A New Thing Every Month – January: Wine Making!

This year I’ve decided to set me and my better other half the challenge of doing something we’ve not done before each month. We’re aiming for a mix of experiences at a variety of prices so that we’re not breaking the bank! This month is a fairly cheap one – wine making!

1 cheapo wine making kit from Wilko: £20. Now this has everything you need to do what it says on the box and makes 6 bottles of wine. Going forwards, you only need to buy the wine making ingredients themselves which are only about £10.

Getting Started:

This is the kit when out of the box. The first thing we needed to do was to get everything sterilised. The sterilising powder is the little white tub to the far right.

Get it Clean:

A few teaspoons of the powder, some warm water and we were ready to go 10 minutes later. Do remember to rinse everything well; nobody wants their wine laced with steriliser.

Empty the Goo:

That sounds horrible but really, it’s just a can of goo. It gets emptied into the demijohn:

Mmm goo. Then the brewing sugar goes in, followed by 3 pints of water. I do recommend you use a funnel (not included) for this, to make your life easier. It really did, when I eventually found it.

Next wine yeast and nutrafine sachets (whatever they are) go in to your gloop:

Lovely chemicals. Everything got a good shake up next to agitate the gloop and get the fermentation started.

This is what we had 20-30 minutes after first opening the box, so it doesn’t take long at all. Who are the two weirdos lurking in the reflection…?

3 days later we added more water (this time boiled then cooled off) and for the last 9 days we’ve been letting it ferment. The bubbling is pretty cool; a friend said I’d feel like Walter White and she’s not wrong. It’s finally slowed down so when it stops, we’ll add the final powdery stuff (some stabiliser and whatnot) and then more waiting.

When the wine is ready (about a week/10 days later) they recommend syphoning it into the box and leaving it for a further 4 weeks. Because I want us to get the best results possible (and there WILL be a blind taste test) then we are going to leave it the recommended time. So, I’ll update you in late Feb/early March and let you know what happens!

The actual ‘doing’ is quite short, which is good for me as I don’t have much patience but there’s a lot of waiting involved. The Demijohn doesn’t take up too much space though and will sit quite happily on a kitchen counter, bubbling away. Not sure I’d pursue the great art of wine making in this way going forwards but hey, if it tastes good then never say never.