Wild Berry Wine

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

The beer/wine making equipment will be necessary and then the bottles for the finished product. However, both will get used again and again I'm sure. Food grade buckets, fruits, grains and other fermentables, sugar, water and yeast is all you really need.



A blender is helpful for making the mash. A large pot to boil the beer wort and hops is necessary for making beer. Plus temperature is important, so a cooking thermometer is needed. I suggest growing hops, they come back every year and take over like weeds. Buy the barley, you can malt it yourself in those plastic Rubber Maid bins.



I was starting my wine in plastic fruit juice jugs, you can use almost anything to make wine in as long as it's clean (soap and water) and sterile (20 min. soak in a solution of 1 tablespoon of bleach to one gallon of water, rinse with sterile water that was boiled).



There is a lot of details and things to know, but a lot of that seems to be traditions and methods that go beyond the basics, but will produce consistent brews. I used well water, added sugar, used baker's yeast and doubled the fermentation period. I guessed on how much hops I was using. All these things are big "no nos" in the brewing world, but it totally worked.

From my completely novice perspective, all of that seems really, really complicated. But usually i am able to learn new things if the thing happens to have my interest. Been thinking about this on and off the whole day and i am starting to feel like it is not a good idea if i have lots of alcohol here at home and i can make more with a relatively cheap price. I am an alcoholic, i could fall into delirium or die. All these years... decades... poverty is what has kept me alive, and prevented me from drinking myself to the bottom of my own grave.

Also, sorry about the quote format. RN has been doing this lately and i am feeling too lazy to fix the gaps.

Yes, it is complicated, but the simplicity of yeast and fermentation, it's very basic.

I have had my day of binge drinking and partying, that's long ago now. Now I've come to appreciate an expensive craft brew of higher quality and alcohol content, twice the price of the mass produced domestic swill they call beer here in the states. I can't really afford that for daily consumption, but two will do the trick, more than that and it's a party.

If the only beer you drank was from 5 gallon batches of home brew that takes a month to produce, and you had to make that last until the next batch is done, then drinking might not be so big of a problem, then again, I wouldn't want to encourage alcoholism either.

Five gallons is 640 ounces, or about 53 beers, you aren't going to get that much, two cases at best. 48 beers until the next batch, or a 12 pack per week.