lb. invert), port yeast,
nutrient.

GRAPE WINE

Homemade grape wine is much more difficult and requires 20
pounds of grapes so unless you own a vineyard it is
not cost effective to make homemade grape wine.

After several batches you will get the rhythm of making
homemade wine down to a tee. With further knowledge you
will be able to make homemade wines with a strength,
clarity, flavour and bouquet of which you will be justly proud.

How To Make Homemade Wine With Simple Household Utensils

If You Think This Was Helpful Click On The Link Below To Get A Great Collection Of Resources That Will Further Your Knowledge And Understanding In Wine Making. Go To.... Over 90 Recipes And The Technical Training To Boot! [http://www.make-homemade-wine.info] Now!

**Attn Ezine Editors / Site Owners** Feel free to reprint this article in its entirety in your ezine or on your website as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content & include our resource box as listed above. Thanks! 746 words

Simple Homemade Wine Making Instructions

Making wine is a little bit science and a little bit art, and like anything worthwhile, learning to make good wine takes time and practice. These wine making instructions will give you a good overview of the process, you will then need to give it a try. The more you practice the better you will become, and the best part is that you get to drink your "mistakes".

Home winemaking is a fun, exciting hobby for people that are creative and enjoy making things, or who love social drinking, or want to give away their wine as gifts to family and friends. Here are some simple homemade wine making instructions:

Wine

• Use your own fresh grapes from your backyard. You can also make wine from any number of fruits. Also, many farms will allow buyers to pick their own fruit which is another good source. You can purchase fruit concentrate from your local winemaking shop as a last resort.  
• You will need to purchase your wine making equipment and have it ready to go. Carboys, fermentation locks, plastic funnels, trial jars, siphon tubes, wine bottles with corks to name a few. These are obtained at local winemaking stores or these days can be ordered online.
• You will also need to purchase your necessary ingredients. Your recipe might require a specific ingredient, but in general, yeast, pectic enzyme, wine tannin, acid blend, and campden tablets will be required for winemaking.
• You will need a good wine recipe. Again your local winemaking shop will have a complete supply and there are countless recipes on the internet. Start with a simple recipe and only increase the complexity after you gain experience. Additionally, use a recipe that others like and that has been well tested.  
• Make wine in a room with a constant temperature of between 45 to 65 degrees, and humidity between 50% to 80%.
• Ensure equipment is properly washed and sanitized prior to use. This not only kills germs but eliminates wild yeasts that can be detrimental to your wine making.
• Read though your recipe and wine making instructions thoroughly, preferably several times, to get a good understanding of the process. Additionally, ensure you know how to use the equipment and have read those instructions as well.

Making homemade wine is a fun hobby to start on your own, or to enjoy with friends and family. After the initial cost of some equipment, the ongoing expenses are fairly small especially if you grow your own fruit. Start small and as your knowledge, confidence, and experience grows you can learn to make different wines to share with everyone.

Simple Homemade Wine Making Instructions

For more wine making instructions [http://www.homemadewineguide.com/wine-making-instructions.html] and to learn more about growing grapes and making homemade wine visit us at: [http://www.homemadewineguide.com/]

Home-made Strawberry Wine - The Simplest Recipe

With a perfect blend of the freshest and sweetest fruits, strawberry wine is among the delicate and exquisite wines you can make at home. If you are unrelenting in making a strawberry wine, you should plan this in advance especially if you are thinking of serving this for a particular occasion because strawberry wines need to age for one year.

To start the winemaking process, gather the needed ingredients. They include seven pounds of whole, freshly picked strawberry fruits. Wash them and hull. You will also need 2 galloons of boiling water, lemon juice and five pounds of sugar.

Wine

To begin the preparation, mash the strawberry fruits in a large crock, or any fitting casserole. Cover the mashed strawberries with boiling water. Add the lemon juice and stir the mixture quickly for around two minutes. You may set this aside, covering with a linen cloth. Rest the crock in a dark and cool area, and make sure to stir it everyday for a week.

After a week, purify the concoction through cheesecloth that is double layered and strain them in a large bowl, thoroughly discarding the strawberry pulp. Mix the strawberry liquid and the sugar, stirring them constantly until the sugar is dissolved. Pour into a container and let it stand for another week, still stirring daily.

When the second week is over, you may pour the strawberry juice into a galloon of wine bottle, preferably glass-made. Cork them loosely. Let it rest in a dark and cool place for about three months. When you see that the wine is no longer bubbling and perfectly clear, you may pour it into individual wine bottles, cork them and let them age for a year. By doing so, you will be serving and tasting a deliciously homemade strawberry wine. This recipe can yield about 40 servings or two galloons.

Strawberry wine may vary accordingly. You can choose to taste it semi sweet, lightly sweet or sour or completely sweet.

Strawberries provide favorable effects to one's health. In addition to having low amount of calories and fats, these fruits are also rich in fiber, folate, antioxidants, potassium and vitamin C. compared to bananas, oranges and apples, they top as far as nutrient contents are concerned.

Apart from strawberry wine, the fruit can also be a perfect ingredient to make cereals, salads, yogurts, muffins, cakes and desserts. They can be eaten dried, frozen or fresh.

Home-made Strawberry Wine - The Simplest Recipe

Milos Pesic is and internationally recognized expert on wine, wine making and wine tasting. He runs a highly popular and comprehensive Red Wine and White Wine web site. For more articles and resources on wine making and tasting, wine recipes, wine reviews, vintage wine and much more visit his site at:

=>http://wine.need-to-know.net/

How to Make Your Own Homemade White Wine

There are normally several steps involved in making a great homemade wine. The recipe given here
uses grapes but you can also use blueberries, raspberries or any other berries of your choice. If you choose to use berries instead of grapes, just the same directions, adjusting the sugar to taste. You will need more sugar for fruits other than grapes as they are much lower in sugar content.

1. The first step in making wine from grapes (or any other fruit of your
choice) is to pick grapes at the peak of their flavor. Under-ripe or green grapes and fruit will make your wine very acidic and sour which is undesirable. Some of the best grapes for making wine include Merlot, Concord, Niagara and Catawba. These are but a few of the many varieties of grapes available for making wine.

Wines

To test whether your fruits are ripe enough mash up a good double handful,strain the juice and then measure the sugar level with a hydrometer. A hydrometer is a device that is used to accurately measure sugar levels and they are available from any winemaking supply shop near you. You should aim for a sugar density around 22° Brix - this equals 1.0982 specific gravity or 11 percent potential alcohol - and the fruit should have a sweet, ripe and slightly tart flavour.

You will have to make sure that the grapes are clean and free of insects and other debris. Get rid of any grapes that look rotten or not usable. You also need to make sure that all the stems are removed before mashing the grapes otherwise it will give your wine a bitter taste.

2. Rinse the grapes under running water to thoroughly cleanse them. Next you will need to crush and press the grapes to separate the pulp and juice from the skins. A good way to do this is to place the fruit in a mesh or nylon bag and press the juices out by hand, or, if you are making a large batch, stomping on them with your feet using clean Wellington or gum boots.

3. If you prefer a sweeter wine, you can also add purchased juice or juice concentrates to your mixture. These juices are available online or from your local wine making shop.

4. Next, add sugar, acid nutrients and yeast to achieve your desired ratio.

Here is a basic white wine recipe:

1 gallon of the fruit of your choice (crushed)

5 pounds of sugar

1 gallon of water

1/8 teaspoon of wine yeast (can be purchased from a winemaking supply
store or ordered online)

Campden tablets

Tartaric Acid

Let the yeast dissolve in a cup of warm water. Use a container of 2-gallon or larger to combine the remainder of the ingredients in. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Next, add the yeast and stir until mixed in properly. You can add more sugar at this stage if you prefer a sweeter wine.

5. Next you should add some ingredients to help you control the process and improve the flavor of your wine. At this stage you should ad a crushed Campden tablet to your must; this is a sulfur tablet which helps control the growth of natural yeast by slowing it down .

6. You can buy a special acidity testing kit to test the acidity of your wine if you desire. Following the instructions that come with the kit, check the titratable acidity (not the pH) and adjust with tartaric acid if necessary. You should aim for around 8 to 10g/L.

For the purpose of good winemaking it is also recommended that you purchase a hydrometer to check the sugar levels. This is used to check the SG (specific gravity level) gravity level on the hydrometer.

Normal table wine has a specific gravity reading of 1.090. Desert wines will have a higher reading, and dry wines, lower. The hydrometer is also used to measure alcohol levels.

Consult the instructions that comes with the hydrometer for doing proper readings. Both the acidity testing kit and the hydrometer can be purchased from a winemaking supply store near your or you can order it online.

You should also use small taste tests throughout the winemaking process to determine if your wine is developing without problems.

7. Ensure that all containers and utensils you use have been cleaned thoroughly and sterilized. Unsterilized and dirty equipment will result in fermenting bad bacteria with your wine which will give it an off taste.

The usual container used for fermenting wine is called a carboy or demijohn. These come in glass or can also be purchased in plastic. Just make sure that if you elect to buy the plastic one that the plastic is food graded. Using any other plastic may cause chemicals to leach into your wine that will make you sick as well as change the flavor of your wine.

8. Cover the container loosely and allow the must to ferment 7 to 10 days at room temperature (around 70 degrees Fahrenheit or a little above). The container should be glass, ceramic or food grade plastic. Metal containers should be avoided could cause a negative chemical reaction due to the acids in the wine. Stir the must at least once a day.

9. Once the primary fermentation stage is complete, strain the liquid and place in a jug filling the jug nearly to the top to ferment. You will need to put an airlock on the mouth of the jug to allow the gases caused by the fermentation process to escape. (An airlock is a device made specifically for winemaking and can be purchased from any winemaking supply store. This airlock allows carbon dioxide to freely escape the wine while preventing oxygen from entering) Place the jug in a warm place to allow fermentation to continue. During this process, bubbles will rise out of the must mixture for six weeks or longer. When the bubbles have ceased, the sugar is all gone or the yeast have finally expired.

10. At this stage you can take a taste of your wine if you are curious about the taste, but do not drink a whole glassful. The wine is still fermenting and will probably result in an upset stomach! It is OK to taste little bits of wine as you go, but not drink too much of it the whole process is complete and the wine has had a chance to age.

11. At this stage, you can now rack the wine into a container for aging. Racking is the term used for siphoning the fermented wine into another container with the use of a siphoning hose. You can use fine mesh or cheesecloth to siphon the wine through. Let the wine sit until it clears.

12. When the liquid is clear and and no longer bubbling, this means that the fermentation is complete and you can now bottle your wine and cork it.

13. You can create your own labels and identify your wine with the year and your family name or you can give your wine a special brand name. You can handwrite the labels or create them in a word program and print them.

14. For the first several weeks, you should store your wine on its side - this will prevent the corks from drying out. Your wine should be stored in a clean place that is preferably cool and not subject to temperature fluctuations.

15. To develop the wine to best flavor, store it for at least 6 months to a year before drinking. Most wines improve in flavor if aged longer.

16. Now it is time to practice patience. Winemaking is not a hobby for people who are impatient. Wine can take anything from several months to several years to reach its full potential and flavour and you will be fully rewarded for waiting!

How to Make Your Own Homemade White Wine

FREE Newsletter shows you how to make your own wine from home. Learn how to make wine from grapes or any other fruit. Sign up for your copy today at: Homemade Wine and learn the fine art of WineMaking at your own leisure!

How to Make Wine - Adding Flavor to Your Homemade Wine

Whether you are already making your own wine or just pondering jumping into the rapidly growing hobby, one thing that you will want to experiment with is adding or changing the flavor of your wine.

Sometimes, just fermenting the fruit or grape juice doesn't produce a taste that seems "full". There seems to be something missing.

Wine

What can you do? How can you round out the taste?

Here's 3 different things you can do that will improve the fullness of the taste of your homemade wines.

Oaking

You can give your wine an aok flavor very easily. There are two ways to do this. You can add oak chips before the fermentation or after the fermentation. There are even 3 different flavors of oak chips.

Oak chip manufacturers try to duplicate the charring found inside the big barrels that are used to age wine in. There are light toast, medium toast and heavy toast chips. The toast part simply means how much charring from a flame there is on the chips.

You just add these chips directly to your must or your wine and let them soak.

Another oaking method preferred by a lot of home winemakers is to flavor some vodka with oak chips and then just pour some of the oaked vodka into the wine to add and oaky flavor.

Sugar

Some people prefer their wines a little less than dry. Some like their wine downright sweet.

The secret to sweetening wines is this: you have to make sure the wine is stabilized before adding any sugar or sugar water. You can stabilize your wine using potassium sorbate, a common food preservative. This takes place after all of the fermentation is complete and the wine has mostly cleared.

How much do you add? Just sweeten to taste. Add a little sugar water, and taste. That's all there is to it.

Glycerin

If your wine seems a little thin, you can thicken it up by adding glycerin. Glycerin will give your wine "legs" and a somewhat better mouthfeel. Legs don't really have anything to do with the taste as much as the ability of the wine to cling to the sides of a wine glass.

Glycerin will give your wine a more rounded and smoother feel in your mouth when you are drinking the wine.

Try these 3 winemaking tips on your next batch of wine. You could surprise yourself!

How to Make Wine - Adding Flavor to Your Homemade Wine

Want more information on how to make your own wine? Hop over to http://www.how-to-make-wine.net/free_book.html and download the free 24 page winemaking book. For a complete online winemaking library, go to http://www.how-to-make-wine.net