By this time you’ve racked your wine several times from one carboy to another. The airlock is quiet as fermentation has stopped. You notice that after the last racking, there has been no more sediment deposited on the bottom of the carboy, and using a wine thief, a specially formed glass tube for drawing samples of wine; you fill half a wine glass with your labor of love to check it for clarity and flavor. If you’re satisfied with the wine you can either leave it in the carboy for further aging, (assuming you don’t need the jug for additional batches of wine), transfer it to another container such as a small barrel, or in most cases you’ll choose to bottle.
A supply of bottles should be no problem if you’ve been saving them as you drink. Of course, your bottles will need to be cleaned. You can use a pressure washer type attachment on your faucet, a scrubber that attaches to a driver/drill, or the good old fashioned hand bottle brush. A bottle tree, a rack to hold bottles while draining; is a useful purchase if you’re cleaning lots of bottles. Bottles must be sterilized before filling using a device that squirts a sulfite solution into the bottles, or you can just line them up in the sink and pour boiling water over them. Once bottles are clean, dry and sterile they’re ready to be filled. The simplest method uses the same siphoning system you used to rack your wine; fill to the desired level and stop the flow. There are filling devices you can use that attach to your siphon hose and automatically stop the flow when the bottle is full, as well as gravity feed and electric bottle fillers for filling large quantities.
Filled bottles then need to be sealed. I use corks exclusively for closing my bottles and have yet to have a bottle spoil. To seat corks you have several options. Plunger type corkers are OK for small quantities. Single- and double-armed lever corkers are easier and faster to use, although the double-armed type takes a little practice. If you’re going to make more than a couple of cases a year though, a floor or bench corker is a worthwhile investment; much faster and more consistent.
Now we’ve covered the basics of equipment for the home winemaker. Join me for the next series of posts as we get into the actual winemaking process. I’ve got 50 lbs of raspberries to turn into wine!
Front to Rear: Wine thief, bottle brushes, double-armed lever corker, bottle sanitizer, bottle tree, floor corker, Pippin.

STUDYING HOW TO MAKE WINE

For those who are interested in making homemade wine, there are a number of ways to do so. You can hop off to the Internet and learn about recipes for the different types of wines which make use of different fruits in other to get their particular base. After this then you should select the particular wine that you want to make and get a recipe so you can begin. Alternatively you can easily purchase books, videos or DVDs which will teach you how wine is made. At the library you can also spend a huge amount of hours taking stock of the library books and making notes until you have heard all the things that are possible about the winemaking procedure. You can also talk to people who have been making wine successfully for a long time and this would usually be in the case where you have tasted some wonderful wine that they made and you want this experience for yourself. If you find yourself with enough time on your hands, you can also opt for winemaking classes at a local institution or one which offers its courses online.
The art of winemaking has become very popular and so much so that courses at the university which offer to teach people about winemaking exist. Other things that can be discovered here are the types of grapes which are used to make certain types of wine and which types of these grapes you should grow. These courses are things you take all year round but lighter courses which will still earn you credits. Other more complete courses also exist where you will learn everything from wine growth, chemical reactions to the financial facts necessary to maintain a wine business. These courses may even teach about the comparisons between large wineries and smaller ones and they also give you the tax advantages and accounting strategies which are necessary for the running of any business.
People who want to learn how to make wine just for themselves also have courses which cater to them. Not only can you find classes which will teach you how to make wine, but if your enroll you will have at least a minimum of sixty bottles of wine just to prove that you have attended the course. These courses are so simple and they cost less than a hundred dollars but you should probably factor in an extra fifty, in order to account for associated costs such as ingredients, bottles and some other stuff which may be needed. Some institutions offering these courses will even permit you to utilize their cellar space as a wine cellar in order to allow your wine ferment more conveniently. Encouragement and assistance will also be provided to enable you design a label for your foray into the world of winemaking.
Another thing that these classes will teach other than making grape wine is the art of making fruit wine. While some of these classes will be at university level, not all will be, most will be provided by community colleges and community centers. If you aren’t up for joining any of these efforts however, you can simply stay at home instead of taking a winemaking class. You also have the options of distance learning and purchasing your own winemaking kits