- 1). Cut away the woody main stem of your grapes prior to crushing them, assuming you do not own a crusher with an automatic de-stemmer.
- 2). Crush your grapes. If you do not own a crushing machine of any kind, there is the old fashioned way of doing this: you can put the grapes into a big vat, and stomp on them with your (washed) feet. Then transfer the grape juice, skins, and small bits of stem to a new vat. This mix of juice and debris is known as "must."
- 3). Test the must for brix (sweetness), pH (one kind of acidity) and tartaric acidity (a second kind of acidity), and adjust accordingly. Concord grapes have a brix of 16 on average, which is too low and why most winemakers shun them. They usually require added sugar, typically 4 or 5 ounces of common table sugar per gallon. Also add campden tablets on the basis of the pH reading. A pH of 3.7 requires 1 1/2 tablets per gallon of must, for example. Finally, tartaric acid needs to be above 0.55. If it is not, you need to add the acid until a reading above 0.55 is reached.
- 4). Cover the must with a tarp or plastic lid, and let it sit overnight.
- 5). Add winemaker's yeast to the must in the amount specified by the directions. You may be able to find a strain of yeast specifically tailored to making concord wine or kosher wine, which would likely yield better results than generic red wine yeast.
- 6). Let the must ferment for seven to nine days. If the weather is hot, make it seven. If it is cold, make it nine. The must will froth and bubble, forming a cap of foam and bits of skin and stem. Return twice a day, every day during that week to stir the must with a pole or paddle.
- 7). Pour the wine from one vat to another, straining it as you go. You may wish to use a press, if you have one, to squeeze the last bit of tannin-packed juice out of the skins. For a home winemaker working with concord grapes, however, this is strictly optional.
- 8). Pour the new concord wine into sanitized old water carboys, using a funnel to help keep the transfer neat. Plug the carboys using winemaking airlocks, store them in a cool, dark place, and let it continue to ferment for three weeks.
- 9). Redistribute your concord wine among the carboys to eliminate any pockets of gas that have formed during secondary fermentation. This can be easily done with a siphon hose and a funnel. You will probably wind up with a little wine leftover. Either transfer that to a smaller, suitable container, or discard it.
- 10
Add sulfites to the wine to kill any bacteria or yeasts that might have gotten into it during Step 9, and then re-plug the carboys with the airlocks. Age the wine for a further 3 to 6 months.
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