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What recent advancements allow
for a better home winemaking experience?
In spite of the common belief,
winemaking is a very simple process that can be done anywhere with
the most ordinary ingredients. This art has come to us, the modern
man, though ages and ages of wisdom and experience. In ancient
times, winemaking was simple, fast and the result was exceptional.
In modern days, there are a lot of ways to make wine, some simple on
the lines our ancestors, and some as complicated as you would like
them.
Thankfully, homemade wines have become a
fad the world over and with the pleasure of making wine at home, the
demand for better ingredients, automation and fast maturity of the
wine have grown by leaps and bounds.
The modernization has not, as expected,
improved in any way the process of wine making. You can still the
best wines in the traditional way at home, with the ingredients that
you can pick from the shelf of your kitchen. However, the hi-tech’s
contribution has been to fast forward the maturity time of the wine.
This development has made it possible for people to have their wine,
almost immediately after it has been bottled and dispatched to the
market. Many love this development because the patience of a human
being is not the same today, that had been some hundred years ago.
The second great achievement and gift of
science-technology to the making of wine is that the grapes quality
has become much better, and much more uniform in taste. Hence, the
wine’s flavor is fast to develop and better to taste. What the modern could not do, was to
improve in any way the art of wine making. The basic wine making art
remains the same.
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extract the pulp of the grapes by
soaking and then crushing and pressing
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add your helping ingredients, i.e.
yeast, sugar, etc and leave for fermentation for an initial
period of about one week
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After 7-10 days take the liquid and
strain it of the grape skins and other ingredients also allow
the liquid to ferment further, while being careful to maintain
the temperature at 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit.
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Wait till the fermentation totally
stops (you will know when the bubbling of the liquid ceases
completely)
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Strain the liquid again through very
fine cheese cotton cloth and let it ferment again – this time
for the secondary fermentation. You can repeat this step once or
twice at intervals of one or two months
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Bottle the resulting liquid and cork
them tightly. The bottles will need to be left standing for
about five days, after which these should be stored at an angle
at 55F for 6-24 months. For white wines, aging should not exceed
12 months.
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Sample the wine; if you find it
matured, enjoy it. If not, let it age for about six months to
one year more.
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