Hubby and I have an allotment so if we grow too much on the plot we turn it into preservable stuff like jam, chutney and, best of all wine, we make homebrewed beer too but that's not from the plot as you can imagine. Anyone elsr like brewing their own hooch?

Just had a glass of elderflower wine-this stuff is from Wlikinsons Homewbrew section, once made it's jolly nice. Don't get me wrong, if you have a pound or two of fruit going to waste try making wine. All you need is some sugar and a demijohn with an air lock. Brew it , wait a few weeks and enjoy. If your are interested let me know and I'll tel you how to make home brew.

Summer, why don't you Have a wiki party in your garden?

Gazebo's music karaoke barbecue beer/wine

What do you think?

Everyone could chip in on the munch?!

I've put together a few tips on making your own wine so I might as well post it here.

A FEW POINTS ON WINEMAKING
BEFORE YOU START
All utensils, glassware and buckets etc should be sterile. This is very important. You will need a demijohn (a large glass bottle with a narrow neck that holds a gallon of liquid), an airlock and a siphon (try Wilkinsons). Places like Wilkinsons or chemists will sell sterilising compounds as well as yeast, enzymes and nutrients that might appear in the wine recipe.
If you want to work out the alcohol conent of your wine you will need to buy a Hydrometer and a measuring cylinder. Use the hydrometer to measure the specific gravity of the liquid BEFORE you add the yeast (ie the fruit juice/wine concentrate plus sugar and water mixture you get after following the recipe). Keep a note of this reading and then take the specifig gravity of the wine AFTER it has finished fermenting). The difference between the two readings will give you the alcohol content from a list of figures provided with the hydrometer. Don't expect a high alcohol content, some kits only make wine to about 8%, but if you find a stronger yeast you may get higher alcohol contents.
FOR A FIRST ATTEMPT AT WINE MAKING
Try a wine making kit and just follow the instructions. You will probably have to buy some sugar for this, to add to the wine concentrate in the kit. This should be granulated sugar, not fruit sugar or jam making sugar, which contain pectin and makes your wine cloudy. Make sure the liquid is at the right temperature before adding the yeast otherwise it will be killed off. Don't be upset if your fermentation doesn't begin straight away, or if it is slow although you might want to consider moving it to somewhere warm if fermentation doesn't pick up after a day or two.
Eventually the fermentation will stop, you will know when this happens when there are no more bubbles passing through the air lock. All you do now is wait till the wine clears and sediment sinks to the bottom of the demijohn. Once the wine appears fully clear, siphon it into sterilised bottles. You can also use empty, unwashed spirit bottles which are naturally sterile inside provided no other liquids have been placed in them. Clearing might take a week or two, or maybe a few months, depending on the fruit used. Once bottled your wine can be drunk straight away, or left for up to a year.
USING FRUIT/VEGETABLES TO MAKE WINE
There are plenty of wine recipes available online. Buy when the fruit is in season to ensure good quality wine that is also cheap to make.

I dont realy drink wine, unless there isnt anything else in the house (hide the Brasso!!)
The best homebrew wine ive ever had was rhubbarb, gorgeous and potent!!!!
Got homebrew kit for Xmas 2 yrs ago but never used it, maybe for our Wiki summer party (like the play on words??)

home brew addicts/ next stop liver transplant. hit the tea bags they are a lot safer

prison hooch is the one to have lmfao!! when i was locked up 11 years ago a few of us made are own to sell on lmao!! warm water, frut, as much suger as you can get and moldy bread in a sock. all placed in a nice strong netto bag. tie the top of the bag letting a tube stick out. so it won't explode while it gives off carbon dioxide. leave for 7 days and hey presto you have prison hooch. dont get caught or your getting another 30 days on ye sentences.


oh and the sh!ts lol!!

Hmmmm tempting for 'skint days'. Lol!

The basics of home wine making are so simple that anyone can do it. I challenge everyone to go to Wilkies and buy a wine kit, demijohn and airlock and then see what you end up with. You can all get together and do a Gillie Goulden, lol.

I don't drink wine but I wod really like to try and make some.

Doesn't have to be wine wheels-homemade beer is as cheap as chips. OK you have to buy the kit first but it lasts a lifetime.

There is a home brew shop just up the road from me. I'd rather make wine than beer tho. I think home brew beer will be horrid.

I was looking at the kits in wilkos today thinking should i have a go. never done me own before. anyone used them from wilksons are they any good???

The black cherry one is quite nice.

The kits from wilkinsons have everything you need to make a batch of wine with except the sterilising compound which you can get at the same shop. Old wine bottles are fine once sterile but if they are screw topped, make sure the tops and the outside of the thread on the bottle are also sterilised. Make sure the wine has completely stopped bubbling before you put the wine into screw top bottles or there might be a build up of gas.

Enjoy summer01-it's fun and rewarding.

How much does the kit cost?

Depends what you buy. If you want to buy stuff individually then you need a demijohn at approx £10, a siphon £2, a airlock and bung £2 and a wine making kit from £5 to £7.50, all from Wilkinsons. The only other thing you will need is steriliser, less than £1 and maybe corks. Bottles can be old wine bottles which will need corks or as I use old spirit bottles which don't need sterilising if you don't contaminate them when they are empty, as the alcohol acts as its own steriliser. Screw top bottles are fine as long as the wine has finished fermenting before you decant into them.
Once set up each batch will only cost you as much as the kit and any bottles and corks you might buy. Each kit makes 6 bottles.

aye i think we should!

No need for fruit when you buy the wine kits as they contain concentrated fruit juices in the can section. Once you get the hang of making the kits you might want to use fruit instead of concentrates, in which case you will need plenty of fruit and a large bag of sugar, each recipe is different though so can't be more specific than that.

I can see a brewers droop epidemic coming!

Arm wrestle it.

To work out the strength of the wine you need to buy a trial jar and a hydrometer, only a couple of quid each.Sterilise both jar and hydrometer before use. What you do is put some of the liquid from the demijohn into the trial jar BEFORE any yeast is added-ie fruit concentrate plus water. This liquid contains sugar which the yeast will turn into alcohol, so you use the hydrometer to find out the specific gravity of this initial liquid. Do this by placing the hydrometer into the trial jar plus liquid as stated above. The hydrometer floats and all you do is take a reading from where the hydrometer floats in your trial jar (full instructions will be enclosed with the hydrometer). Put the liquid back into the demijohn after taking your reading. Make a note of this reading and do the same measurements AFTER the wine has finished fermented (finished bubbling). Subtract the before and after values for the specific gravities of both liquids and you will get the amount of alcohol in the end product. It's not as hard as it sounds.

My mate did this and put it in 2 litre plastic bottles. It was constantly fermenting and you couldn't actually take the tops off as it'd just explode. We called it 'Dicks Head' as his name was Richard and it had this infinite forming head. Seem to remember drinking it all.

On one of the boats I was serving in the days workers (chefs, steward and mess men) decided to use the rice and yeast from the galley to make rice wine. This was done in square plastic buckets and was kept in their lockers in their little cubby hole mess. Anyway, the skipper couldn't find his binoculars and his target guide book (Janes Fighting Ships) or his stop watch which made it rather hard for him to carry out his attacks (dummy ones of course). He reckoned someone was mucking him about witht he hope of getting out of a day at sea so he threatened to carry out a locker search to find the culprits. As we were dived at the time there was no way anybody could get shut of his stuff, or the wine. The day workers panicked and brought the buckets into our mess for us to drink so as not to incriminate themselves. The stuff was still bubbling and smelt horrible but we did it and ended up the worse for wear. The skipper then found his stuff, he'd put his coat on top of them on his bunk, so the heat was off but too late for us. We were still bevvied when we were at harbour stations coming back in that evening, we'd had our normal daily tot as well. And do you know, there wasn't a hydrometer in sight.

This place is on Derby Road Tranmere. It sell everything that you need.

Here is a recipie for Turbo Cider for those that dont like beer or wine cheap to make tasty and wont give you a hangover.

Turbo Cider Recipe:

4L of pure apple juice

1 packet of yeast You can use bread yeast or wine yeast

Sugar/Honey – optional

Method:

1. Sterilise Sanitize everything needed

2. Place 4L of apple juice into a demijohn

3. Place 1 packet of yeast into the demijohn

4. Give it a damn good shake

5. leave for about 36 hours to ferment. Add the other 1L of apple juice. If you add all the Apple Juice at once it does have a tendency to bubble up through the airlock, hence 3L 1st, then 1L later

6. leave to ferment (mine took a week, but can take longer. Need to ensure the SG is constant for 3 days, or less than 1 bubble per min in the airlock) with rubber bung and air lock in the demijohn

7. Bottle – I use plastic PET bottles with 2 tbs of sugar if you like it fizzy or no sugar for flat cider

I used Aldi apple juice the SG was 1.046 (so that means the ABV 5.5% approx) but I wanted a slightly stronger Cider, so added about 80g of Sugar and a 2 or 3 teaspoons of honey. The SG was then 1.055 (ABV 7.5%), but this should drop slightly after I add the final 1.5L of Apple Juice in a day or so. So should end up with Cider with ABV of 7%.

Any questions just ask

I Love this. I used to brew a lot years ago and i have been thinking of making cider for some time. Whats SG? Also do you use ordinary carton apple juice?

The SG is starting gravity depending how strong you want it it should be between 1040-1060 but I dont bother taking hydrometer readings for this as its ready when its stopped bubbling for a few days.
You can use any apple juice as long as it says made from concentrate the best ones I've found are the ones form Aldi in the litre cartons. The good thing about this cider is its ready to drink in a couple of weeks.

How much did the brewing kit/equipment set you back Baldy?

Aldi's apple juice is delicious... can you use the banana and apple?

Free I got my demijohns from freecycle but you can get a 5 litre water bottle from Asda etc for a couple of quid then all you need is a bung and airlock. The health shop on Oxton road has all the stuf you need as well as Willkinsons.
And you can make any fruit juice into alcohol pineapple cider is a good summer drink with a kick :)I dont see why you cant use bannana and apple only prob I can see is it might not clear but try it and see.

We had a clear out recently and took some demijons to the charity shop.They said that they didn't want them as wouldn't be able to get shut.As my husband walked back out with them a passer by asked if he could have them.Great,at least they went to a good home. Wait now, I'm affraid that's not the end of the tale.
A few days later I went to Tesco and they have them on sale for almost a fiver!!!
Bit short sited of the charity shop I think.
End of tale!!!

Here's a pint of turbo cider straight out of the fridge

I remember when brewing was made 'legal' in about 1969, The market was flooded with Geordie and Scouser brew kits. They produced five gallons of cloudy flat liquid that did not resemble the stuff in the pub but it got u blind drunk. How times have chnged. Some of the kits now are better than the pub stuff.

That cider looks good!