Teakettle Kitchen-Brewed Wine
by Jim Gerrish
This is wine you can make in your own kitchen,
one bottle at a time. Most recipes call for making 1 to 5 gallons
at a time, but that's too much for me to handle, so I worked out
this method of wine making in a teakettle and a bottle to cut out
the hassle.
1. Using an old wine bottle that I've cleaned
and scalded with boiling water, I fill it with bottled spring
water to the height I want the finished wine to be - more or
less.
2. I pour that wine bottle of spring water
into my glass tea kettle and start it boiling. I like using glass
utensils and containers because you can immediately see if they
are clean and can immediately see the results of each process.
3. I use 1 to 2 cups of fruit measured in a
(Pyrex(r) glass measuring cup); fresh or frozen raspberries,
fresh or frozen blueberries, fresh seedless grapes, etc. These
get mashed in the glass measuring cup using a fork and/or a
spoon. Naturally the frozen fruit needs to thaw first. Try to
fish out any large seeds, but don't worry too much because we can
filter them out later.
4. The mashed fruit gets dumped into the tea
kettle of boiling water, let it boil a bit longer, stir it up and
then cover the top and let the whole thing sit for two days. Did
I mention the entire process takes six months to a year? Well it
does, so you do a little bit of work every now and then, but most
of the time you spend waiting for your wine to ferment and then
age.
5. Now I pour the liguid mash through a screen
sieve (Dollar Store) which is placed inside a funnel in the top
of my clean wine bottle. Mostly clear liquid runs down into the
bottle. I can add a bit more water at this stage so it comes up
to the level I am expecting to have in the bottle. Rinse out the
tea kettle and pour the bottle of wine mash back into it.This
time add wine yeast (not bread yeast!), stir, cover and let it
sit for five days. Don't cover it tightly or it may erupt all
over your kitchen when the gas begins to come out of the yeast
mixture.
6. After five days of sitting, pour it back
into the wine bottle, but this time have both the screen AND a
coffee filter inside the funnel. Because of the paper coffee
filter, it will pour more slowly, but the liquid going into the
bottle should be relatively clear. If you have an airlock, cover
the bottle with it, otherwise cover it loosely with a cork and
every few days let the pressure out until you no longer get any
pressure. This time the bottle should be stored in a cool dark
place for about three months.
7. By the end of three months, the wine on top
should be clear, but you may have some sludge on the bottom. This
is where a second wine bottle, the same size as the first, comes
in handy. The preferred way to "rack" the wine is with
a siphon, but that can be messy. Racking the wine involves
siphoning out only the top clear liquid while leaving the bottom
sludge alone. An easier way is to simply pour the wine very
carefully and slowly from the full bottle, through a funnel with
a coffee filter inside it and down into the second clean bottle.
Stop pouring when you get near the dregs in the bottom of the
bottle. You can wash that bottle out thoroughly and pour the wine
back in, or just put a stopper on the second bottle and let the
first be the next empty bottle for "racking" the next
batch of wine. You can add some more water to bring the volume of
wine back up in the bottle if you wish. Let it sit at least one
more month, then you can have a taste test. If the wine tastes
weak, add a bit of sugar and let it sit a few more days.