Wine making in a more simple form?

Question

I made wine before and the results were ok. I have been looking up ways to make the yeast turn more of my sugar into alcohol. Can someone explain this in a way I can understand it? I am not trying to win an award for best wine of the year! Any other tips will be apreciated! Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think the sugar will turn to alcohol. I drink dry wine and you don't need sugar. Use more grapes, crush up real good put yeast in. Use glass jar. Try to let it sit 3 months or more.

Answer 2

Yeah, if you keep the temperature good, and give it enough time the yeast will produce alcohol from sugar until 1. the alcohol content kills the yeast, or 2. the sugar is used up.  If you didn't have as much alcohol as you wanted, you might not have had the right temperature, or you didn't give it enough time.

Answer 3

Yeast does consume sugar and produce alcohol, but once the alcohol gets to a certain level, the yeast dies off.  It can't live in a very strong alcohol solution.

Here's more info:  http://www.goodbyecitylife.com/home/wine...

Answer 4

One of two things is probably going on here: 1) you might not have enough sugar in your juice to start with; 2) you might not have yeast that are capable of surviving high enough alcohol levels to turn all of your sugar into alcohol.

If your grapes weren't ripe enough to start with then they probably won't contain enough natural sugar to make a very high alcohol wine.  Go online to one of the wine making supply stores or drive to one if you have one nearby and buy yourself a hydrometer (should only cost about $10).  The hydrometer is a glass measuring instrument that looks kind of like a thermometer.  You just place it fat end down into whatever container you are going to do your fermentation in or some kind of smaller test jar.  The hydrometer will float in the liquid and you simply read the number on the hydrometer at whatever level the grape juice comes to on the side of it.  To make a wine that will end up being around 12.5% - 13.0% alcohol (pretty standard for table wine) you want your reading to be about 1.100 when you add the yeast.  If it is lower than that, add sugar a little bit at a time to the juice, stir, and measure again.  Repeat this process until you get to the 1.100 reading.

Next step is to make sure you are using a yeast designed for wine making.  A packet of yeast should only be about a dollar and that is enough yeast to make up to 5 gallons of wine.  Any good wine yeast should have enough alcohol tolerance to eat all of the sugar in the juice and bring your specific gravity down to 1.000 or less, which means you should be up at the 12% - 13% alcohol level you were going for.  Just be sure you don't try to use a yeast not designed for wine making.  Many other kinds of yeast will only get you to 5% 0r 6% alcohol and then they will die.  Wine needs to be at least 9% alcohol by volume in order to resist spoiling, so that should be the absolute lowest you would aim for.