This article is meant just to acquaint winemakers-beginners with the stages of homemade wine preparation. The complete guidance on creation of homemade wine you can find in the book "How to make wine"

For homemade wine preparation you need three essential requirements:

at first, the best concentration of sugar for homemade wine is 20-25%, it gives approximately 10-13 % of alcohol content;

secondly, the process of fermentation goes at the temperature of about 20-25 °C;

and, finally, the most favorable acidity of fermenting environment for homemade wine is about 0,5-0,6% (comparing with tartaric acid).

All the process of getting high-quality homemade wine must pass three stages - formation of limpid juice (winemakers call it wort), its fermentation and clarification of the got homemade wine.

Every stage of homemade wine preparation has its own rules and features, violation of which can spoil the homemade wine.

Similarly as in the process of yield and berries canning, first of all for homemade wine preparation you need a good raw material, clean tableware and equipment. Those, who think that it is possible to prepare ? good homemade wine from rotten yield and berries, are deeply wrong. This is impossible. A bit defective apple or slightly rumpled strawberry is quite another matter. Similar raw material, if it is not covered even with small tracks of mould, is good for homemade wine.

It is not necessary to wash the raw material while making homemade wine, and in some cases (vine, raspberry, black chokeberry) it is even undesirable, because there are necessary for homemade wine fermentation yeasts on the surface of some berries.

For preparation of homemade wine you need to get limpid juice from raw material. In most cases it is possible to use a squeezer or simply to squash berries in the enameled basin by means of wooden pestle.

The only exception is black chokeberry. This berry badly gives juice, and for its extraction you need the double boiling of septum (squashed berries) with tap water. However before septum boiling for homemade wine it is necessary to separate an appearing drift from septum and keep it separately. Afterwards you should use this drift to dissolve yeast. For homemade wine the squashed berries of black chokeberry after straining drift off are placed in a pan for ? of its volume, which is then filled up with boiling water until the surface of the berries is covered with water.

Boil it for 20-30 minutes until the first blebs appear, whereupon juice is poured out and left to cool. Got in this or that way juice for homemade wine should necessarily be filtered through the dense cloth filter for the maximally possible clear state. It is done in order to clean juice from pectins, which previously were concentrated in the coat of berries and fruit. The presence of pectins in homemade wine is very undesirable for two reasons: firstly, afterwards they will cause dimness of homemade wine. And secondly, it is necessary from the hygienic considering, because during fermentation pectin matters produce the tanol, which is a very toxic alcohol, dangerous for using in the process of homemade wine making.

After getting more or less limpid juice we can pass to the second stage of homemade wine preparation - process of fermentation. In many cases at surface of berries and yield there are yeasts which are able to cause the process of fermentation themselves. Exactly because of these reasons they are not recommended for washing (and drift of black chokeberry juice should not be boiled no matter what!). That is why usually you do not need to add special wine yeast during the preparation of homemade wine.

To make a high-quality homemade wine from juice, its sugar content is taken to the optimum concentration (20-25%) by means of adding sugar.

As at the process of homemade wine preparation most of ripe fruit and berries have sucrose percentage of about 10% (except for vine - 16-25%), it is necessary to add approximately 100-150 gr of sugar for 1 l of juice. If there is no sugar, juice can be concentrated (steamed) on fire approximately till there remains a half of original amount, but in that case you necessarily have to use dissolved yeasts or fresh-made raspberry or vine juice, because while steaming its own yeasts perish.

During the homemade wine preparation juice already should have before fermentation not only optimum sugar percentage, but also acidity. If acidity is low (often happens with overripe summer apples), though fermentation goes quickly, the homemade wine as a result turns out very unstable to the different kinds of spoilage. But if acidity, vice versa, is very high, as for example in the cranberry, the fermentation can not happen at all. Therefore it is recommended to add some other juice of berries with high acidity (for example, apple juice is mixed with plum or currant juice) in juice with low acidity and vice versa, sour juice is diluted with water according to the taste.

The juice for homemade wine with the optimum sugar content and acidity is poured in a clean container (vessel) for fermentation.

Although during homemade wine preparation, the process of fermentation easily can pass even in a pan, however for this purpose it is better to use a vessel with a narrow neck. It is done because oxygen is not harmful for fermentation itself, but after fermentation it can cause undesirable vinegar souring. Therefore during the preparation of homemade wine it is necessary to care about impermeability of fermenting vessel from the beginning, what, certainly, is easier to do, if a neck is narrow, as at the real wine barrel. In case of the narrow neck it is easier to find a cork with an opening to insert a tube with a hose. The free end of hose is placed in a jar with water. If everything is sealed hermetically, the carbon dioxide during fermentation will gurgle through water.

Active fermentation in the process of homemade wine preparation continues usually for a week (if its own yeast is not enough for fermentation, in a week add dissolved bakery yeasts or fresh-made raspberry or vine juice). But to get high-quality dry homemade wine the fermentation is continued for 1-2 months. After that you need to put this fermented homemade wine for a month in a cool place (for example, at a balcony with the temperature up to 10 °C below zero). It is done in order to let yeast and tailings of berries and yield settle on the bottom. When homemade wine becomes limpid, carefully pour it through the hose into clean bottles and use clean corks to seal them. Dry homemade wine is ready now. Keep it in a cool (not higher than +10 °C) place. It has about 10-12% of alcohol content and about 1% sweetness.

To get semisweet homemade wine right after active fermentation add about 5% of sugar in homemade wine, stir it and let ferment for 1 month more. Such homemade wine turns out a bit stronger, with 12-14 % of alcohol (I.e. for about 1-2% more than in dry), and with the small amount of sugar, that many likes. All other procedures are the same as with the dry homemade wine.