Hello, I'm Liz Zorab and this is Byther
Farm. I'm back in the kitchen again today and this morning I'm making some wine, so I
thought I would show you the process that I use to start off a gallon of wine.
And today I'm making some plum wine. This is not a full of winemaking video, but it
will show you how I start it off.One of the most important things is that
everything you use in relation to your wine is very, very clean, so it's worth
sterilizing equipment before you begin. Here I have three and a half pounds of
plums that were previously frozen, so these are last year's plums. And two days
ago I popped them into this bowl, poured boiling water over them covered them and
I've left them to stand for the flavor and the color, as you can see, to come out
of the. And I also put in a very small handful of sultanas.
So they've just been sitting and it smells wonderful. So I'm going to strain
them off. Okay, I'm not going to throw this away
now because I'm going to use that for something else. So this is the
liquid that I'm going to make my wine with. Here's my demijohn I've just
sterilized this using a sterilizing solution. I actually use baby
equipment sterilizing tablets. As long as you follow the instructions on whatever
you get that should be absolutely fine. I can't, I'm not going to guide you because the instructions will be different for
different products. So into here I'm now going to add sugar, the water from
the plums and my yeast mixture. Using a funnel I've weighed out my sugar, now
that was three and a half pounds of plums that I put into the bowl to soak
and we're going to use three pounds of sugar and I'm putting the sugar in first
so the funnel isn't wet when I'm trying to put the sugar in, because otherwise what
happens is the sugar sticks to the funnel.
it took me about three or four goes to learn that one, so that's a good tip! The next thing I'm going to do is add in the the
fruit juices. Now it really doesn't matter what fruit it is as long as you've
extracted the juices and the flavor from it. What I used to do would be to press
the fruit but something like plums sas an awful lot of bits come ou,t which means
you don't get a particularly clear wine and it takes an awfully long time to
settle. So I've stopped squeezing things like plums and pressing them to get the
last bit of juice out, I just let them stand. And next I'm going to put my fruit
juice in. And the next thing I want to do is make
up the yeast mixture to go in there. And I use a dry active yeast for winemaking
and obviously you follow the instructions. But with this one, for one
gallon it's one teaspoon. It doesn't look like very much in here and there's a
certainly a temptation to add in extra, but the yeast is a living thing and it grows
and swells and multiplies, and this really is plenty enough. So I'm going to
add that to my mixture as well and then I'm going to top this up with lukewarm
water. And before this gets completely filled up I'm going to sterilize the
handle of a long spoon just to give it a stir and a mix in. The reason I'm doing this is that I
think it helps the yeast if there is some sugar dissolved in the fruit and
water. The sugar won't all dissolve in it at this stage, but some has, so I'm
going to carry on topping it up to the base of the neck. And in fact for a couple of
days, I'm going to leave it at this level because the yeast action is quite
vigorous and very often bubbles right up through the airlock. And this way it just
gives a little bit of space for the yeast to do its thing and then in two
days time I will top the water up to this at the base of the neck just here.
So the last thing to do is to put an airlock on it to stop this oxidating
or oxidizing, I'm not sure which it is! And for that I use an airlock. Now there
are different designs, this is the one I like to use. So you fill up the top parts
about half way with water. You could also use an alcohol like vodka to do this and
then you push it into the top, so this has got a nice seal between the the
rubber bung and the glass jar. It's got a seal here so no air can get in. And as
the yeast action happens the carbon dioxide will come up through this tube,
around through the airlock and out at the top. Next thing to do is just to leave this now to do its thing. You can see that
it's already getting busy. I tend to stand this in a container just
in case it does fizz all out at the top so it doesn't make a mess everywhere,
and in a few days time, as I said, I'll top this up to the base of the neck here
and then I'll just put it in a, not a very hot place, not a very cold place,
just a room temperature to ferment for the next three to four weeks. Now I'm
sure at this point, there are lots of you shouting at the screen saying no no
that's not how you do it! This is how I do it. I'm not making a high-quality
fancy wine to sell, I'm making a country wine for Mr. J to drink. It will be an
everyday wine, it will be palatable. Some of them are a bit sweeter than
others, but as this is a plum one I don't imagine it will be too sweet. Generally I
tend to think these country wines are a bit sweeter than say a really nice
Graves, which is very dry, but they do the job. And they're a really good use of the
surplus fruit here. I'm going to use a sticky label just to label it and so I
know which wine is which, because at this time of year I make quite a lot of wine.
They all just look like pinky red liquids, no idea which is which, unless I give it a label. I hope you found that useful, when I do the next stage in
the winemaking I'll be sure to show that to you as well.
Well I think that's it for me I've got a lot of tidying up to do in the
kitchen today. And so, wherever you are in the world and whatever you've got
planned for today I hope it's a good one. And I also hope you'll join me again
tomorrow!
