It holds 4.5 litres, so you'll need at least 5kg of grapes to ensure you have enough juice, maybe more to allow for wastage. A demijohn (the glass fermentation vessel you transfer the wine into after you've done all the bucket stuff - see below) makes 6 bottles of wine. As a rough estimate,1kg of grapes will turn into 1 litre of juice. You can calculate how much wine your grapes will make once you know the weight. Alternatively you could leave your juice and rely on the natural yeasts to do the work, though that can be a risky business (see below). To start with, we would just recommend an all-purpose red wine yeast for red grapes, or white wine yeast for white grapes. You could use a all-purpose universal wine yeast like GV1, or a specialist yeast depending on the 'style' of wine you'd like. Standard granulated sugar from your kitchen cupboard is fine. Then leave the equipment soaking for about 20 minutes, rinse under the tap and you're done. Simply mix the sterilising powder with water. Sterilisers are easy to use and you soon get into the habit of doing it, whatever you are making. Unwanted bacteria will spoil your brew and risk all your ingredients, hopes and dreams going to waste. Sterilising all the equipment you use is just about the most important thing when making any wine, beer or cider. Some of them you'll already have in your kitchen. I do mention some other things too, like non-specialist buckets, muslin, demijohns and straining bags.
So it's about time I wrote down how to do it. Or, indeed, how many people have offered us their garden grapes to make wine. Use our homebrew advice forum or contact us.Since we started making our own everything, I can't tell you how many people have asked us about making wine from garden grapes. Remember to sterilise all of your equipment to ensure that bacteria does not spoil your homebrew grape wine! Do you need help or advice with making your own grape wine?
reading of the juice with a hydrometer and adjust with sugar syrup to 1080.