Homemade wine is both daunting, concerning and intriguing. My grandfather used to make homemade wine and I can say from experience that it was a little gross... but very effective. My housemates and I were so curious about making homemade wine that we decided to try it ourselves.
1. How Do You Make Homemade Wine?
It's actually not that hard to make wine at home. All you need is a bottle, some grape juice, sugar, yeast, and a balloon. My housemates and I used this recipe for easy step-by-step instructions. We mixed the sugar and yeast into the juice, put a balloon on top to allow CO2 gas to escape and put it in a dark place until the bubbling stopped and the balloon fell. Overall? Super easy.
2. What does it taste like?
I'm not going to lie - the homemade wine by itself did not taste fantastic. My grandfather's white wine was much worse than my red wine, so that's an improvement. At the same time, it was definitely not something I would want to drink casually. At least it tasted like wine, which was a huge relief.
3. How in the world should I drink it?
Make it into sangria! Here are some excellent sangria recipes. If you don't want to spend all that money on juice and fruit, I can tell you what I did. I mixed my wine with a $0.88 can of frozen mango juice concentrate. It made an excellent mix and I even threw in some chopped mango for the ~asthetic~.
4. Did it even work?
My grandfather's wine got me very drunk. It's a cheap alternative to the low-concentration wines you find in stores. The wine I made? This also worked and got me nice and tipsy off a few glasses.
5. Actually though; is it safe?
Homemade wine is entirely safe. All you are doing is fermenting juice. The worst that could happen is that it will taste bad if you leave it too long. Because you aren't distilling the wine, you aren't making any methanol, just ethanol. Methanol is that super scary thing in moonshine that can make you go blind.
So is the process safe? Absolutely; just use sterilized bottles and equipment and then it's just like any other cooking process.
6. What was the morning after like?
I had never been hungover until I drank too much of my grandfather's homemade wine. And oh my goodness, I had a bad hangover. Homemade wine contains a lot of sugar which doesn't help. When I made my own concoction, I made sure to limit myself and woke up the next morning feeling great. Moral of the story? Drink responsibly.
7. Should I really try this?
Yes, you should absolutely try to make wine at home. It's so cheap to do and as a university student, cheap alcohol is amazing. The wine costs include the juice, yeast, sugar and the balloons. The wine is effective and it doesn't take a lot to get you happily drunk. 10/10, would recommend.
While I encourage you to try your hand at making wine, don't forget to drink responsibly. Just because you can easily make massive quantities of wine for cheap, that doesn't mean you should drink it all at once. That being said, I hope you can enjoy a glass with dinner or a few glasses before you go out.