Cooking apple wine at home in a simple and affordable way

The apple harvest turned out to be prohibitively large and now you need to figure out what to do with a huge amount of fruit? It is best to make apple wine from them at home. Making this drink is not difficult at all if you adhere to the basic rules for the selection and preparation of the base product..

Basic information

Depending on the sweetness of the raw materials used to obtain a fragrant drink, wine can be divided into three types:

• dry – up to 0.3 g of sugar per 100 ml of liquid;
• sweet – 5 g of sugar or more for the same volume;
• semi-dry – 2.5 g sugar per 100 ml.

The best way to make homemade alcohol is to use sweet and sour apples. Fruits ripened in summer are the least suitable for these purposes, since they contain a lot of organic acids. It is best to use autumn or winter apples of the following varieties: Bogatyr, Snezhny Kalvin, Antonovka, Borovinka and Anis.

The collection of the product is carried out at the stage of its technical maturation, otherwise in the future the level of pectin will increase and it will be much more difficult to separate the juice from the pulp. It is recommended to store raw materials from 2 to 5 days..

How apple wine is made at home

Making apple wine at home is pretty easy. The technology of its preparation is similar to the production of any other berry alcoholic drink..

The main thing is to adhere to the main stages of work:

1. Pretreat apples: rinse, dry.
2. Peel fruit, chop into pieces, pass through a press or juicer.
3. Analyze the received raw materials.
4. Prepare the wort.
5. Add yeast if necessary.
6. Leave the leaven for fermentation.
7. Carry out the first filtration of the liquid.
8. Leave the wine to ferment a second time.
9. Another cleaning of the drink followed by pouring it.
10. Aging and refining of wine.
11. Pouring homemade products into bottles.

It turns out that making apple alcohol is not difficult, but this process is long. On average, at least 7 months pass from harvest to full ripening of the drink. But the result is worth it – you get an amber wine with a delicate apple aroma..

Yeast is not always used to make wine. It all depends on the specific recipe of the drink..

It remains only to consider a few step-by-step recipes for homemade apple wine in order to learn how to make it with your own hands..

Classic version

To prepare a fruit drink with a simple recipe, you need to prepare the following ingredients:

• apples – 5 kg;
• sugar – 6 tbsp.

Cooking steps:

1. The raw materials are cleaned, cored, divided into small slices and passed through a meat grinder. Alternatively, you can grind apples using a regular grater..
2. Add 3 cups of sugar (half of the indicated amount), mix and transfer to a large bottle. The container must be sealed with a cork, then moved to a dark place. There, the wine stock is left to ferment for several days..
3. When fermentation stops, the pulp is separated from the juice, combined with the remaining sugar and again sent to ferment (for about a month).
4. The resulting liquid is filtered through several layers of gauze, then bottled.

Based on a simple recipe for preparation, until the moment of direct tasting, the wine should be infused under lids for 2-3 months.

Cider – apple wine at home

Cider is a sparkling wine made from apple juice. If you follow the recipe, you get a 5-7% drink that resembles real champagne.

To make your own cider, you just need to stock up on the following ingredients:

• apples;
• sugar at the rate of 100 g of product per 1 liter of juice.

Cooking steps:

1. Peeled fruit without a center, chopped into several pieces.
2. The prepared base is passed through a juicer.
3. The resulting juice is poured into a glass or plastic bottle.
4. Add half of granulated sugar to the container, mix both components thoroughly.
5. Close the container so that not the slightest gap remains, then a water seal is installed on it. Move the workpiece to a dark corner for at least 7 days.
6. After a week, the liquid is filtered through cheesecloth. The purified composition is poured into a jar so that it takes up only 80% of its volume.
7. Combine young wine with the remaining sugar, mix. The jar is sealed, the same water seal is installed on it and left to ferment for another 7 days.
8. Repeat the filtering process by pouring the purified liquid from apple juice into a deep saucepan.
9. The finished drink is poured into plastic bottles, adding 1 tbsp to each container. l. Sahara. It is important that at least 15% of the free space remains in the dishes. This is necessary so that during further fermentation the bottle does not explode under increasing pressure..
10. The containers are twisted, hidden in a dark place. Wine is observed periodically. As soon as the bottle has become sufficiently elastic, the gases are lowered by slightly uncorking the lid..
11. Young cider is removed to the cellar, where it is stored until direct use.

Sugar is only needed if the apples for the cider were sour.

Apple cake wine

It turns out that making excellent apple wine at home is possible not only from fruit juice. Recycled products are also suitable for these purposes, which are usually sent to the trash bin..

Ingredients:

• apple cake;
• water;
• sugar.

Cooking steps:

1. Despite the simplicity of its execution, it takes a juicer and a little care to make a good drink from fruit pomace. Apples must not be washed before use – only wipe with a napkin.
2. After working with a juicer or juicer, the liquid goes to other needs, and the remaining pulp is used to create homemade wine.
3. The cake is laid out in banks so that only 70% of their volume is filled, and sugar is added. Proportion – 120 g of sweet sand per 1 kg of pulp.
4. Pour in cooled boiled water, leaving 5 cm free near the neck of the jar. The reason – in the process of subsequent fermentation, foam will appear, due to which the liquid will rise higher.
5. We cover the containers with gauze, leave for 4 days in a dark corner of the apartment. Once a day, the contents are stirred so that the fermentation process takes place evenly.
6. After the specified time, the resulting liquid is filtered using several layers of gauze as a filter.
7. The resulting composition is combined with a small amount of sugar, poured into clean jars, corked and again set to ferment. This time the wine will take at least 35-40 days. During this time, a sediment forms at the bottom of the container, which is normal.
8. The drink is almost ready. It is filtered as carefully as possible, then sent to the cellar to mature for at least 20-30 days.

The more sugar you add before the second fermentation, the stronger the alcohol will end up..

Apple wine at home from drying

If for some reason it was not possible to make your favorite drink in the autumn harvesting period, but you want to feel its taste unbearably, you can always use an excellent analogue for these purposes – apple drying.

The main thing is to have all the necessary components in stock:

• dried, cut apples – 3 kg;
• water – 2.5 l;
• granulated sugar – 330 g;
• alcohol – 1.5 l;
• wine yeast – 3 tsp.

Cooking steps:

1. Drying of any kind is laid out in a large enamel bowl, poured over with hot water. Leave to soften for 24 hours.
2. The finished product is thoroughly squeezed out, the resulting liquid is poured into a bottle.
3. Sugar syrup is added. To prepare it, you need to dissolve 100 g of sweet sand in 930 ml of warm water. Yeast is also poured, all components are shaken well.
4. Close the bottles with a special stopper (fermentation), leave the wine to mature.
5. After 7 days, add alcohol to the apple wort.
6. The resulting composition is insisted for another 3-5 days.
7. Now the drink is filtered, trying not to pour out the sediment, transferred to glass bottles, they are well corked and left to ripen for at least 7-8 months. During this time, using a small plastic tube, the wine is poured several times into a clean container..
8. The finished alcohol is freed from sediment again, bottled in beautiful bottles and kept in the cold until the moment of use.

Before soaking, drying must be washed in hot water.

Tips for making great homemade apple wine

To learn how to make a really worthwhile alcoholic drink from garden fruits on your own, it is enough to remember a few easy-to-follow secrets:

1. To make the wine strong, it is enough to add a little vodka to the ready-made drink. 110 ml of product per 1 liter of liquid will increase its strength by 10 degrees.
2. The resulting wine should only be stored in a cool room, preferably in a cellar or refrigerator. A homemade analogue of a well-known drink should be consumed over the next 1-1.5 years.
3. Handmade alcohol can reach a strength of up to 12% maximum. You can increase this figure with sugar. If you use 50 g of sweetener per liter of apple juice, the wine will be light, but 400 g of sugar for the same volume of nectar will make the drink fortified.
4. Do not overdo it with water, as it makes the taste and aroma of the wine less pronounced. It is better to strictly comply with the recipe, otherwise the drink may turn sour, and then completely deteriorate..
5. Despite the fact that alcohol will be stored in a glass container, it must be disinfected before use. Alternatively, rinse with a solution of soda, or scald with boiling water, then dry well.
6. If there is no water seal, it doesn’t matter. Instead, a regular pharmacy dropper will do. All you need is to insert the system needle into the closed nylon cover, and place the other end in a saucepan with water. At the same time, it is important to release the roller, otherwise the gases will not be able to leave the can, and under pressure it will simply burst.
7. If you make wine from the pulp, the first few days it must be stirred periodically. This activates the fermentation process and prevents the appearance of mold on the surface of the composition..
8. It doesn’t matter which apples are used to make wine – sour or sweet. The main thing is to clean them well, remove the core and stalk..
9. Wine is an excellent natural immune stimulant if consumed in reasonable amounts (100-150 g per day). It contains useful trace elements and vitamins.

Apples are an excellent base for creating homemade wine that tastes unique. Experiment with different varieties of it and create your own unique alcoholic drink.

Video recipe for making apple wine at home