We usually make hard cider this time of year. We press bags and bags of wild apples save some of the cider for drinking and using fresh and ferment the rest. No added preservatives, sugars or yeasts...just pressed apple pulp juice fermented. If you're going to drink alcohol, this is the ideal. We decided to give wine making the old fashioned treatment too. We were given some grapes from someone overrun with them. We removed them from the stems and put them, unwashed, into a bucket where we mashed them up and let them sit for 6 days fermenting. We then siphoned out the loose juice and pressed the rest out of the grapes and put that in a clean, sterilized carboy to ferment further. Right now, it smells divine. It's to the point where I can't pass by without taking a quick smell. These days, the grapes would be washed and sterilized, yes the grapes themselves are sterilized to kill any wild yeasts and bacteria, and then wine making yeast would be added back into the grape juice. We are simply allowing nature to do it's thing, the yeasts and sugars in the grape skins, and apples, are what makes them ferment, naturally.
Mashed up grapes, seeds and all.
The almost full carboy is hard apple cider and the 1/4 filled carboy is the grape wine.
you really don't add anything? just mashed fruit with skins in a carboy and wait? What next?
ReplyDeleteNope, not in the carboy. You didn't read the post properly ;) You ferment the grapes in a bucket first for several days and then siphon the juice out, press the grapes for the extra juice and THEN ferment the juice ALONE in a carboy. Nope, nothing else added and then you let it ferment, racking it a few times to get rid of the sediment in the bottom. The you bottle it and let it age in the bottles as long as you want.
ReplyDeleteI can vouch for the deliciousness of the cider.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor did this. Tasted like Grape jelly champagne.
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