It is probably the best grape I can grow, and I'm glad it thrives in our soil. One of a few that does.

I don't remember saying this was a how to.

I agree with markspc1

Thanks for the story! Wine can be made very simply and there is a movement of natural wines that don't even contain sulfites or added yeasts. I might try some of those once I master the easier methods and know entirely what's going on and how to prevent the bad microbes from making bad wine. I watched a video recently of an Italian guy making wine the old way, and he would just put it in empty wine box bags and drink out of it as he needed it. Interesting take.

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Kudos for the Video! Apologies for chiming in, I would appreciate your thoughts. Have you considered - Lammywalness Green Grapes Guide (do a google search)? It is an awesome one of a kind guide for learning how to become a successful grape grower minus the normal expense. Ive heard some amazing things about it and my close friend Aubrey after many years got astronomical results with it.

Great Video! Apologies for the intrusion, I would appreciate your initial thoughts. Have you researched - Lammywalness Green Grapes Guide (search on google)? It is a smashing one of a kind guide for learning how to become a successful grape grower minus the headache. Ive heard some incredible things about it and my friend got excellent results with it.

Wow, I wish I could grow grapes where you are. You have more vineyard space than any other country.

Hardcore Sustainable ....we do love our wine here and I grow Albariño, Albarin, Godello (white) and Mencia (Red) which grow very well here. All the best and thank you for your reply..!

Welcome! Glad you liked the video. You can probably find a wine grape variety that will grow where you live.

@@HardcoreSustainable Can you write out what bacteria to break down what acid a the near end of fermentation ? Thx

@@andrewyek It's called malolactic bacteria, if this is the one I think you are referring to. It breaks down malic acid into lactic acid giving a buttery flavor to a full bodied red wine.

Thanks for the suggestions. It's a delicate balance in harvesting here because if I leave the grapes on longer to bring down the acidity and increase the sugars, they will get sucked dry by various bugs and my yield will be really low. So I've been harvesting at what I think is the optimum time for lower acidity and maximum yield and I try to adjust later in the process. How does the color relate to the acidity? Maybe I should watch your videos. Isn't pH more related to ability to preserve the wine over time than taste? I thought TA was more related to flavor. Either way, both the pH and the TA are high, and I try to do what I can to bring that down, with cold stabilization, malolactic fermentation, and using a yeast variety to lower acidity. I haven't ever tried potassium bicarbonate, but I will. Thanks! The winemaking book I refer to says it affects only the tartaric acid, which is also affected by the cold stabilization. Maybe it allows more tartaric to precipitate. I'm sure I haven't gotten the right formula for a balanced wine yet. The wine I made two years ago was really good, but I think the acid last year was way too high because I harvested too early.

Hmm, that sounds like a good idea. It would break the cells and get better extraction of juice from the berries.

Yes, it can be tricky deciding when to press. Sometimes I've let it go too long and ended up with some serious nasty stink that I had to try to get rid of later by aeration. It also depends on which kind of wine you were looking at. If it was concord type, it's usually brighter because it is diluted and the grapes are more purple than dark burgundy.

Good luck in finding a place with space to garden!

Glad you liked it!

Good luck to you.

the press I have was made by someone else, but it was handmade. I would say it has a capacity of 3 gallons or so. I think the inner basket came from a turkey deep fryer.

I'd recommend Muscadines. They are different from other grapes but grow well in the south. You might also be able to grow vinifera grapes there if you have warm winter temps above 10 degrees F.

That barrel is 15 gallons. I got it from a guy in our area who gets barrels from food processing facilities. They might have had bulk foods like soy sauce, or minced garlic in them. Not sure where you can source them in your area but you might call around or see if there is someone in your area that sells them.

I'm limited in the varieties I can grow because of the climate and the fact that I'm growing organically. We have cold winters now. Too cold for French grapes. This is one of several I grow and it's not a great wine grape. I've recently made a better wine without the foxiness by making it white. I press the grapes immediately and cold ferment it like you would a white wine. It's fruity like some other whites I make, but doesn't have the Concord grape juice flavor.

Yes, that is what I do myself because I have smaller amounts of different grapes that ripen at different times. To make one larger batch I freeze the earlier harvest grapes and then bring them all out for the final batch. It's only usually a couple or a few weeks in the freezer, so it's not a problem.

@@HardcoreSustainable Thank you that help me alot...

I would use gallons jars. Anything holding fermenting wine would have to at least be stainless steel if it was metal, but glass is much better. A plastic bucket is fine for the initial fermentation, but later you need to have an airlock to prevent oxidation.

According to what I've found, 100lbs of grapes will yield about 10 gallons of must. Where is your vineyard?

Texas. we are facing the same problem with weed. I am thinking to install ground cover with anchors under the vines. about 2 ft wide.

Yeah I've been trying to sheet mulch to kill off the grass then seeding white clover, which has a shallow root system and will crowd out the grass. I don't have to mow the clover, it is a good forage crop for livestock, and it fixes nitrogen. Good to know there are people out there trying to do it organically and having to figure out organic solutions.

Hardcore Sustainable awesome happy brewing

please update how it goes. I am planning to keep the ground cover permanent and plant the clover and pea in between the rows in fall and mulch them in the spring.

I've been researching table grape vineyard and found a great website at Grape grower folio (google it if you're interested)

I haven't ever made juice in bottles. I do have a bottle capper, but having the heat involved ensures the juice won't ferment in the bottle. I suppose you could do it by just heating the bottles and juice in the same way I do for canning in jars, and then use the capper to cap them. As the juice cools it will create an even better seal on the cap.

@@HardcoreSustainable thanks for your response! I had wondered if I needed to do a canning bath with the bottles like you do for canning jars. But I think the mechanical topper plus the hot juice seal will be sufficient.

It would be a good idea to do the boiling water bath just to be sure, but I would do it before capping because I think the caps will blow if you do it after. You'd have to leave the bottles open above the boiling water for a little. But you could try both. Probably as long at the juice was way above pasteurizing temp and then after capping you sloshed the juice around to kill anything stuck in the top of the bottle.

It depends on what kind of wine it is. Some like Concord I add some water too to dilute the acid and others are straight grapes. With concord you have to add more sugar because you added water, but with most of my wines I have to add a cup or two to a 5 gallon carboy, but it depends on the year. You can do calculations with online calculators to find out how much sugar you need to add to reach a desired Brix level in your wine. As far as yeast, I add one packet per 5 gallons and each packet is enough for 5 gallons.

I haven't ever tried. I would more likely select a vine and intentionally cross it than just get random seed. But I've never seen seeds sprouting from the leftover pomace I put in my compost. I'd guess the seeds don't survive the fermentation process.

I do add yeast. A wine yeast specific to the type of wine I'm trying to make.

I have Frontenac and Frontenac Gris, Marquette, and Edelweiss growing in my vineyard. Frontenac produces well in a dry year, but gets black rot bad in wetter years when grown organically. I think the disease pressure is much less in Minnesota and so some of these varieties are touted as disease resistant when they aren't. Still, my frontenac got up to 25B this season because it was so hot and dry.

Good to know. I live right on the boarder of ND and MN right in the red River Valley. When I get a house soonish I plan to plant some. Not so worried about cold but we can have nasty humid stretches here in the summer. So im thinking i would have quite a bit of Mildew. Where do you live

Sorry, this video isn't a how to. It's just showing parts of the process. I have other videos focusing more on how to.

I've never grown that one or made wine from it. Is it like Concord? Or is it a wine grape?

@@HardcoreSustainable Its going to be wine... suggestions?

@@AlanMolstad I can't really give you yeast suggestions without knowing much about the variety and what kind of wine you want to make. If it's a purple wine grape that makes a full bodied oak aged wine I'd recommend different kinds than if it's a sweet American grape and you want to make a sweet wine. You could also do a google search and find out for yourself. That's what I'd do if I were growing that variety.

@@HardcoreSustainable I would guess that I should only plan to make a common red wine. Nothing tricky. I did not plan on it being a sweet wine , I did not plan for it to be a desert wine. I think my goal should be to make my first wine just as normal and common as I can.

@@AlanMolstad Probably a good idea. Sometimes the sweeter wines can help a wine that isn't perfect taste a little better. But leaving residual sugar is tricky. Alternately you can add potassium sorbate and potassium metabisufite after fermentation is done and then add some sugar. This will prevent the sugar from fermenting again. But just making a dry red wine will probably be the best thing. You could add oak chips to help the flavor too. There are a few yeasts to try for a dry red. Pasteur Red, also called Premiere Rouge, Montrachet, and RC-212 are good ones. If you want to make a full bodied wine that you age, you can also do a secondary fermentation with malolactic bacteria. This stuff is pretty expensive so maybe not the best for small scale, but it makes a huge difference, giving a full bodied wine a smoother more buttery finish. But to keep it simple maybe just get one of those yeasts I suggested and see what it tastes like after you've racked it about 4 times.

Some videos don't explain anything about the process or ingredients. This is more of a demo than a how-to. Sorry if you were hoping for something different. Maybe I can do a more in depth how to in the future.

Sure, but I don't know if that adds any coconut flavor or not. I use organic sugar to chaptalize.

I did kind of. I tried one vine on my other house, Wisteria Lodge, and planned to grow it up the same trellis the Wisteria was being started on, but on the opposite end. It didn't survive the first winter. I think it's too cold here for muscadines.

Hardcore Sustainable Think James Grapes are very similar but are a domesticated variety. Thanks for answering

Excellent Video clip! Excuse me for chiming in, I am interested in your initial thoughts. Have you thought about - Lammywalness Green Grapes Guide (Sure I saw it on Google)? It is an awesome one of a kind product for learning how to become a successful grape grower minus the normal expense. Ive heard some incredible things about it and my best friend Jordan after many years got astronomical results with it.

I do usually add some sugar, but how much depends on the variety of grape. The American grapes are high acid and low sugar and so usually need to be diluted with water and more sugar added to bring them up to wine levels. Wine grapes tend to be fairly close to the levels they need to be. We can't always get high sugar levels naturally here, but there are some years I don't have to add any extra sugar. You should use a chaptalization calculator to gauge how much sugar you will need to add to get the must up to the right sugar level for the wine you are making.

@@HardcoreSustainable Thanks! What about yeast ?

@@ansvel Yes I added yeast as well. The type also depends on what kind of wine you are making. You can just use the yeast found naturally on the grapes, but it might not turn out well.

@@HardcoreSustainable Do you kill wild yeast first or just added yours on top? Thanks.

@@ansvel I do add potassium metabisulfite to the grapes after harvest and let them sit overnight before adding the commercial yeast.

It depends on how sweet your grapes end up. I add sugar to some varieties. If you are making a white wine usually they start with less sugar, but then you might add sugar at the end so the wine end sweet. You just test the Brix level with a hydrometer.

@@HardcoreSustainable but in your video i don't see you are adding suger

@@fmrcoc9502 At 3:40 in the video I say that I have to add sugar. This wasn't supposed to be a how to video but a demonstration video, just showing me making it, not going through step by step.

@@HardcoreSustainable will you create a video step by step step

Where are you from?

I'm from Philippines. The garden and green surrounding reminds me .

Could be, but squirrels are few and far between out here in the country. You might spot one from time to time out in the woods but they are totally different than suburban squirrels. Skittish and wild. We've a had a few start coming into the village in the last few years, or they rode in from town on cars. Rats are everywhere though.

Rats do exist, especially in rural areas. They probably exist where you live and in any area where grapes are grown, so likely all wine is "rat wine", you just don't know it. In fact, pretty much anything you eat that's processed probably has some rat residue in it, whether rat feces or parts, you just don't think about it. mmmm. I'd trust homegrown products over mass produced anytime, if we're talking about the likelihood of rat contamination.

Haha! My thoughts exactly.

I mean from the Americas. Grapes evolved separately on both continents. I don't know if there were native grapes in South America but I can't imagine why there wouldn't have been. I mostly know the North American varieties, so that's what I'm talking about.

Well, if it does it will certainly get removed from the wine in the process and the alcohol will sterilize anything that does get into the wine from whatever falls in it. You should be more worried about any kind of processed foods you buy at the store than stuff made at home the old fashioned way. I've heard stories about workers intentionally urinating in vats of product in factories, and one time I found a pubic hair in a bag of potato chips. What you don't know can't hurt you I guess though, right? People have been making wine this way for thousands of years without any problems.

Hmm, I wonder what winemaking gurus you are referring to. I usually see fruit wines being scoffed at by enologists and vintners. The problem with those fruits is that, like you say, they don't have natural sugar levels anywhere close to being able to produce a stable wine. You have to add sugars, and those sugars have to come from really far away usually, and require lots of processing. They also lack the balance of acidity that grapes can achieve. Fruit wines tend to require a lot of adjustment of acids too because they aren't always as naturally acidic, or are too acidic or have other off chemicals. I tried making a wine from carembola last year and it was acrid and insipid. I think this is why you don't see fruit wines as widespread as grape wine. I think eau de vie is more commonly drunk worldwide than fruit wines, but I could be wrong. I think that is because it can be made from all local sugars without addition. Before we could buy sugar cheap in large amounts, people wouldn't have bothered with fruits that aren't naturally sweet. So I disagree that it has to do with money in the way you say. I think actually the fact that sugar has become so cheap and readily available (and because grapes require more work and tending to grow properly) is the only reason people make fruit wines these days. That's what I started with because I could easily get lots of raspberries, mulberries, or gooseberries and just add cheap sugar from the store. But now I have grapes and I want them because they are naturally sweet and can produce a wine without the addition of sugar. That's really what I'm going for...all local ingredients to make an alcohol. I do add some sugar in some seasons, and I do for American grape wines (because they are around 15 Brix instead of 24-30B and require dilution), but if I can get as much of the sugar naturally, it's much more sustainable, natural, and a better feeling buzz.

@@HardcoreSustainable ~ Hmm, I wonder if you're shill who is being paid by some wine company to diss any information that reveals that grape wine is inferior to berry wines. As for who the 'gurus' are I'm referring to, if you really are interested to find out who they are (which seriously doubt), you can go to any well known wine maker's forum and you'll find that information. As far as grape wine giving you a much better feeling buzz, you don't know what you're talking about seeing as how comparing a grape wine buzz to an elderberry wine buzz is about like comparing a beer buzz to a tequila buzz. I'm 74 years old now and I've been drinking since I was 15 years old so I can well imagine that I've had a lot more alcohol buzzes than you have. In other words, I know more about what I'm talking about than you do. Furthermore, most commercial wines contain sulfites or sorbates which give you a hangover, and practically all California wines contain pesticide and herbicide residues that can make you feel like shit. I've been a winemaker for fourteen years and I've never added sulfites or sorbates to any of my wines and I've had numerous people tell me that my wines don't give them any hangover. With all this being said, my suggestion to you is that you unlearn everything you've learned about wine and winemaking and start all over by learning how to make it yourself.

@@jimyost2585 Yes, I'm being paid $10K by the wine industry for every random comment suggesting fruit wine is better than grape wine that I respond to. I'm rollin in dough because of people like you!! I just made the only $10K I've made since signing that contract years ago. I would never take advice from someone like you. You started out of the gate like a know-it-all acting like you know better than I do and that I should give up grape wine because fruit wine is better. You don't even address the points I made about using added sugar as your source of alcohol. I can't think of anything more artificial than taking fruit juice and adding a bunch of sugar to make it wine, but you try to make it seem like it's the most natural thing in the world and far superior to grape winemaking. What a bunch of nonsense. Winemaking forums are usually home winemakers. I'm sure some of them are skilled in their craft and have perfected fruit wines as much as they can. But the reason they make fruit wine is because it's easier to make than grape wine. You just take your local fruit and add lots of sugar from Brazil, and then you have to add other additives to make them balanced. I guarantee you that most of the winemakers on those forums use PMB in their wines. And without some amount of sulfites you will inevitably end up with a wine that can become active again in the bottle and that will oxidize fast. And if you filter instead of sulfiting you will end up taking out flavors. There are natural wines that are a whole different glass of grape wines that don't have added sulfites. But I doubt you really know much about the chemistry of winemaking and the fact that the only sulfites that stay in a wine are the ones you add just before bottling. If I do add them, I add the bare minimum to ensure the wine doesn't become active in the bottle because I don't want to filter. Winemakers have been using sulfur to preserve wine for hundreds of years. And I'd consider actual vintners and people who do it for a living to be the "gurus". I've been making wine for 28 years. I don't consider myself an expert yet at all, but I have a lot of experience. You seem to have an axe to grind about fruit wines. I disagree. I have plenty of experience with them and I've never tasted one that could compare to a grape wine in complexity or flavor. Usually people just make them sweet to mask the off flavors.

@@HardcoreSustainable ~ Whether you'd like to admit it or not sulfites give you a hangover. But... if you're a wine sipper instead of a wine drinker then I guess it doesn't matter if you drink wine that is corrupted with sulfites. Plus I gather from what you said that you've never tasted elderberry wine or blackberry wine. As for adding sugar to wine, I've never made sweet wine on purpose, the only time I made sweet wine was a couple of times when I left the must in the brew buckets too long and the fermentation didn't start back up after I transferred the wine to the carboys, so that what I wound up was sweet wine with low alcohol content. Moreover, I never add sugar at the end. The only time I've ever added sugar to wine was when I added it to some bottles of pear habanero wine and/or tomato habanero wine to heat it up in a double boiler and drink like hot saki on cold winter days. If you've got a chill and are having a hard time getting warm, a couple of saki cups of either of those will warm you right up. Whenever I add sugar to either of those wines I always try to add enough sugar to make it have close to the sweetness of saki. I don't usually care for sweet wine, but the sugar in either of those wines makes the alcohol go right into your system and you get warm real quick. I usually add 20 orange habanero peppers to a five gallon batch of either pear or tomato wine, or 12 red habaneros. If you add much more than that amount of peppers most people complain about the heat. You may find this to be interesting. Not long after I started making wine fourteen years ago I read everything I could get my hands on about how to make wine, and I ran across an article in a winemaking magazine that said that they did a survey in which they sent a questionnaire to a hundred seasoned winemakers from all around the world asking them what they thought are the best fruits for making wine, from their favorite and on down the list, and they compiled the following list: 1. Elderberry 2. Blackberry 3. Blueberry 4. Cherry (sour cherries, not black cherries) 5. Pear 6. Plum 7. Apple 8. Peach 9. Grape 10. Fig 11. Muscadine 12. Persimmon Along about that time I read a comment posted by a winemaker on a winemaker's forum in which he said that he did extensive research about the history of wine making, all the way back to the ancient Canaanites and ancient Hebrews (nearly 5,000 years ago), and he found out that the ancient Romans regarded pear wine as their favorite wine. And there they were in the middle of the world's premier grape growing region. I wonder if maybe they were tired of grape wine and pear wine was more of a novelty. You said you've been making wine for 28 years. What kind of wines do you usually make? How much do you usually make every year?

@@jimyost2585 Well, that's interesting, but there has to be a reason why fruit wines are not anywhere near as widely drunk as grape. I don't think I've ever had a commercial fruit wine that wasn't sweet. I haven't ever had what I'd consider a well made elderberry wine, though I'd like to try one someday to see what they are supposed to taste like. I think I'd trust the British to make a good elderberry wine. As I say, early on I made a lot of fruit wine because I didn't have grapes readily available. I made gooseberry, cherry, dandelion, mulberry, elderberry, and even garden huckleberry. I made a pear wine a few years ago, but it ended up turning into a really good vinegar. These days I've been making around 150-250 bottles of wine a year, and all of it is grape these days, though some is Concord type, which is more like a fruit wine in that you have to add some sugar and dilute it to balance the acids. I have been making a nouveau type wine, a full bodied red, at least one white wine, usually two, and the concord type, but I don't backsweeten to the levels that it's traditionally sweetened to because i don't like really sweet wine, unless it's an oxidized holiday type wine, like glugg.

Not sure what to say to this one. Really? You are seriously concerned about this happening as a result of this video? Do you go around leaving similar comments on the millions of similar or even more detailed video explanations of wine or beermaking? Alcohol distillation? Kids can easily find out how to build bombs on the internet, so I think this is an extreme expectation. It makes me think you are just trolling. I doubt you are going to reach youtube through a comment on my video.