We went to the Bannerman Vineyard with some friends. Originally it was pretty much put together for the kids, but us dads got together the night before and hatched a plan to brew some muscadine wine!
Collecting the Muscadine
It was a beautiful day, we had lots of family around us and managed to pick plenty of muscadine for the task. I personally rolled out of there with 8lbs. My daughter and I made some juice today with 1-2 pounds - she was really excited to try that, and it was fun. We just made up the recipe like traditional prison hoochers, but it came out pretty good!
Black Muscadine
White Muscadine
Red Muscadine
Making the Wine
2022-10-10
In keeping with the traditional prison hooch way, I just mixed and mashed all the muscadine together.
I was going to smash a layer and top with a thin coat of sugar, then repeated until I was out of fruit, but the skins were pretty tough to break so I boiled them instead.
After it started to boil over I dropped the temp. This was when I remembered the smoked bhut jolokia pepper! Normally I use 3-4, but for this batch I decided to use just one.
I boiled it on low for 20-30 minutes, until the muscadine started falling apart.
I added about a half bag (~2lbs) of sugar and stirred on low heat until it was all dissolved.
Once it was ready, I transferred the mixture/solution to the fermenter.
I added water and filled it to about 4.5 gallons.
I stirred in the new water to drop the temperature, and added one packet of wine yeast.
I dated the fermenter so I won’t forget how long it’s been.
I moved it out to the garage when it was all set. The weather here is just about perfect this time of year.
So there it is! Roughly 7lbs of grapes, 2 lbs of sugar and one smoked ghost pepper. Fill to 4-5 gallons and add one pack of wine maker’s yeast. Hopefully it comes out ok, but this was about as easy as it gets, and the whole house smells like the sweetness of autumn.
Please note: All quantities were completely wild-ass guesses, I measured nothing, and this is more of a documented experiment than a recipe…but I’ll let you know if it ends up being one worth repeating!
2022-10-12
Now the solid matter has begun to separate and we can see the drink has gone from a brownish color to something more pink or burgundy.
I could rack this now, but today isn’t good for me. I’ll wait until tomorrow, but I need to move fast enough that the top layer doesn’t get time to mold.
Racking the Wine
2022-10-13
Today I racked the wine. This basically means I moved it from one container to another, leaving sediment and other chunky crap behind.
As it got towards the bottom it began choking, so I poured the last bit through a strainer.
Once it was all transferred to the bucket I moved it back to the garage. The living yeast is still in the solution, so it will continue to ferment but now we’ve got less risk of infection.
…so that’s where it’s at right now. I’ll probably just update this post when it’s done, but that’s a ways out so I’m just gonna post for now.
EDIT 2022-10-13:
We taste tested a small sample, and it had almost no sweetness. This won’t do well for fermentation of course, so we added 1 bag of brown sugar.
Thanks for checking out some more of my work! As always, I hope you enjoyed witnessing as much as I enjoyed creating!
© Photos and words by @albuslucimus, except where otherwise indicated.
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