Home made country wine making and recipes - growing and caring for vines and grapes

Chop your almonds and raisins very finely in a food processor, but do not leave your almonds in there too long otherwise you will end up with an almond paste.

If you now place the processed almonds and raisins in a pan along with water to cover them by a good inch (25mm), then this needs to be simmered for around an hour, stirring and adding more water if needed, and making sure you do not burn the almonds on the bottom of your pan.

After the hour, the liquid is strained off and placed in your primary fermenter.

Add all the other ingredients (except the yeast) along with water to make it up to the 1 gallon mark and allow it to sit overnight.

The following day, check the specific gravity S.G.) ---- it should be around the 1.090 mark. If it is a little lower, then simply add a further two ounces of sugar, stir it in, then check the S.G. again.

If necessary add more sugar to bring the S.G. to the starting point of 1.090 - but do not worry too much if the volume of the must exceeds one gallon because of the extra sugar added as this volume will be reduced by the fermentation process - then add your yeast.

Stir daily for around four days, while the vigorous frothing continues, and it is then time to remove the liquid from the solids.

This is done by either straining through a fine cloth, or simply siphoning it into your secondary fermenter before adding an airlock.

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If you like your wines dry, then rack every three or four weeks, until the fermentation has ceased, then crush your campden tablet and sprinkle it into your fermented wine and allow it to sit for a day or two before bottling your wine.

This will kill off any bacteria remaining and also the yeast as well, that way protecting your wine from bursting your bottles at a later date.

The whole fermentation process should be around two to four months later, but it all depends on the temperature the fermentation goes on at.

The final SG should be around the 1.000 mark, but slightly less is OK.

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For a sweeter wine, simply follow the above procedure, but when the fermentation has ended, ignore the point about the campden tablet altogether and just decant around half a pint of the wine and warm it up (do not boil it) and stir in two ounces of sugar, before returning the new sugarred solution to the main fermenting vessel.

What this has done is, by heating the half pint, you will have killed off the yeast in that small batch, but when you return the sweetened half pint to the secondary fermenter the live yeast you left inside the fermenter will immediately begin to feed on the new sugar you have just added and produce more alcohol.

This process can be repeated once the fermentation ceases until the yeast is totally killed off by the alcohol level in the wine, checking each time for the SG to be above 1.000.

Once it reaches this state, and no further fermentation occurs, providing of course you have not let the must get too hot or too cold, that way halting the fermentation early, then you know that adding further sugar will only sweeten the wine, so you simply add it to taste.

The wine in this state has enough alcohol in it to kill off any bacteria, just like the campden tablet would have, but without any unnecessary chemical requirements.

It's now time to bottle your wine.

But be warned, an over-sweet wine is not to everyones taste, and if you get up to 1.005 or more, then you are likely to be overdoing it a little, especially for a white wine.

Also, you have produced the maximum amount of alcohol possible in your sweet wine, maybe around 14 or 15%, so you are advised to go steady with it.

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