How to Make Homemade Wine

Hello,

All of us wine makers are always looking for a new recipe to experiment with. Do you have any to share?

Here is one I have for you:

Birch Wine Recipe

With the days of winter behind us and the days turning to the warm days of Spring, the birch trees are sending their sugar into the sap. The birch tree is found in the United States and Canada. Now that it is the time of the year to collect the sap of this wonderful tree, so we should celebrate this occasion by making this wonderful wine.

Ingredients

1 Gallon Birch Sap

4 ½ cups of Granulated Sugar

2 Oranges or 1 Lemon (slice it thinly)

Campden Tablets

1 Package of Wine Yeast

Directions

1.       The first things you must do is place the gallon of birch sap into the primary fermenter, then add the sugar and add the orange or the lemon. Let the mix sit overnight.

2.       Use your hydrometer to test for the specific gravity the next day, the specific gravity needs to be between 1.090 and 1.100.

3.       Stir in the yeast, then for the next 5 or 6 days stir the mix until the Specific Gravity reaches 1.040. Then strain out the fruit and press as much juice out as you can. Siphon the must into the secondary fermenter and use the airlock.

4.       For a dry wine, you will want to rack in about three weeks, and every three months for a year

5.       Bottle the wine.

If you would prefer a sweeter wine, you should rack at three weeks. Then you will want to add ½ cup of sugar that has dissolved in 1 cup of wine. Stir the mixture gently and then place it back in the secondary fermenter. Remember to repeat this process every six weeks until the fermentation does not restart with the addition of sugar. You will then want to rack the wine every three months for a full year. Then bottle the wine.

For this wine it will taste better and give you the very best results if you dont drink it for a complete year since the start of the process.

If you want to gather your own sap

This is a guide to getting birch sap without harming the birch tree.

The best time to harvest the sap is in the springtime. Make sure you only cut one or two low branches per tree; it should be about the same thickness of your thumb with shears. Attach a plastic container (the best one would be a gallon milk jug) and use it to catch the dripping sap. You will then need to cover the container with cheesecloth or a pair of womens nylons to keep out debris. Make sure you collect the sap on a daily basis, and store it in your refrigerator until you have enough to make your wine. You will also want to add a crushed Campden tablet every time you add more sap to collection in the refrigerator because you will want to kill any wild yeast or vinegar bacteria you may have collected.