How To Make Muscadine Wine. Start to Finish

hey everybody welcome back to the channel appreciate you guys stopping by on today's video we're going to be learning how to make muscadine [Music] i wine to take the opportunity to make a real quick video and show you guys how we make wine here on our farm from grapes that we grow in our vineyard it's really really easy and every single thing that i use to make our wine you can pick up on amazon so if you have any questions about where we get our stuff and the prices and all that just check out amazon i'm going to try to keep this video really really simple and really [Music] really really basic it's really easy to make wine so if you guys just follow along you too could be making your own wine at home we're going to be making a three gallon batch which will look like this okay in order to make a three gallon batch we'll need two uh two gallon buckets and like i said again you get these on amazon that come with the lids and they also come with the airlocks if they don't come with airlocks just order some airlocks too they're a couple of bucks but you really need these next you're going to need some sterilizer because you're going to want to sterilize everything that touches your wine whether it be the spoon the filters to scrape your grapes out the buckets anything that touches my wine i make sure i sterilize it first we use this product called star sand uh of course you get it on amazon and it lasts forever you it doesn't take but a little drop to make a lot first thing i do is sterilize my bucket real well and i just let that sit for a minute it doesn't affect the flavor or the taste of your wine and after leaving it sitting for a minute or two i rinse it out real good with some cold water next you're going to need some grapes or whatever type of fruit you want to use we've made a lot of different wines here lately out of pineapple uh scuppernose this spring and summer we're gonna make some plums some peach uh you could do this with a lot of different fruits but our favorite seeds however muscadine growers are muscadine grapes this this is the isis variety of grapes it's one of our absolute favorites it's a real super strong sweet really really sweet grape just fantastic but what we do is we put them in one gallon bags that way they're pre-measured because we're going to put one gallon of grapes and just top it off with water so all right for step one that's basically it you need a couple of two gallon buckets uh with the lids and the air locks you need a gallon of grapes per bucket and that will fill your bucket half full you fill it you fill it with water right to the top of the grapes and we're going to let them thaw out until tomorrow tomorrow we'll do the crushing something just popped in my head we're on a well we use well water if you're on a city or county that has a water that has a lot of chemicals in it i wouldn't recommend using that i would try to go to the store and buy some purified water or some kind of spring water something like that i think that would be better for your wine but stick around we'll start crushing some grapes it's been 24 hours our grapes should be thawed out we're going to take just a regular old potato smasher and smash our grapes we will make sure we sanitize first always sanitize everything how about that nice purple color already coming out isn't that pretty next we're going to need what's called a camden tablet uh the camden tablets what it will do is help kill off any of the wild yeast that was left on the grapes uh because we didn't wash them or anything we just picked them bag them and put them in the freezer but this will help kill off any wild yeast and get it ready for tomorrow when we add the sugar water the yeast and some other stuff but you'll need some camden tablets uh like i say everything i'm showing you guys will be on amazon real cheap it's actually just a little white tablet i take two spoons and just squish them together they break up really really easy and then just sort of spread them around give them just a little stir okay well you will need the camden tablets uh at the beginning and at the end of our wine making like i say it helps kill yeast or any uh kind of bacteria anything that you don't want in your wine so you have to get some canning tablets now the airlocks if you're curious about having the airlocks on right now basically the airlocks are just to keep anything from getting inside our wine like gnats or little flies or any or anything that you don't want in your wine it just sort of covers that hole up you really don't need it right now but you really need to cover your hole up you don't want anything getting in your wine because we're going to have it sitting for another 24 hours and then tomorrow at this time we'll add our sugar water and our yeast i think you'll get a kick out of that this is night number three to me this is where it starts to get fun because we start adding our yeast and all the chemicals and things we need to make a really nice wine our grapes have been sitting in the bucket for 24 hours with a camden tablet letting it kill off all the wild yeast and things we don't want growing in our wine but the chemicals we're going to need for tonight will be an acid blend it's called acid blend we'll also need a pectic enzyme this helps break down your fruit and pull them sugars and stuff out of your food and a yeast nutrient to help feed our yeast these are basically the three chemicals that i use and i'll only use them one time right at the beginning of the fermenting process next we're going to need our yeast and you can get all this all this stuff on amazon as i said before this yeast is an ec 1118. our pectic enzyme we're going to use a half a teaspoon our acid blend will use a full teaspoon and two teaspoons of yeast nutrient stir that in a little okay next we're going to be making our sugar syrup that will top off our buckets we're going to need two quarts of water and four pounds of sugar per bucket and i do it the easy way you don't have to heat up any water on the stove i like my stuff to be kind of lukewarm because i don't want my water to be ice cold i don't want it to be too hot i'm always very paranoid about wiping out my yeast so i just try to keep everything nice and and warm we'll just keep this moving around until it starts to dilute and break down really really well [Music] okay while this starts to break down we're going to get our yeast started this is one of my absolute favorite things to do and what better way to do it than in a nice wine glass then we'll add about a tablespoon of sugar and get it diluted and we're just going to add about half a pack of yeast to each we'll end up using the whole pack with just half for each container we won't stir it we just let it sit [Music] all right i just love watching that yeast explode and start to work it's really fascinating the yeast is looking good it sinks all the way to the bottom and in about two or three minutes it just all of a sudden explodes it's really cool and i get a kick out of that okay now we'll add our sugar water to each container all right next we add our yeast and we just pour it all around just have a little fun take a little water and we just sort of stir that in and everything's been sterilized and i don't mind mixing my spoon with each batch because eventually this is all going in the same cardboard all right well that's it your chemicals your sugar water and your yeast super simple you don't want to bring that you don't want to add additional water to bring that level up to the top for the fact when that yeast starts working it's going to push that fruit up and cause what we call a cap that will want to break every day but it'll eventually push that fruit up and it'll clog up our air locks and we don't want that so you want to leave a little headspace in there about an inch of headspace inside and i'll show you on the next clip what i'm talking about how it pushes that fruit up uh because we'll have to go in here every day starting to start in this time tomorrow and break that cap up and give it a good stir until that yeast stops working off but stick around i'll show you uh all about that next okay it's been three days since we put our yeast in and every day i've opened up the lid and stirred our wine up broke that cap loose and stirred our wine that's what you should do every day i thought i would show you guys uh what what it looks like when that fruit comes up at the top i'll show you the foam where the yeast is working i thought you guys would get a kick out of seeing the airlocks work that's what you want to see you want to see your bubblers bubbling that lets you know that carbon dioxide is being released the yeast is working and producing alcohol so we're going to take the lids off these things and i'll show you what it looks like on the inside see how all that fruit's been breaking down it's just looking great there's a close-up and you can kind of see the foam in there that's the little bubbles that are working that is that yeast and you'll really see it when i stir it and you see that cap just needs to be pushed around push back down all that foam is that yeast working for you it smells absolutely fantastic that's my one of my favorite parts is breaking that lid and that nice aroma that comes out of there it's just beautiful i give it a little stir from the bottom just get everything moving around and look at that color that color is crazy cool that's number one let's see what number two looks like okay as you can see the bubblers are working uh and we will stir this every single night we will not skip at night we'll stir this every single night until you get to where you see these where they're just you'll see in a couple weeks they'll slow down but once it's completely stops you watch it for a few minutes and you don't see a bubble whatsoever or when you stir it and you're not seeing any more foam it's time to take it out of the buckets and put it in our glass car boy stick around we're going to stir these for the next couple weeks and i'll show you what we do after this yeast dies all well it's been a couple of weeks these guys have settled way down they're hardly bubbling at all i know there's still some still some fermenting going on in there so what we're going to do is we're just going to uh pump both of these buckets into a three gallon carboy uh put an air lock on it and just let it sit for a couple more weeks and let make sure all that fermenting is over with and we'll let the sediment settle down to the bottom uh but first we got to scrape out all the grapes and all the stuff that settles to the bottom of these buckets before we do that and clean it up a little bit okay we're just gonna siphon this into the three gallon carboy really really simple now that we have it in the three gallon cardboard we'll let this sit for a couple weeks it'll settle out we'll let all that sediment settle to the bottom we'll re-rack it into some buckets this will be in a week or so and we're trying to work on getting that clarity that we want we want it really crystal clear to be really really pretty and wait the way we do that is we'll just leave it in here we're going to put it in the back of this closet for a week or two you could leave it for as long as you want but uh we usually just keep our eye on it make sure we don't see a lot of bubbles around the edge or any activity in our airlock to make sure it's done fermenting for one thing and uh and we'll work on that clarity at the same time but uh stick around we're gonna put this thing in the closet next clip i'll show you how we rack it and try to work on getting this uh wine a little more clear all right what we're gonna do next is we're going to take and try to get all the sediment that's settled to the bottom of our carboy ouch which is called racking we're going to take it out of here rack it into these buckets and then once we dump this sediment out we'll put it back in the carboy put an air lock back on it let it settle one more time and it'll be ready for bottling it's really really simple and as you can see nothing has happened the yeast has all died off everything is settled uh we have our muscadine we also have another one we've been doing on the side this is our pineapple wine i'll show you guys it just because we're doing it at the same time but both of them have settled out and they just look great you can see the difference from when they were fermented all right we racked off all our wine down into our buckets um this is the part that gets everybody and me it's really hard to make yourself throw that away but we don't have a filtration they make these wine filters that you can buy on amazon uh they're 150 bucks this to me is just the easiest way to do it just to dump that and rack it right back into the car boy and let it settle one more time and you will have a crystal clear one and by the time you back sweeten it it fills it right back up so you just you're filling that space up with your sugar water when you're back sweetened but uh it's really tough and i know i'm gonna get a lot of comments about dumping that down it really drives me nuts too but i don't have a filtration system uh if you guys want to buy me one hey rock on this my wife's over there laughing but this is the cheap way to do it i show i told you guys this is the way we do it and it works great every time so bite the bullet dump this and just start new all right as you can see all the sediments gone there will be very little sediment left in this when we're done that that really wrecked really nice i mean it's just crystal clear just beautiful and we add our airlock back to it and like i say by the time we start sweeping it we won't back sweeten it that much but there'll be a lot enough back sweeten to feel to go back to your three gallons it'll really turn out nice that is really turning out pretty and the alcohol is really strong we can smell it all over it's really really strong so uh hey looking great and what's nice is you can actually get a little sample of what you're making get those little bubbles out of there that you look already clear as a bale just looks great smells fantastic i could just sit and smell it all day it smells just like muscadines i just love it it's really really good it's a little dry it's a little dry so for you guys that like a dry wine don't add anything to it uh we'll rack it like i say one more time and then we'll bottle it it's almost ready but i mean look at that oh it's just it's just beautiful beautiful it's strong that's really good all right it's been a couple weeks since we separated our wine from our sediment we're going to do it one more time we've let this settle uh we should have just a little teeny weeny bit at the bottom but we got our sugar water waiting to back sweeten and we're ready to bottle so stick around we're going to take and siphon this out into some buckets and then get our bottles out and we've sanitized everything we sanitized our bottles anything that i say again anything touches that wine you make sure you sanitize because we don't want to mess our wine up but we're ready to take this put it in our buckets and put it in some bottles and get ready to sample some and i just want to show you guys real quick we had a sediment to about right here the last time and i mean you really i'm just trying to get a better view but you really don't even see anything but it just looks so crystal clear it just turns out really really nice okay what we did uh with our sugar water is we just made it one to one one quart uh warm water one quart of sugar and uh that makes a nice sugar syrup to back sweeten and uh i just basically use a measuring cup we do one cup and we've made it enough to where we already have our preference we start off with two cups per batch that was nice we basically start off with two cups per batch and then we'll go from there and i didn't video this but the remainder that was the last bit that was in that three gallon carboy we poured it into another glass and really looked at it because i hate i told you guys i hate throwing anything away as far as especially our wine but there was zero sediment there was a very very small amount of sediment i just put it right back in my wine it's just going to be for me and my wife to consume you see how clear that looks it just turned out beautiful my camera girl trying to make me laugh smells great dang that is good that is right where i want it i'm watching my wife behind the camera and it's never sweet enough for her so when you're sweetening your wine it's a taste preference that's the fun part is you sit back and you just add a little add a little and find that sweet spot that you like but i will add a little more because i know my wife wants it sweeter i'm going to add one more cup to each batch and that ought to be just right i just love it that's where it's staying right there but you back sweeping it to whatever you guys prefer let's put this in a bottle i'm ready to bottle it up that first siphon was a lot bigger i can't remember the sizes but they're on amazon everything's on amazon it's just a bigger one that fits inside of a three gallon carboy this little mini pump is perfect for these buckets and it comes with a uh if it doesn't come with one make sure you order a bottle filler it has a little plunger right there that when you siphon the liquid in the wine in here you'll push that plunger and it'll fill our jars do all right well that gave us 13 and three almost 14 full bottles but we're going to cork this one this will be the one we sort of sip on through the week we need to cork all these uh we bought a corking tool this thing is awesome i love it it's going to be on amazon my wife just said she's going to put all the links to this stuff in the description at the bottom of the video so you guys can find all these tools and things we use on amazon this thing is a must-have and the corks we use we sanitize our corks too we put them all in a bowl spray them down and with the same sanitizer these are a number eight cork uh you'll see a number eight and number nine these go in there absolutely perfect let me show you nice court bottle all right there they are they look great stick around we're almost at the end of the video we're going to let these sit for 24 hours before we finally put them up uh but tomorrow night we'll put our little decorative caps on each one of our bottles to sort of prune them up a little bit we get these on amazon as well you can get all the colors of the rainbow there's just so many different colors you can choose from but stick around we got 24 more hours and we're done all right well the last step is to put our little shrink wrap cap on you don't have to do this we're going to put a label on here as well you don't have to do that i just do because it looks good you can bottle it just the way it is it's ready to go i mean it's ready but you could buy these shrink wrap caps in tons of different colors i i mix and match a bunch of them i bought a ton of these things and uh i meant to say two is you can really venture off into different colored bottles too because there's a lot of different colored bottles green blue clear the frosted and i've been buying a bunch of different bottles too because it can be it could be a lot of fun mixing things up like that but anyway we're gonna i'm gonna show you guys how we shrink wrap our little caps to our wine bottles first step is i'm going to get some water boiling and once it comes to a boil i'll cut it off and let that water calm down so we're able to stick our bottles in the water a lot of people use hair dryers they make another little thing that sets down on here and dries it's just extra money uh this works fantastic and it only takes two seconds it really works you're really going to be blown away how easy this is all right we're boiling we're just going to cut it off and set this to the side let that calm down all right all we do is we put our finger right at the edge so we don't stick it in the water and we'll we'll submerge about that much of it and then it'll shrink wrap here and you need to sink the rest how about that nice well that's what they look like when they're done they just look fantastic i love that extra little character it gives you wine bottle i love those all right next we'll put our labels on uh that's optional as well like i said you can print your own labels out uh that's what we did uh actually we were gifted some labels from some friends of ours so we're gonna put those on and they'll look really really nice [Music] all right guys thank you guys so much for checking out my video i know this was a long one but i wanted to get this one out we've really gotten addicted to making my own muscadine wine i just want to show you guys that you can do it too if i can do it anybody can do it it's super easy this video should help you from grapes to bottle shouldn't be no problem if you'll follow this video step by step we're making some fantastic wine thanks again guys do me a favor like subscribe share and comment i'd really appreciate it love you guys death and we'll see you on the next video

Channel: Kinfolk Farm

Views: 72,021

Keywords: muscadine, grow, garden, gardening, Georgia, farming, farm, prepping, selfsufficient, self-reliant, grapes, wine

Id: mdLIOZ6S3Qc

Length: 31min 48sec (1908 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 06 2022