Homemade Easy Grape Wine Recipe / Kerala Munthiri Wine / ഗ്രേപ്പ് വൈൻ
I know that you all would love this quality homemade wine made from grapes because of its remarkable flavor. It is worthy of recognition by you all, which costs less and equal to store bought wine in taste.
I posted Rice Wine long back. Since then I have been getting messages and emails demanding to post the grape wine recipe. As Christmas also is coming up, this is the best time to post this Homemade Grape Wine. So this post is on demand and request. For the coming Christmas, is there any better recipe post other than Grape wine and fruit cake?
For me, there are no other thoughts coming to my mind when it is on Homemade Wines, other than my mom. She had a great passion of making various wines at home. Of course I am indebted to my mom for this recipe, as it is her one of the best signature recipes.
Normally, wine can be made out of many fruits, but Grape wine is the most common wine we get to see and taste. It says drinking wine is good for our body.. Yes, I started hearing it from my childhood. But of course for so many reasons, drinking too much of wine causes many issues including health problems. But contrary to that, it has many health benefits too.. It is good for your heart and it lowers cholesterol level too. Wine is a good appetizer and also a digestive.
We, the whole family used to have homemade wines once in a while and the chef was none other than my sweet mom, Grace Mathew. Wines are an integral part of my parental home, where she used to make many kinds of wines, some as trials and some, the tested and successful wines. When I planned to make this Homemade Grape Wine, the immediate thought came to my mind was, the whole scenario of making of wines by my mom.. How I missed my mom’s homemade wines these days!! She makes wine with banana, pineapple, beetroot, grapes (her usual one). Sorry to mention here that she completely stopped making wines these days.. Sorry to me as well.. Otherwise I would have taken so many images of making varieties of wine by her!!
You can keep on checking the taste of this wine each day when you take it out from the shelf to stir it once a day at the same time duration and interval. You won’t be satisfied enough till the day when you filter the content. Pause it now and wait for the finish to check the taste. After seven days you will be getting a wine which is as good as the store bought wine, I would say, maybe it’s better. Yes, that’s what I have experienced.
My mom used to make all wines in new ceramic jars (new ceramic bharanis) every time. Craving for those bharanies now. On my last visit too I saw all those old used bharanies in the kitchen store room of my parental home. Now my mom is using those ceramic jars for various other purposes.
For making wine I wanted a big jar (expected to get the real ceramic jar) and searched in the Kinshasa super markets for a long period, but all my efforts went in vain. At last one of the guys in one American supermarket told me that it would be arriving in one month time! I waited again patiently.. Poor me.. No result was found still after that one month period. To my surprise, in this November I found out this big glass jar in a new super market.. Aha, our driver was also with me in my search. He explained it in Lingala, the local language here (98 present of the supermarket employees are Congolese.. Though most of them are not helpful to the customers, this girl took me to many sections in the crockery side and showed me so many related vessels including big and small.. We couldn’t find out any such jars.. Losing all my hope, I turned to another side and headed to an isolated side of the same crockery section in the super market.. Whoa.. I saw this plain glass jar (the one you see in these pics). Hooray, I GOT IT..
21 days is enough for its preparation. After straining the mixture, allow the wine to settle down for few more days and after that strain it again and bottle it. So the whole process will take about 25 to 30 ddays!! After you bottle it, you can keep it for many days and months or as long as you want. The older the wine, the better the taste.
You will get to see air bubbles on top layer. This is the sign of fermentation. Once the fermentation is over, the air bubbles stop forming on top; and this is the sign that the fermentation is over and the perfect time for the wine to be strained.
From the third day I started getting the kick of the real wine!! My wine has finished going through all these processes on 9th of November this year. But now only I could be able to post it!!
Lemme come back to the recipe of Homemade Grape Wine..
Preparation Time: 15 minutes
Ready in: 21 days.
Ingredients for Homemade Grape Wine:
Black Grapes (seedless) – 750 grams
Sugar – 650 grams
Yeast – 1 tsp.
Water – 1 litre + ½ cup for dissolving yeast)
Cinnamon – 1 small piece
Cloves – 3
Wheat Kernels – 1 ½ tbsp.
How to Make Homemade Grape Wine:
Rinse, wash and clean grapes after removing from its stalks. Pat dry it well with a kitchen tissue. Crush it with your clean hands. Make sure the grapes you picked up don’t have particles of debris. Boil 1 litre water in a clean vessel. Switch off the stove and keep it aside to cool down. Once it is cooled down, filter it. Take ½ cup of luke warm water in a small bowl. Add in the yeast and ¼ tsp. of sugar. stir it well and keep it aside for 5 minutes for fermenting it. Crush the grapes with a masher or with your clean hand to extract and release most of its juices.
Now take a big glass jar or ceramic / porcelain jar with a tight lid (preferable ceramic and it should fit double the quantity of the grape mix). First make the first layer with the crushed grapes followed by wheat kernels. Then add in the whole spices like, cinnamon and cloves. Add the yeast mixture, sugar. Give it a mix. Now add the boiled and cooled water. Stir it well with a wooden spoon. Cover the jar tightly with its lid. Keep it in a dark corner of your kitchen.
Let this bottle remain there unshaken for a week. After that period, take a wooden spoon and start stirring it daily for 21 days. After 21 days, strain the mixture through a sieve. Clean the same jar and pat dry it. Pour the strained liquid again in to the same jar. Remove the sediments at the bottom after a couple of days until you get the clear wine.
How to Caramelise Sugar: Take a heavy bottom pan and add ½ cup of sugar. I have taken brown sugar for this. Keep it on stove on medium heat. Stir it continuously till the sugar melts. Keep on stirring it and scraping down sugar particles from the sides of the pan, till you get a dark brown colour. Switch off the stove and keep it aside to cool down completely. Now pour in 2 to 3 table spoons of hot water and mix well. Cool this sugar syrup and add this to the wine in the jar.
Your Homemade Grape Wine is now ready to be bottled.
My Recipe Notes on Homemade Grape Wine:
1. Grapes – You can either use seeded grapes or seedless grapes. But always it is better to use seedless grapes as the seeds bring bitterness to the wine. Black Grapes is the best one for making Homemade Grape Wine. If you are not getting it, red grapes also would be fine.
2. There should not be any moisture left on grapes after washing and cleaning it.
3. Water – boiled, cooled and filtered.
4. Yeast – I used Active Dry Yeast.
5. Sugar – I have used white sugar here, but if you want, you can substitute it with sugar cane sugar which is brown in colour. If you use brown sugar, of course the colour of this wine would be pretty better one. Also the quantity of sugar used in grape wine has to be adjusted as per the sweetness of the grapes used.
Sugar Caramelizing is completely optional. Those who want a perfect brown colour for your wine only go for this process. Otherwise your wine would be in golden brown colour. Remember, caramelization has to be done and poured to the wine, only after you get the clear liquid after removing all the sediments by sieving it a couple of times.
6. You can add a small piece of crushed dried ginger too while incorporating everything in the jar.
7. From the third day I started getting the kick of the real wine!!
8. You can add one egg white on the top layer; this will avoid forming fungus on top.
9. A germ-free environment is highly required. Hence maintaining hygiene throughout the process of making grape wine is very much necessary.
10. The wine will get its true colour with age, so don’t expect the original colour once you filter it and remove the chunks.. A little browning ensures better colour. If you want the colour of grape wine to be light in colour, don’t go for the sugar caramelizing process.
11. Don’t keep any sour fruits near to the wine mixture or else the wine mixture will turn sour.
12. If you feel any sort of dizziness after having this wine, switch immediately to having water. Or else, drink lots of water before drinking wine.
13. Keep stirring the mixture for 21 days with clean wooden ladle. If you miss to stir in between, nothing to worry. But make it a point to stir it daily.
14. I got about 1 ¼ liters of Rice Wine from this. Keep this in dark bottles for not losing its appearance.
15. This wine is very strong. It will become stronger as it matures resulting in much improved taste.
One of the stage wise pictures:
Happy Fermenting and Happy Christmas guys,
Cheers,
Seena.
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ഗ്രേപ്പ് വൈൻ റെസിപ്പി
Grape Wine.
Description
Simple and easy way to make quality grape wine at your home for Christmas and Easter.