When I decided to embark on making my own wine at home, one of the main questions I had was: What do I need to make my own wine? Wine making from kits is a pretty straight forward and simple process.
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wine making equipment you need to start making and bottling your own homemade wine at home as well as an explanation of what each piece does in the wine making process:
Primary Fermenter: A primary Fermenter is a food grade plastic or a glass vessel that holds your wine during the initial fermentation process. Some of the characteristics of a Primary Fermenter include: • Your fermenter needs to hold the batch size you’re fermenting with some additional head space. For the most popular batch size of a 6 gallon batch you will want to have a minimum vessel capacity of 6.5 gallons. Some of the most common fermenter sizes are: 3, 5, 6, and 6.5 gallons. Like I stated earlier if you plan on making wine with the popular 6 gallon wine ingredient kits you’ll want to get a 6.5 gallon fermenter. • Your Fermenter needs to be glass or made from a food grade plastic.
Secondary Fermenter: A secondary fermenter is basically a second fermenting vessel that you will transfer your wine over to after the primary fermentation process is over. In all reality your secondary fermenter can be the exact same type of vessel you use for your primary fermentation. Personally I have a plastic primary fermenter and use a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for my secondary fermenter. Although, you could use glass carboys for both your primary and secondary fermenters
Stoppers: Stoppers are basically just a rubber bung that holds your airlock and provides an airtight seal. These stoppers or bungs are sized to match the fermenter you’re using. Universal bungs are also available to fit most sizes of glass carboys.
Bottling Bucket: A bottling bucket is basically what the name infers. It is a temporary vessel that is used to hold your wine while you bottle your wine. Traditionally a bottling bucket has spigot that you use to bottle your wine and may have a “needle” valve on the bottom that opens when the bottom of the bottle is pressed against it. The bottling bucket I use also functions as my primary fermenter.
Mixer: A mixer is necessary to remove the entrained CO2 that is still in your wine after the fermentation process is complete. I use a plastic aerator that I attached to a cordless drill. Some of the popular mixing wands have collapsible “wings” that allow it to fit into the top of a glass carboy. I strongly recommend these because the alternative is to stir your wine by hand to get this entrained CO2 out. This is a fairly labor intensive process. Why not let your cordless drill do most of the work?
Siphon / racking cane: A siphon or racking cane is used for the transfer of your wine from your primary fermenter to your secondary and then to your bottling bucket. You can use a flexible plastic tube and suck on the end to start the siphon. I like using a “pumping” siphon wand that siphons after a couple strokes of the wand. This eliminates the need to suck on a tube to start the siphon process (a cleaner process in my opinion).
Hydrometer: Hydrometers are a tool used to measure the specific gravity of a liquid. Hydrometers are a glass cylindrical shaped device that is calibrated to measure the “density” of a liquid. The specific gravity is important because it can tell you the alcohol content of your wine or can help you determine the “potential” alcohol you can expect. The potential alcohol can be determined because before your wine ferments the sugar content will change the liquid density. This sugar content can help you predict the potential alcohol content after fermentation is complete. Basically the more sugar content, the more “potential” alcohol you will have in your wine.
Airlock: An airlock is a simple device that stops the intrusion of air or other potentially harmful material from entering your wine while allowing the CO2 to escape. Fermentation naturally produces CO2. Obviously this gas needs to escape. An airlock allows this to happen.
Bottle Corker: A bottle corker does exactly what it’s name states…. It corks your bottles (lol). There are several different styles of bottle corkers available. All perform the same function and depending on your budget the easier the wine bottling process can be. Some of the most popular wine bottle corkers include: • Mini Corker • Colonna Bottle Capper and Corker • Plastic Plunger Corker • Doubled Lever Corker • Gilda Compression Hand Corker • Floor Corking Machine (This is the one I use, a bit more expensive but well worth it in my opinion) As you can see the list of equipment needed to make wine is relatively short but you have several options for every wine making component. Like any hobby you spend a ton of cash for the top of the line equipment or find that happy medium to fit your individual needs. If you want more specific information on the above wine making equipment feel free to check out my more detailed articles on each of these wine making components.