Brewing - making wine without yeast

[sands of time]

I know that when most people brew they use yeast. I was wondering if you can use other shit besides yeast. I know that in the middle ages they used chamomile. I tried this and it worked quite well. Anyone know any other stuff that can be used?

[hollywood]

I know what your asking, but when I was in jail we use to make home brew "if you will", we used peaches and mixed fruit from the kitchen and we saved our sugar from our coffee in the morning, and used buscuits, and honey buns. It tasted like shit and smelled worse but it would get you drunk, if you could stomach it. I would like a good wine recipe if you have one...............

[sands of time]

Well for chamomile I just made some of the tea, threw in tons of sugar and molasses and let it sit in a plastic bottle for about 3-4 weeks. You get alot of floaters andshitso when your done yougottafilter it out. If you get the sugar and mollases in the right amount it will taste good but I didn't recordhow much I added unfortunately.Letting grape juice sit in a plastic bottle for awhile works to. Yeast helps alot though with making any kind of wine. If yeast is notavailable you can make "prison wine" by using bread since it has yeast in it.

[HCB1337]

I work in a Winery. Yeast ferments things. you CAN NOT make wine without yeast. LUCKILY there is a little thing called NATURAL yeast! if u get things to the right temp then the natural yeast will kick in and ferment the goos for you. for a good wine u want a good sugar level - called bomeau (spelling? pronounced bow-may). the right acid levels are important too. for white wine you want to crush the grapes and get the juice AWAY from the skins ASAP. for red u want to ferment the wine WITH the skins. you also want a good size berry. a good sized berry is SMALL!

Table grapes are useless for winemaking - thats why they go on the table. conversely winegrapes are SHIT to eat.

2 products that will aid in the fermenting process are "diammoniumphsophate" and "Cerevit". just think of them as yeast food. they assist the yeast in the process.



When you are happy that the wine has reached a decent alcohol content (or the yeasts have died) just bung the container in the fridge for a day or so. this should help seperate all teh crap to the bottom of the container. there are several fining agents u can use, our winery uses skim milk powder, which is mixed with water and then slowly added to the wine. NOT MUCH IS USED! i'm talking 20kg to a 130000 litre tank. then the wine is passed through a centrifuge which spins the solids out of the wine.



It is important to not let the fermenting juice go below 16 degrees celcius or teh yeast WILL die. it is also important to try and MINIMISE the contact the wine has with oxygen. the oxygen will discolour the wine and screw with the flavours.

[Alfa]

HCB1337: good to have you here. You seen to know quite a lot about alcohol. Would you care starting some topics?

[bman1]

hcb1337 is right wild yeast works well


one could do a google search for a lambic beer for ideas. Lambic beer uses these wild yeast for fermentation to produce a veryunique sour flavor. I would assume one could use this technique for wine also.


I do not know much about making wine but am an avid homebrewer and have tried lambic (personaly to sour for me)