Grow Your Own Magazine

hi i am looking into making my own wine for the first time
if i buy a starter kit wi a fermenter,hydrometer,thermometer,airlock,and steriliser what else will i need?
i always thought you needed demi johns or has the fermenter replaced that?
is there any good cheap mail order places?

thanks

If you have a Wilkinsons near you they do a Wine Buddy kit for twenty quid which has everything you need to make your first gallon of wine - except bottles. It is a good kit to start with as it is done in a week and makes a jolly pleasant tipple. It teaches you the basics and you can progress or not as you wish thereafter.

__________________
Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

We enjoy making wine from any wild growing fuits ! Really nice wines can be made from elderberry, blackberry, sloe, strawberry and redcurrants or a mixture of all of the above, in fact you can use virtually anything, we even tried to make a pumpkin wine! It's great fun, cheap and very rewarding.

It looks like the starter kit includes most of what you need to get started. I would suggest that you might get another container possibly another fermenter purely for ease. When the fruit has been fermenting with yeast water and any added sugar it will need to be strained and then put into another sterile container (this is when you would use the airlock in your fermenter or more commonly a demijohn).

As far as cheap sites, I tend to go on ebay, there are a couple of good shops on there that are great for getting yeast and anything else relating to winemaking or you could go to any local car boots and look for bargains.

Good luck and feel free to contact me should you need any more information or help.

Try charity shops for demijohns, Boots used to sell them but I think they've gone politically correct and stopped selling winemaking products. Also check out bookshops and charity shops for recipe books for what we call "country wines", made from fruits, flowers that you can pick from the hedgerows or lottie. I used to make loads, but don't seem to have the time or the space now.

I'm hoping to go back to winemaking when I retire soon. My late husband and I had great fun in the early 70's making wine using C J Berry's book "Home Wine Making" or similar title - now out of print but a great little paperback - arranged according to months of the year - we even made coffee wine(instant was more expensive in those days!) in the dead of winter. There is a good website homewinemaking.co.uk - very informative, very helpful people will give you recipes, advice whatever. Go on, I thoroughly recommend this and predict with all the 'anti-social' flavour news we will go back to v.expensive alcohol in the shops - if only to raise revenue for the Govt.

CJJ Berry is still available in most brewstores. Title is now First Steps in Winemaking. Still arranged according to the month.

__________________
Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

the nearest wilkinsons to me is in carlisle which is a little too far!!!!!
but i will not give in i am off to scour the net for options.
i may tire you guys with questions about my wine soon!
i am growing grape vines so hopefully next year i will have enough to make some from home grown grapes!!!!

Oh dear, here are the kits, available on ebay

WINE MAKING STARTER KIT CABERNET SAUVIGNON RED WINE on eBay, also, Beer Wine Making, Food Drink, Home Garden (end time 04-Jun-08 20:16:12 BST)

WineBuddy Wine Making Starter Kit 6 Bottles White Wine on eBay, also, Beer Wine Making, Food Drink, Home Garden (end time 08-Jun-08 16:36:21 BST)

Hope that helps. I can also recommend the California Connoisseur range (well the Sauvignon Blanc anyhoo) which makes a really lovely wine - sorry, can't tell you where to find it online though.

__________________
Happy Gardening,
Shirley

http://www.honeyjukes.co.uk

Hi! nomad,
I have to side with rustylady regarding collecting your equipment. Given that the fun is making wine from low priced or free ingredients look to your local tip for demijohns. I have also found them next to glass recycling bins and they are often on freecycle with all the other bits.
They can be cleaned with the cheapest supermarket bleach, wash well and don't splash your jeans!!

I have collected a useful number of books from charity shops about brewing. I have never spent over £1 for a recipe book. they all cover the subject in slightly different ways and you (I did) can learn from all of them.

Have fun

freecycle always have equiptment on, we dont have a fermenter whatever that is, just demijohns, we bought some old demijohns from a brew shop on line for £5 each, they are very cool they have old brewery names printed on them.

__________________
Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

i have been looking in the charity shops near me but to no avail but i will keep on looking
i got nearly all my cook books from them,like old farmhouse cook books which it shows you how to use every scrap of food you have and nothing goes to waste including calf brain and sheep heads!!!!!!! never tried them though!
and italian cook books as i love italian food
and fish cook books as i do alot of sea fishing from the rocks, i went today and caught mackeral and pollack and dog fish!!

keep looking nomad somthing will turn up, or get yourself on freecycle

__________________
Yo an' Bob
Walk lightly on the earth
take only what you need
give all you can
and your produce will be bountifull

One thing to remember about buying mail-order is that postage on things like airlocks will be more than the price of the airlock, so make sure you buy a few large orders, rather than several small ones.
In particular, once you 'get the bug' you will keep finding more things to make wine out of, and need extra demijohns/fermenters, bottles and corks.
For 'country' wines, I would acquire a 2 plastic gallon bucket with a reasonably well fitting lid as a 'first stage' fermenter (you can just about get away with ONE of those, because nothing stays in it more than a few days).
We just got the elderflower going for this year, a second gallon will be started off next week. I have been known to make wine out of any fruit that is going cheap (with practice you can get away with fruit starting to spoil), and most of them are quite drinkable eventually (some take a long time to mature. I also used to make dandelion wine, but not done that for a few years.

Hallo Hilary B: Noticed that you were making elderflower wine(?!), would love to have your recipe. Tried the champagne,had a couple of explosions and ended up decating into a plastic barrel with airlock. It tastes like almost flat perry and smells wonderful, am sure it lacks sugar but it certainly has some alcohol. Have bought the measures for alcohol and sugar but have no idea what to do with them as don't have any info. Any tips would be really appreciated.