If you have been waiting for the next step in making wine from concentrate you are in luck!  If you need to catch up on what is going on up until now you should read my previous post.  The next step is to rack our wine from the primary to the carboy.  In layman’s terms: transfer our wine from the first container to the glass jugs.

So how do you know when to rack your wine?  You will notice a big decrease in your airlock action as the bubbles slow down. You should also take the specific gravity with your hydrometer.  For this batch ours is now measuring at 1.000 after fermenting.

For this step you will need:

You will be fitting your airlock from the primary into the bung that goes into the top of the carboy.  You will also need to go purchase tubing at a local wine shop if you have one in the area.  You will see in a picture below that you need to mix the wine but I couldn’t find that tool on Amazon to show you.

The auto siphon that I pointed out for you on Amazon is so nice to have.  You put your tubing into the carboy and you pumped the siphon part a few times and it keeps going for a while!  This creates suction for you that you do need to restart occasionally.  If you don’t get it to automatically do it then you will be pumping the whole time and that gets tiring!

You can see in the picture above that the siphon holds a lot of wine.  I will warn you that you need to watch your siphon and be sure you are not collecting too much wine in the tubing because if you don’t pay attention you are going to make a mess! Before I was aware that it filled inside the siphon in addition to the tube that transfers it to the carboy I made a mess!  I pulled the siphon too far up and spilled that wine all over the floor and myself.

After you rack your wine you will see that it doesn’t go up to the top.  You want very minimal surface area exposed so you want to top it off so it is into the neck.  You can top it off with water or I have read others top it off with a wine they enjoy.  You will figure out what works for your taste buds but for this we topped off with water.

I have also read that people sanitized marbles and put the into the carboy so they don’t have to top it off.  This would result in less wine in the end but it also wouldn’t loss strength.

This is the sediment left in the bottom of your primary after you rack the wine out.  This consists of dead yeast cells and is the reason we rack the wine so many times.  You will see that even in the glass carboys there will be a little layer of sediment that will cause your wine to be cloudy if the sediment is disrupted.

Tip: You don’t want to disturb the sediment much while you are racking the wine so you don’t transfer much into the carboy.  This is another reason I find the auto siphon so helpful.  When you don’t have to pump you aren’t moving air around in the liquid and things stay pretty calm.

You want to purchase the mixer that can fit into a drill because it makes your life WAY easier!  Once you transfer your wine you need to get some of the air bubbles out because there will be a ton.  Having the drill is the quick and lazy way to do it.  If you don’t have this you will be spinning by hand for 10-15 minutes!!!

Tip: when using the mixer take little breaks because the air bubbles will creep up fast and overflow your carboy!  Then you will have a sticky mess!

See the ring of air bubbles at the top of our batch?  Even though the bubbles have slowed down you will still continue to get them and will need to mix them out.  No one wants a bubbly wine! Now you just secure your airlock and let time do it’s thing!

Stay tuned for the next step!

I am in no way an expert wine maker but I am a pretty good home brewer according to all of the people who have tried it!  We first got into wine making because it was cheaper than buying wine and that snowballed into our wedding.  We made our wedding favors bottles of wine and it was a great idea because it was about $1 a bottle to brew and that included the labels and ribbons to decorate them.

Now I will be upfront and tell you that the initial cost for wine making supplies can be daunting if you want things like what I have pictured here but never fear because there are alternatives that you can use and that people have been using for years!

• 5 Gallon Glass Carboys- you can use the gallon jugs that wine come in but you will have to break down your 5 gallon batch into 5 smaller ones.  Check out Craigslist or ask your friends if they are getting rid of some.  People recycle these so you could always check in your neighborhood too.

• 5 Gallon Fermenter- you can use any food grade plastic bucket!  Check out bakeries or Home Depot.You would have to drill a hole in the lid and fit it with a rubber grommet so you can put the airlock on.

• Airlocks- you can use a balloon if you are not using a bucket type of container.  If you are just doing a gallon batch put a balloon on top of your jug and make sure it is sealed with a rubber band!  Airlocks really are not that expensive though.

• Hydrometer- This is a must have to read your alcohol levels.  I guess you could just not read the specific gravity and hope for the best but it isn’t worth it to me.

• Sanitizer- This is a must have and isn’t expensive for how long it lasts.  I like the Five Star found below.

• Yeast-This is a must have and Lalvin at my store is $1.09

• Wine Kits- Frozen concentrate if you like fruit wines.  This peach chardonnay kit is delicious though!

The first thing you need to when making wine is to sanitize your equipment. You should sanitize everything that is going to come in contact with your wine: 5 gallon buckets, stirrers etc.  This is what Michael bought this time to sanitize things and I don’t have pictures of it because he did it without me.  The instructions are pretty cut and dry on the sanitizing agent so just follow them.

Here are the 5 gallon buckets (AKA primaries) that we use to make our batches. You do not need to go out and purchase these to make wine.  You could very well use a glass gallon jug that wine comes in that you buy at the store.  Buy the wine and enjoy it and you get a jug to start brewing in!

For the first batch I am going to make is from Old Orchard’s Blueberry Pomegranate.  We have made this flavor before and it turned out to be great!  It aged fabulous and got better too.  For my batch you will need 10 of the concentrates and I picked these up for .79 a piece which is $7.90 for the juice!

I use 2 cups of sugar and 2  jugs of concentrate per gallon.  I take 1 quart of water and boil it so I can dissolve the sugar into it.  We recently got a bigger pot too so I don’t have to do the sugar dissolve step in multiple steps.

The picture above is my new giant pot and I am boiling 5 quarts of water and 10 cups of sugar until the sugar is dissolved.

Next you will want to add your sugar water and your 10 containers of juice concentrate and top off with water until you have 5 gallons in the bucket.

When it comes to the yeast you have a couple of options.

1. You can sprinkle your yeast over the top of your batch (called wort or must) like I have always done and is pictured above.  Do not stir it into your wine though!  This is called ‘pitching’ your yeast.
2. You can make a starter (aka activated yeast)  Typically you take 1 cup 105 degrees F water and sprinkle the yeast on top to ‘rehydrate’ it.  Wait about 15 minutes.  Once it is hydrated you would add sugar or juice to ‘feed’ the yeast. After about 30 minutes see if it is rockin’ and rollin’ and if so then you can ‘pitch’ the yeast!   The is an extra step to ensure that the yeast is going to work before adding it to your must.

 Tips for a good fermentation:

• Store your fermenting batch somewhere warm because cooler temperatures will slow down your process and perhaps stop all together.
• Add yeast nutrient and/or energizer before pitching your yeast.  The more food for your yeast the better your fermenting will go!  Energizer also helps if you get a slow fermentation.
• Don’t take the lid off of your fermenter a lot because you could possibly let germs in.  The primary is OK being plastic because the yeast is creating carbon dioxide which acts as a protective barrier keeping germs out!  That is also why you store your wine in the following stages in glass containers.

 Now you can put your lid and your airlock on and wait for the bubbles in the airlock to stop!  Usually it take about 5-7 days.  While it is fermenting you will smell it working if you get close to the fermenter.  My cats love this step because they know that if they get on top of the fermenter then the extra air will come out and it makes noise.  They are so silly!