A few days ago the Island King and I were sitting outside enjoying our late afternoon cup of coffee when we started talking about wine. We both agreed that we've always wanted to try making our own and that lead us to the internet and a search on homemade wine.
We found all kinds of articles, tutorials and videos and it didn't take long for us to decide to make some ourselves.
I found a simple recipe involving Concord grape juice and as we continued surfing around we came across a recipe for a Kool-Aid wine. Well, the Island King being the redneck that he is, immediately decided that he wanted to try some of that.
I decided that I would stick with the grape juice wine and that he could have all of the Kool-Aid wine that he wanted so we made both.
We started by gathering the ingredients for the grape wine.
And the ingredients for the Kool-Aid wine.
The directions said you can use any flavor of Kool-Aid so the Island King picked his favorite which is Berry Blue. He calls it Romulan Ale.
I learned quite a few things that night and the first was that if you pour a little dish washing soap into a pot of water and then put it on to boil the soap bubbles will grow and grow and grow into an odd mushroom shaped tower LOL
Once we cleaned up the soap mess, we put the bottled water on to boil for a bit.
For the grape wine we added sugar to the hot water, let it dissolve and then cooled the water down in an ice bath.
For the Kool-Aid wine we let the water cool but poured the sugar directly into the container.
While the water was cooling we poured 2 containers of grape juice concentrate into the water jug.
And we activated the yeast for the Kool-Aid wine.
We poured the sugar water into the container with the grape juice.
And then emptied a yeast packet directly on top of the juice/sugar water mixture.
We poured the warm water onto the sugar in the Kool-Aid wine container,
Shook well and then added the activated yeast.
For some reason the instructions for the Kool-Aid wine say not to add the Kool-Aid until the wine has fermented, which will take 6 to 10 days. I'm a little worried about that process because the directions also state that when the Kool-Aid is added it should be done in the bathtub because there will be "a reaction" I'm thinking we'll add the Kool-Aid outside LOL
We still had one last step for each jug and that was to cap them.
We poked a pinhole in two balloons, covered the mouth of the jugs with the balloons and then secured them with rubber bands.
This will let the CO2 that builds up out without letting air in - or so the directions say.
The directions for the grape wine said to put the jug in a warm place away from sunlight and in a spot where it can sit for 6 to 10 days without being moved.
The directions for the Kool-Aid wine said to "find a safe, warm place to hide the jug" Hide the jug? For some reason I'm now thinking that the person who wrote the Kool-Aid wine tutorial may not be quite old enough to make or consume wine LOL
We didn't feel the need to hide the jug so both jugs went onto the top shelf of the kitchen pantry where they will sit, wait and ferment.
I woke up this morning and can see that something is happening.
I'm not sure what prompted us to spend Wednesday evening making cheap wine but it was fun and I can't wait to see what it tastes like LOLLabels: Done
