5 bottles of wine for $3

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By Luke Iseman
Posted 2009/01/26 @ 9:38 pm
Category Energy

Mikey and Wendy created a wonderfully concise wine-making video:

Just what I needed to get over the “there’s too many interesting things to read about this project and complications to explore before ever getting started” barrier. $3 gallons of wine, here I come!

Skeptical about the quality? Check out the first recipe on this page. Who knew Welch’s grape juice concentrate was capable of such greatness?

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5 Responses to 5 bottles of wine for $3

Jack of Most Trades. on January 27th, 2009 at 10:29 am said:

Welch’s, sugar, water, and yeast. That’s the same rot-gut recipe my brother used to get wrecked on when he was younger.

Get loaded, stagger off to bed, puke out the window…

(sigh) Well, I suppose if we’re gonna be reduced to raising rabbits and chickens on the fire escape and hunting rats for food, you can’t be too choosy about what you drink to try and forget about it all for a while, now can we?

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penguin on January 27th, 2009 at 1:08 pm said:

As a home brewer, I wouldn’t touch that recipe with a 10ft pole. As a previous commenter pointed out, that’s rot-gut that high school kids make. There are several steps in the process that could improve it a bit. One, get an airlock. Balloons are great, but they’re not foolproof. If the wine hasn’t COMPLETELY finished fermenting before capping that off, you’re going to end up with carbonated wine or worse, an exploded gallon of wine all over the room it’s been sitting in. Second, as far as sitting time goes, 30 days isn’t enough to make it taste very good. That’s ranging on rot-gut territory. Waiting 3 months at minimum is the general rule I’d follow. If you use fresh fruit or honey, you’re looking at a year minimum. Third, that’s going to be yeasty wine if you don’t siphon it into another container. Fourth, drink it fast because it’s not stabilized. Fifth, get wine yeast. It’s only a buck a packet. Brewers yeast usually ferments to a max of 10% before the alcohol kills it. It’s not made for wine, don’t use it that way.

The shorter version of all that is this:

Wine is a bit more complicated if you want a product that tastes anything like wine. This method WILL produce an alcoholic beverage. I wouldn’t drink that beverage. There are ways of making mead and wine that are still under $10 that will turn out better. The methods can be applied to this recipe to vastly improve it.

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ehrichweiss on January 27th, 2009 at 4:19 pm said:

That recipe is GHETTO!! I think I saw better recipes in jail.

I just got into brewing and I’m working on a recipe that will produce a Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout clone that is only going to cost me around $15 for 5 gallons which is great seeing as how Sammy Smiths often cost $4 for 550ml(1 pint 2 oz).

Life is too short to drink bad beer/wine.

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* on January 27th, 2009 at 5:45 pm said:

Are we looking at the same recipe? I didn’t watch the video (no sound, broken computer)…

There were a couple more ingredients than just Welch’s, sugar, water, and yeast, and the aging isn’t 30 days.

I’ve not vinted wine, but I have brewed plenty of beer, and mead.

I’d at least try it for fun.

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craig on January 28th, 2009 at 12:07 pm said:

Who knew Welch’s 100% pure could be fermented??? What do you think wine is made from? Greatness??? Wow, your pallette is wrecked. I used to dabble in this crude stuff 20 years ago. Lessons learned… Corn sugar is better, all yeasts are not created equal, sanitation is gospel for not souring a batch, and for god’s sake use potassium sorbate to STOP fermentation before bottling it up. I got good at letting fermentables self pressurize and carbonate themselves before adding the inhibitor. A gallon of cider & corn sugar fermented to 12% was too harsh to drink, but cut it with a gallon of unfermented cider made 2 gallons of darn good stuff… as good as Woodchuck. Experiment and have fun!!!

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