How to Make Wines

Fermentation Aides

Most beginners will be content to keep their fermenting wines warm in an airing cupboard or near the boiler in the kitchen. Others will want to know how they can make a special fermenting cupboard.

If only two or three jars of wine are fermenting at one time, a small cupboard with a small electric heater installed will be ideal. Alternatively, an electric light bulb hanging in a cupboard and the jars grouped round this will serve the purpose just as well, especially if the cupboard is just large enough to accommodate the jars and not so big that a lot of warmth is lost. I know of people who group several jars round a small safety paraffin lamp, but this would only be satisfactory when the wine is under a fermentation lock otherwise the wine might become tainted by fumes.

Other aids to satisfactory fermentation are good nutrients. Yeast nutrients, as they are called, are carefully balanced yeast foods which assist the yeast to reproduce and therefore make the largest possible amount of alcohol. Sufficient nutrient speeds fermentation so much that, once you have used a good one, you will always do so. I know from my vast experience that warmth, a good yeast and good nutrient will together make wines ten times better than any old yeast, no nutrient and a warm atmosphere one day and a chilly one the next. We want the best; very well, let us take just that little extra care and spend those few extra coppers which will make such an immense difference to the finished product.

Suppliers of special ingredients offer a variety of nutrients are accompanied by directions how to prepare. In most cases it is just a matter of mixing the nutrient with some of the prepared liquor and then adding it to the brew with the yeast.

Now, a word about ‘invert’ sugar. Most of you will be content to use household sugar and it is household sugar that I include in the recipes. However, I have proved beyond doubt that invert sugar gives better results. this is also obtainable from the same fires.

A summary of the foregoing is this: the inexperienced wine maker who uses bakers’ yeast, no nutrient, household sugar and who allows the wine to ferment anywhere cannot possibly expect the results which can be achieved by following my advice. By doing so anyone, including beginner who do not have to endure years of apprenticeship, with the aid of a fermentation lock, by keeping the wine warm during the whole of the fermenting period, using the appropriate wine yeast, invert sugar and nutrient will obtain wines with a strength, clarity, flavour and bouquet of which they will be justly proud.

When bakers’ yeast is used it is crumbled into the prepared liquor. When wine yeast is used the directions supplied by the dealer must be followed. This involves starting what is called a ‘nucleus ferment’. A half-pint mild bottle will do for this. About a quarter-pint of water and a teaspoonful of sugar are boiled together for a minute and then allowed to cool. This is then put into the milk bottle-sterilized as directed later on- and the yeast then added in whatever form it is obtained.

The neck of the bottle is then plugged with cotton wool and put into a warm place. Within a few days-usually three-this little lot is fermenting merrily ready for adding to a batch of wine that you will be waiting to make.

If you prepare the liquor for wine-making and then add the wine yeast it will take three or four days to begin to ferment. Better therefore to get the nucleus fermenting ready to add to the liquor when you have prepared it so that the whole lot is quickly in a state of vigorous fermentation.

It is most important that the yeast is not added to hot because a temperature well below boiling will destroy the yeast. Let the little drop of sugar-water cool well before adding the yeast and later let the prepared liquor cool well before adding the nucleus or ’starter bottle’ as we call it. In the recipes I shall refer to adding the yeast as ‘adding the nucleus’ on the assumption that you will have taken my advice and will be using wine yeasts prepared as directed, but if you must use bakers’ yeast merely crumble this into the liquor at the time you would add the nucleus.

It will be seen in the recipes that all the sugar is not used at once, this is because yeast ferments much better if the sugar is fed to it in stages. Too much sugar at the outset might cause the yeast to stop fermenting at around ten percent of alcohol. Inexperienced operators might think fermentation has finished naturally and put their wine in a cool place to clear- which, of course it would do. But it would be an over-sweet wine likely to start fermenting again at any time.

For a simple re-statement; having prepared the liquor as the recipes advise, the yeast or nucleus is added together with the nutrient and the wine put in a warm place until all fermentation has ceased.

In some of the recipes (chiefly those calling for flavoring to be added at a late stage of production), directions read: ‘leave until fermentation has nearly ceased’. This is rather a broad term to beginners, but where fermentation locks are in use they will know when this stage is reached because the water will remain pushed up to one side of the lock and a bubble just manages to push through every two or three minutes.

Where fermentation locks are not in use, but where clear-glass jars are being used, beginners will be able to see the bubbles of gas rising. All the time there is quite a mass of them rising steadily, fermentation is quite vigorous. But when there is only the faintest trace of a line of bubbles round the perimeter of the wine and where only a few bubbles are seen rising slowly to the surface they may say, for all intents and purposes, that fermentation has nearly ceased-though it may go on for several more weeks.