This is not so much a "how-to" blog, but rather a "how-not-to" look at making your own "tea" in a country where liquor cannot be bought legally. Necessity is the mother of invention and I have always wanted to try making my own brew. This a brief account of how I learned by my mistakes and ended up with some homemade wine that even Jon would drink.
As I write this I am putting my last batch to ferment in the dark cupboard under the kitchen sink. It is in recycled plastic juice bottles with screw tops, not screwed on tightly, allowing the gas to escape. I figure it should be ready to drink in a couple of weeks.
For my first attempt I bought a bottle of grape juice (probably from concentrate, certainly not fresh) and a packet of bread yeast. I mixed them with two cups of sugar because I was following a 'redneck wine' YouTube video. After two weeks I attempted to drink it... it was potent, but foul tasting. This led me to ask advice of some veteran brewers, and I was given some packets of wine yeast.
This certainly improved the taste of my next batch. I proudly bottled it and stored it on a shelf. I came home a couple of days later to find the glass exploded across the kitchen, and wine running down the walls. (Wine doesn't wash off painted cement!) After some more research, I discovered that the yeast doesn't die, but keeps on working throughout the wine. I hadn't properly separated the yeast from the liquid when I poured off the wine. I tried to remedy this by using a coffee filter, which helped some, but uncapping my bottles was like popping a cork, and the wine was still fizzing.
I left the wine bottles open, to prevent them exploding, but I felt I was losing the alcohol by evaporation. So I finally solved my problem by keeping the bottled wine in the refrigerator. The cool temperature slowed down the yeast.
I wonder just how many people in Kuwait make their own wine. I did a lot of asking around, to find out what others used for grape juice. I tried apple, but my apple wine tasted like the end of a cocktail which is just melted ice and tastes of watered down nothing. The apple juice must have been all water and sugar, so when the sugar turned to alcohol there was nothing left for flavor. I tried other juices: watermelon, pomegranate, and cranberry mixed with white grape juice. I stopped adding sugar because the juices come sweetened with tons of added sugar. Jon said that if he put enough ice with it, it was drinkable.
By this point I was brewing a couple of plastic 2 L Pepsi bottles at a time. I didn't dare make much of anything, because I really didn't know how the lot would turn out. After pouring some red wine into bottles, I recapped the Pepsi bottle and tossed it aside. When I discovered it a few days later, the whole bottle had blown up ready to burst. Obviously the sludge at the bottom was active yeast. So I quickly filled the bottle with white grape juice and allowed the yeast to keep on doing its work. That accident was probably my best wine yet, a dry rosé that even Jon was tempted to drink.
Don't start to think that my homemade wine is anything like you might get when using a kit. I use the cheapest grape juice that comes in cartons at the local shop. I wouldn't dream of putting it up for sale, and the one time I offered it to a neighbor, she found it disgusting. But I enjoy the process of creating, and discovering that something I thought took years to make in fine European vineyards, is actually simple, quick and requires no expensive equipment. Although my neighborhood is mainly Muslims who shouldn't really appreciate alcohol, I'm sure a little homemade wine could go a long way to bringing people together at the end of the day as they eat their communal meal of curry and rice.
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