Stuff you will need:

• 2x 25 litre brew buckets

Look for food-safe buckets with lids and a hole pre-drilled in the lid to hold your air lock

• Vaseline

Used to make the seal between bucket and lid airtight

• Thin bleach

You can use special sterilising solutions but thin bleach works just as well and is dirt cheap. Make sure not to use thick bleach as the thickeners in it will stick to the the inside surfaces and are extremely difficult to rinse off properly. Just get the supermarket own brand thin bleach with no perfume

• Muslin/cheese cloth/clean tights and string

Wrap your fruit in a sheet of muslin. It will make it so much easier to separate out when moving to secondary

• Clear hose – at least 1m long

You’ll use this to transfer the wine from primary to secondary, and from secondary to racking

• Hydrometer

A hydrometer helps you calculate how much additional sugar will need to be added to reach a particular strength and to calculate the alcohol content of the finished wine. Make sure, where possible that all readings are taken when the wine is at the same temperature as any differences will effect the reading

• Campden tablets

Used to kill the natural yeast and bacteria on your fruit, and clear out any chlorine in your water. It will help prevent mould growing on the top of the wine while fermenting and reduce any funky tastes from wild yeasts. Some people use it before bottling to prevent oxidation and to limit any further yeast activity, but try not to use if if you can get away with it. The sulphur will hurt your head in the morning

• Bentonite

Ground up volcanic rock powder. It’s used to trap all the free-floating cloudy particles in the wine. Other clarifying agents are available, but they are all a bit gross: isinglass is dried fish guts; gelatine is ground up cow feet, etc.

• Airlock

Lets carbon dioxide escape without letting in any oxygen

• Degassing paddle and drill

Gets rid of the dissolved carbon dioxide in the wine prior to bottling. Helps stop them exploding

• Corker

Puts the corks into the bottles. Lots of different types, go for a mid range one

• Corks

Again, loads of different types. Go for your personal preference, but only use the plastic stopper types if you are planning to drink the wine within a couple of months. Bottles with wooden corks will need to be stored on their side to stop the cork from drying out and crumbling. Rubber corks are probably the best, but cost more. Screw-tops are also an option, but you will also need to buy the matching bottles

• Bottles

Match the bottle to the wine. There are tons of bottle shapes to chose from, including square, triangle and other weird shapes, but you will pay for them. A sauvignon (clear), merlot (green) or cabernet (brown) bottle (straight-sided, round shoulders, straight neck) will do well for all non sparkling wines. If you are making a clear, green or rose wine you should use a clear bottle to show off the colour/clarity. If you are making a dark wine you should use a green or brown glass bottle to protect the colour from fading

• Yeast

There are a lot of strains of yeast to chose from and you should match the yeast to the result you want. Generally a champagne yeast will suit for most wines giving you around 11-13% ABV, although there are turbo-yeasts which can give you up to 18%, although at that stage you are probably best making a port

• Fruit

You can use any fruit you want – I’ve even seen a wine with baked beans and tomatoes – and all will have different things you will need to take into account, such as wine with stone fruits like cherries or plums will need significantly longer to mature and clear, strawberry wine looks amazingly pink in primary but easily turns brown in secondary, bananas can leave a weird gel in the bottom of the bottle, etc. You can use fruit juice instead of whole fruit, making the process a bit easier, but you will be limited to what is available as any juice with preservatives added will kill the yeast. For a 25l bucket use at least 5kg of fruit. Don’t try an orange or lemon wine – once the yeast has eaten all of the sugar you will be left with just the bitter acidic bile-tasting citrus

• Pectolayse

This is an enzyme which breaks down the pectin in fruit so that the yeast can digest more of it. It lets you get more flavour and sugar out of your fruit. You can also freeze then boil your fruit instead, but the flavour suffers

• Water

Just any old tap water, boiled and cooled will do

• Sugar

Standard white granulated sugar is more than fine. To get the best results, add the sugar as a solution – lightly boil 5kgs of sugar in 5 litres of water for 10 minutes then cool. This will invert (split) the sucrose into its 2 constituent parts: glucose and fructose allowing the yeast to start eating the glucose immediately, before moving onto the fructose. Depending on what fruit you are using 5kg of sugar should be enough. Too much sugar will kill your yeast

Method

Primary

Thoroughly clean then rinse one of the brew buckets, air-lock, muslin and string with your chosen sterilising solution

Chop your fruit up into chunks and wrap it loosely in muslin. Tie with the string and put in the bucket

Top the bucket up half way with water and check the gravity with the hydrometer. Add a measure of sugar solution at a time until you reach the desired initial gravity

Add water to fill the bucket to 10cm from the top

Add 1 crushed campden tablet and a sachet of pectolayse and stir

Run some vaseline around the inside rim of the lid and the hole for the airlock

Half fill the airlock with water or vodka and put into the hole in the lid

Wait for 24 hours for the campden tablet to clear and the pectolayse to start working then sprinkle the yeast over the top. No need to stir

Put the lid on the bucket loosely and stir the the contents every couple of hours (or whenever you remember) for 5 days to introduce oxygen

After 5 days remove the fruit and discard

Secondary

Clean the second bucket and rubber tube with your chosen sterilising solution and rinse well

Syphon the contents of the first bucket (primary) into the empty second bucket (secondary), being careful not to get any bits of fruit from the top, or any of the dead yeast from the bottom of the bucket. You can use a sieve lined with muslin in the second bucket as a filter if there are a lot of bits floating about

Prepare the bentonite by mixing 1 teaspoon of the powder and one teaspoon of water for every 5 litres of wine until you get a smooth paste, gradually adding more water until it is is runny enough to pour. This can take about 10 minutes of constant stirring, so use a hand blender (be warned that it will dull the blades a bit)

Pour the bentonite solution into the wine and stir really well

Put the lid on tightly and leave for 6 weeks, topping up the airlock if needed

Sterilise the now empty bucket and hose

Racking

Sterilise the empty bucket and tube again and syphon the wine into it, taking care to not disturb the congealed bentonite/yeast/goop on the bottom

Put the lid on tightly again and leave for another 4 weeks

If the wine is still a bit cloudy, or had any stone fruit, repeat the racking process by syphoning it into the empty bucket and leaving for another couple of months. Racking should be done at least twice and up to 4 times before bottling. take care while syphoning to pour the wine down the side of the bucket or submerge the hose so as you don’t introduce any oxygen

Bottling

You will know that the fermentation is done and the wine is ready for bottling when you get the same reading on a hydrometer each day over 4 days

Sterilise the bottles with your chosen sterilising solution and rinse really well

Attach the degassing wand to your drill, submerge the head in the wine and turn it on, making sure to keep the speed low enough to not disturb the surface too much so oxygen isn’t added into the wine. The best way to do it is to use short blasts, stop and listen to the bubbles of dissolved carbon dioxide coming out of suspension and bursting on the surface. When you don’t hear any more bubbles, you know that you have degassed as much as possible. It will take a good 10-15 minutes to clear the wine

Put the corks into a bowl of warm water with some lemon juice. The corks will soak up a little of the water which will help them go into the bottles a bit easier and the lemon will kill any surface bacteria

Syphon the wine into bottles leaving enough space for the corks. If the necks are straight you can fill the bottles quite high, leaving very little room for the air to spoil the wine, meaning it will keep for longer. If the necks are sloping, leave at least 2cm space between the top of the wine and the bottom of the cork

Store in a cool dark space until ready to drink. You should generally drink white wines within 6 months and definitely within a year. Red wines will last for ages and can get better the longer you leave them. Wine made from stone fruit won’t be ready to drink for at least a year. Turn the bottles every now and again to stop the corks from drying out and crumbling

Cold Crashing

If you have a big enough fridge you can force-stop the fermentation, and help clarify the wine, by chilling the secondary to between 0 and 3C overnight. If you don’t have a big enough fridge to fit the brew buckets, and you’re making wine in the middle of winter, you can leave it in a cold/frost free shed overnight instead