Do I triple all ingredients?

I am making triple the quantity – Do I triple all ingredients?

  • If you are making 3 separate batches of the wine, you will need to treble all of the ingredients.

  • If you are making one batch three times larger than the recipe, I would recommend that you reduce the sugar in your recipe by a third, and only make one yeast starter mix – The yeast will reproduce itself if there is enough sugar – Just make sure that the starter mix is really frothing before you add it.

A Cautionary Tale

One day in the early eighties I made a batch of Rice and Potato wine. I forget the recipe – It was cheap and I had rice and potatoes in the house… so rice and potatoes were in it 😛 . . . also I believe there may have been some raisins.  After all the bubbling and such subsided, this wine was bottled and put in the small cupboard under the sink, to be forgotten.

A few years later, I got married and sold my house to move to the US. In preparation for moving, all the cupboards were emptied and I found these 3 bottles of wine, covered in dust. I was on a tight schedule, and they couldn’t be shipped, so I emptied them into the sink… I don’t know why, but I tried a small glass from the last bottle – It was the best wine I had ever made – clear, light, fresh and not too sweet!

What can you learn from this?

  • Keep a record of ALL the recipes you use to make EVERY batch of wine that you make.
  • Even homemade wine keeps a lot longer than you can imagine ~ If it is bottled and stored properly.
  • Never throw wine down the sink until you are sure you won’t want to drink it.

Recording your brewing(s)

Keep a record of all the ingredients in every recipe you use. It will be important for making adjustments to the recipe or if you want to reproduce good ones in the future. This also helps with avoiding the recipes you don’t ever want to use again.

Record the times of starting, length of fermenting and storage, and how you liked or disliked the resulting wine.
Note the recipe you used and the date when you bottle your wine. Attach some kind of label to each bottle.