HOW TO BREW HOMEMADE WINE ON A TIGHT BUDGET IN A TIGHT SPACE

Warning: If you know the meaning of the word sommelier, cru, terroir, or if you normally spend $30 dollars or more on a bottle of wine, NAVIGATE AWAY FROM THIS PAGE IMMEDIATELY.  Otherwise read on.

EQUIPMENT NEEDED: 1 five gallon white bucket. 12 two liter pop bottles.
TOTAL ELAPSED TIME FROM START TO DRINKING: ~two weeks.
TOTAL COST: ~$35
METHOD:
Garbage pick the cleanest, white, five gallon bucket you can find from behind some restaurant.
Go to Dan's or your own local homebrewing supply shop and buy Lalvin 118 wine yeast, one package of acid blend, one package of pectin ezyme powder (if using fresh fruit) and one package of yeast nutrient.
Buy your fruit juice (on sale!) you will need about 23 liters of grape, apple or any other kind of juice. Frozen concentrated juice is okay if it is actually fruit juice...if the first ingredient on the can is sugar then it won't make very good wine...you'll need 12 cans.
The best juice is unfiltered, not from concentrate juice. My favourite is RW Knudson black cherry juice but it's very expensive. Santa Cruz apple juice is excellent. A good and much more affordable alternative is SunRype grape juice. Aim to spend about a dollar a liter on your juice.
Also buy a 4 kilogram bag of white sugar.
Fresh fruit should be run through a juicer before adding to the bucket. It is a great way to improve your wine but it's time consuming.
Go home and carefully wash your 5 gallon bucket.
Pour your sugar and fruit juice and two teaspoons each of the pectin enzyme powder, the acid blend and the yeast nutrient and fill up the bucket....(all your ingredients must be at ROOM TEMPERATURE!) ..... to within 5 inches of the top. Stir briskly to dissolve the sugar.
Sprinkle the yeast into your bucket and cover it with plastic wrap.
The next day your wine will be foaming with the fermentation.
Over the next couple of days collect 12- two liter pop bottles with lids from recycling and wash them and the lids carefully with hot water at the sink.
The wine will be finished fermenting in about 10 days.
Line up all your pop bottles and using a jug scoop the wine out of your bucket and put the first one into a glass and drink it. Then continue to scoop out wine and fill up all your bottles to within about 2 inches of the tops WITHOUT SPLASHING.
If you want your wine carbonated, dissolve one cup of white sugar in about one cup hot tap water in your jug and trickle it as equally as you can into the pop bottles on top of the wine....put the caps on and put all the bottles in the closet or cover them with a towel to shield them from light.
The wine will be fizzy and mostly clear in about 10 days but you can drink some any time before that if you are ready. The clarity and the flavour will continue to improve for several months however. Even wine that is made from relatively weak flavoured, pasteurized and from concentrate juice will improve significantly after several months in the bottle.  I make lots of wine to try to make sure that some of it lasts that long.
You will see sediment in the bottom of the bottles, the wine will be clearing from the top down and the bottles will be very hard.
If you have carbonated your wine you must chill the bottles in the fridge before opening them or there will be a lot of foaming.
Invite me over to drink your wine.
If you want to take your wine out with you, it would be best to decant a chilled bottle into an empty pop bottle so as to leave the sediment behind.
Rinse your empties as soon as possible for easy cleaning and reuse.
Conveniences such as a spigot for your bucket and an airlock for the lid can be added later if desired for convenience but this method requires very little investment of time, money and effort for a novice.....the world of home brewing only gets bigger from here..... this is the quickest, easiest and simplest way. Your wine should cost about $1.50 per liter depending on the cost of your juice.
FAQ
Do I have to invite Julian over to drink my wine?
Answer: Yes
Can I use other containers than a white 5 gallon bucket?
Answer: No
How will I know when my wine is ready to drink?
Answer: There is no point at which you cannot drink your wine.  If you drink it before fermentation is complete you won't be able to get drunk because you won't have enough alcohol in it yet.  If you drink it as soon as fermentation is complete you'll be able to get drunk but the wine won't be as clear nor as smooth tasting as later on.....but I drink all wine when I am ready.
Is it legal to make wine?
Answer: Yes
Will my wine be as good as Château Lafite Rothschild?
Answer: No
Will my wine be cheaper than any wine that I can buy in stores
Answer: Yes
Can I poison or make myself sick drinking my home made wine?
Answer: Not unless you drink too much.
Can I pair my wine with food?
Yes.
Will my wine be as good as cheap, store bought wine?
Answer: Only wine made from grapes tastes like grape wine. Wine tastes like the fruit from which it is made.  If you want your wine to taste like varietal grape wine you will have to start with that juice.  If you start with apple juice you will only be able to make apple wine. It doesn't mean it won't be good it just means that it won't taste like wine made from grapes.  If you do wish for good tasting grape wine then buy grape juice or a wine making kit.  The process is the same as listed here but it will cost more money.  In Canada this will still always be a lot cheaper than buying wine but in lower tax jurisdictions such as California you are going have a tough time beating the cost of Two Buck Chuck.  If you don't put too high a cost on your time and effort and/or if the grapes are free then you'll save money.
Can I put my wine in Bordeaux bottles and cork and label them?
Yes.
Will my wine taste better poured out of wine bottles?
Yes.
Can I sell my wine?
No.
Can I give it to friends as gifts?
No.
Can I give it to my enemies?
Yes
Can I cook with it?
Yes.
Can I clean floors and other household surfaces with it?
No.
Can I burn it in my car?
No.
Can I pass a breathalyser test after drinking a bottle of my wine?
No.
Is there any risk of clothing removal when drinking my wine?
Yes.
Is my wine flammable?
No.
Will my wine "go bad?"
No.
Will drinking my wine get me pregnant?
Possibly.
Can I drink my wine when I'm pregnant?
No.
Will drinking my wine cause riots?
Possibly
Is my wine suitable for hand to hand combat?
Yes.
When should I make more wine?
Now.

TAX FREE BOOZE IN THE GREAT WHITE NORTH!

Booze and taxes.  Here are subjects that are very important to Canadians....how to acquire the former and avoid the latter.  There's good news and bad news on these subjects.  The good news is that if you are willing to do a little manual labour and research, all your booze can be totally tax free...the bad news is that if you buy your booze at the store, or order it at the bar or restaurant, no matter where in Canada you live, you are going to pay a crushingly high rate of tax.  Taxes on taxes, taxes on retail mark-up and tips on taxes.  With few exceptions in Europe and N. America and none in Canada, one, two and three hundred percent tax rates on all alcoholic beverages are the norm.  Governments are addicted to the cash flow ( The BCLDB counts its profits in the hundreds of millions yearly!) and to a large extent, Canadians still have an historically, cultural, guilt complex about sin taxes and we like paying liquor tax because it relieves us of feeling guilty about drinking booze.  But for those of us who hate paying taxes, especially sin tax on our booze, this blog will explain how to get top quality booze, tax free, with the minimum of equipment to buy,  the least amount of space consumed and the least amount spent in time over all.
There really are only two kinds of booze in the world.  The first is soft booze (beer, wine, cider.)  The second kind is hard booze made from these by distilling (vodka, whiskey, rum etc.)  One must ferment sugar first even if the goal ultimately is to make hard liquor.   For example, whiskey is distilled beer....beer with some of the water removed.
So let's start with soft booze.  No matter what kind of soft booze you prefer, the process is the same.  We mix up a sugar solution and add yeast to ferment the sugar into ethanol.  There's lots of technical info available free on the net about home brewing.   But here's how an urban dwelling Canadian with limited space, money and time can efficiently home brew.
The basic amount to brew most efficiently is 23 liters....that's about 5 imperial gallons.  A brewing vessel of this size will take up 30 cm., that's about 1 sq. ft. on your kitchen counter...but it won't fit in your appliance garage...and you'll need a shelf or cupboard that will hold 12-2L pop bottles. So if you if you aren't prepared to dedicate this much space to your home brewing kit then you should just go to the liquor store right now.  So get a 5 gallon  plastic bucket or glass or plastic carboy (Craigslist has lots)  If you want wine get a kit from your local Ubrew supply store or grocery store.  If you want beer buy 2 cans of malt extract ( 2 beer kits.)  If you want cider buy 23L of apple juice or frozen concentrate. Other kinds of fruit juice, and honey will also work well.   Minute Maid or Welch's frozen concentrated fruit juices are perfect, especially when on sale.  Adding additional white sugar will raise the alcohol percentage.  In any case either mix up the concentrate with warm, NOT HOT, water from your tap or in the case of apple juice warm up enough of it to make it all tepid, pour it all into your nice clean container and sprinkle in the yeast that you bought at the home brewing store or that came with the kit or use bakers yeast if you're desperate and put a clean towel over the top.  Next go to your garbage room or recycling center and collect 12-2 liter pop bottles with caps and wash 'em.  When fermentation is complete ( about 5 days)  siphon the booze into your bottles leaving 2 fingers of space.  To make beer or cider fizzy dissolve a 3/4 cup of sugar in hot tap water in a measuring cup. Trickle it equally into your 12 bottles and put the caps on.   This isn't necessary with wine or if you intend to make hard liquor. Wait 10 days or so and then if it's ready, or if you're ready, chill it in the fridge and drink it.  If you want to take your booze out with you, decant it into another 2 liter bottle and avoid disturbing the sediment in the bottom of the bottles.  I do not remove the labels from my bottles since pop bottles disguise booze nicely when at the beach or wherever.  As soon as your booze is bottled, start another batch.  23 liters seems like a lot but it won't last long and if you don't start another batch you'll run out and start getting taxed at the liquor store.   This kind of booze is totally legal and totally tax free in Canada.   All the necessary equipment and supplies are available anywhere or can be ordered online if absolutely necessary.  It's easy to make beer, wine and cider for about a buck or two a liter! Yes home brewing can be taken to higher levels but keeping it dead simple as I've described will provide basic booze for drinking and cooking at a cost of about 25% of liquor store prices generally...yes that's right....75% less than liquor store prices!
Alright so what about hard liquor.   To make this stuff you are going to have to distill, on the stove top, the soft booze you've fermented.  Just like the soft booze, the best way to start is to keep it simple.   You are going to have to buy a distiller or make one from plans on the net. You can do it with the pot and bowl technique but these are very time consuming projects.   My recommendation is to buy a distiller and keep it in the kitchen just like a juicer.  The purchase of a beautiful and professionally made distiller from Mile high Distilling will cost you several hundred dollars but as Canadians we all know how much a 26er of vodka costs.  If you don't then this article won't be very useful to you. There is a type of counter top, electric, air cooled distiller called Mr Distiller that is available in Canada that has to be the easiest way to make hard liquor in the kitchen.  If you order this distiller now before you start making your wine, by the time your wine has fermented, Mr Distiller will have been delivered and you'll be drinking brandy by the middle of the afternoon...YES my tax paying Canadian friend!  This thing makes a 26er an hour of hard liquor and it's under $300 bucks.  We are trying to keep it cheap, quick and simple here so if your family and friends drink any kind of hard booze on a regular basis, no matter how much you spend on your still, you'll get that money back on your investment very quickly.  Distilling that 23L bucket of 13% abv. wine you just made will produce several 26ers of vodka! Yes my crantini drinking friend...you can buy a top quality home distiller that will make vodka for 3 dollars a bottle.   A full 23L container of soft booze will likely produce around 3 liters or so hard booze depending on how strong your soft booze is at the start. Brewing equipment is one of the best investments a Canadian imbiber can make. Because it eliminates completely all the tax payable on the most highly taxed and widely consumed product in the country!  There's no tax on tomatoes so it doesn't make sense to grow and can yer own tomatoes from a financial perspective....at one dollar per can, it's impossible to improve on the economies of scale achieved by factories.  But beating Canadian liquor store prices by half or more is child's play because the price.....well it's mostly tax.
Ok so maybe getting a Coke bottle full of homebrew and 20 nuggets and going to pigeon park isn't the way to impress your particular date.  Maybe you could lower your standards.  Maybe he/she will warm up to chicken n' hooch.   Maybe tuna sashimi and Grey Goose at the Blue Water Cafe could wait until the economy improves or hell freezes over.
Of course for the Canadian who wants to be truly frugal, the best way of all is to double dip so to speak...first we make our own booze then we drink it in a place that is paid for by tax payers....a public place.  This is the way to truly have a satisfying Canadian night out.   Parks work well but discretion is the key.   Drinking in public in Canada is generally illegal but it is tolerated if we don't flash the containers around.  The problem with drinking home made crantinis in public parks is that it often leads to the removal of clothing which is also illegal in Canada in public places generally and that tends to draw the attention of uniformed civil servants that are paid with tax dollars..... so don't take too many bottles to the park.
Here's one more thing, speaking of hell freezing over which is exactly what  happens every winter in Canada.  If you get a deal on sugar and make a few liters of pure ethanol you might be able to run your alcohol stove to keep warm at the park and boil your hotdogs and dump some in the tank of your Tempo to mitigate the ass whipping that occurs every time we swipe our cards at the PetroCan.....booze isn't the only highly taxed liquid in Canada......but even with the tax it's going to be tough to beat the price of gas with your stove top distiller.
Old myths can be generally considered to be just that.  You won't blow up the place nor will you go blind....probably.   Little to no pressure is produced during distilling nor are poisons produced.  Your hard booze won't be anymore toxic than your soft booze except as a result of over consumption.   There's a lot of confusion about what is and what is not legal when it comes to making booze. Many weird, funny, stupid and Prohibition Era laws remain in force all over the world.  I'm not about to start giving legal advice here.  But it appears to me that if you don't try to sell your booze and stick to drinking it, here in Canada, you'll be ok. If you're discreet and make good hooch you'll be able to trade it for pot...and eggs...and uh....
So if you spend $1000 a year at the liquor store you can save 75% of that by spending an evening or two every few weeks "cooking booze" in your kitchen and also have the satisfaction of knowing that you're starving the bureaucracy.
So why don't all Canadians have a little fermenter bubbling away on the counter, a little distiller boiling away on the stove?  After all it's no more difficult than making bread or apple pie plus doing the dishes and the cost savings are massive. It's more wide spread than you might think.   Most Canadians ARE discreet.  There are home brewing supply shops in most towns and cities and on the net.  Well some mitigate costs by using a ubrew service and  this certainly is better than the liquor store but costs double what home brewing does and will incur the hated HST on the service portion of the bill.  But most of us just don't bother.  Maybe this rant will encourage a few folks to start home brewing...after all, the gov't wants me to homebrew...that's why there's no tax on it!  I'm just being a good Canadian.

BREWING WINDS BLOW COLD IN YALETOWN....DESPERATE TIMES CALL...

A decade or so after its birth, the off Yaletown,  much loved Dix BBQ & Brewery closed its doors seemingly forever without a peep of fanfare from the Mark James Group. That was not the reaction from the staff and regular patrons who took the rumours of the imminent demise of Dix to heart and celebrated the life of the little craft brewery throughout Vancouver Craft Beer Week and afterwards until the last day of business on May 22nd. 

Breweries rarely go broke but of course they have always been subject to the shifting sands of business.  With the projected opening of a new MJG craft brewery in the Olympic village and the longtime lack of upgrades at Dix along with property lease concerns the days of Dix have been numbered for a long time.

The 800 block of Beatty has never been an easy place to tap into the local food and beverage industry as has been seen by the changes in  virtually all of the adjacent business properties.  For Dix to survive ten plus years was unusual in the area.  The location, within minutes of stumbling distance from GM Place and BC Place Stadium, not to mention the ever growing residential Yaletown skyscrapers, makes the eight and nine hundred blocks of Beatty street a tempting location for a restaurant or bar. But for complex, local,  traffic flow reasons most businesses in these blocks are not able to generate enough cash flow to survive from event to event longterm.  But along with corporate support, Dix had something that no business in these two no man's land blocks has ever had and that is a custom made craft brewery.  Costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the well designed, beer generating system inside 871 Beatty st. made it possible for one big man with a big heart to make thousands of liters of great beer a month.... all by himself!  All this points to a beautifully low cost of production of a very high quality product.

But all this is now a part of local history and for those of us who benefited from the constant flow of friends and brew at the now closed brewery the question is where will we meet to watch hockey, complain about the government and drink beer?  Well the Dix tradition of cask night has spread to other breweries and tap rooms around town so as long as we're willing to pay we can drink ...check the CAMRA  site  and subscribe to the newsletter to stay up to date.

Since we're on the cusp of summer we can use Facebook to organize outdoor gatherings which leads me to bring up the question of how to keep the cost down to a king's ransom.  The BCLDB will take all our money eventually, given the chance, just as surely as any government, casino, dealer or thief will...So what are we to do?  The answer of course is to home brew.  Even the coming HST tax grab won't raise the price of home brewing.  There's no free beer,  but with a little effort we can drink very cheap, good,  craft brewed ales....AND PAY NO TAX at all.   It's true that the equipment would attract the HST when purchased new, but craigslist is loaded with used equipment and most days of the week one could buy basic equipment from an online seller, stop at Dan's Homebrewing Supplies for malt and hops and have a 25 liter carboy bubbling away on the counter at the end of the day with change from a hundred dollar bill!  Yes! Including the cost of equipment which would be a one time purchase the cost per pint for the first batch would be LESS THAN 50 CENTS!   I dropped into Firefly on Cambie recently for a six pack of fine, craft brewed Dogfish Head IPA and $20.00 didn't cover it.  I had a pint of it at the Alibi Room on Wed. and it cost $7.50...These are great establishments and I love Dogfish Head IPA but we don't need to do the math to figure that if you like beer and funds are limited home brewing makes sense.  
Water is free and pure, add 4 or 5 kilos of malt extract @ $4.00 a kilo, some hops and yeast for a few dollars more up to thirty dollars or so and besides time and effort that's all it costs for at least sixty pints!  Classified as food products, brewing supplies are tax free.   All the information required to make beer is readily available free on the web.  Wine is similarly cheap to make at home from kits. 

So if the government milks the public for hundreds of millions a year through its monopoly on booze sales and brewing is not only very cheap but  tax free the obvious question is...why doesn't everyone do it?  It's a simple question but the answer isn't simple.  First of all making commercial quality beer at home isn't as easy as buying it.  And, in a busy world where conveniences like fast food, gas stations and demand hot water are the norm, adding a fairly time consuming cooking project to one's routine isn't going attract everyone.  Even using a U-Brew is too much trouble for most folks.  By the way, using a U-Brew will approximately double your cost of brewing...but you won't have to do the dishes, you'll have hands on instruction and it's one stop shopping.  Even using a U-Brew beats buying beer at the liquor store. 

Making 25 liters of good quality beer at home using liquid malt extract and hop pellets takes several hours and there aren't any short cuts.  It's basically a cooking project like making bread or a dinner where part of the meal is prepared days in advance.  Another discouraging factor to consider is that the results, while predictable, are not guaranteed....yeast is a living organism, conditions in the home are not 100% controllable...some batches turn out better than others especially for beginners.  Nevertheless, I'm convinced that mainly because of the crushingly high taxes on store bought beer, spending a little time, effort and money to homebrew makes sense.  Once the equipment is aquired and some of the supplies are bought in bulk it's more convenient for me to brew at home than it is to go to a U-Brew.   I can have the beer on the counter beginning to ferment within two hours from start to finish.   Bottling takes about the same two hours a few days later....one hour if I hurry and use big two liter bottles!  A two liter bottle is about a six pack and it can be made at home for two or three dollars.

I consider home brewing a minor form of protesting..and while I'm "protesting"...I get to drink fifty cent IPA with about 65IBU.......that's bitter...but I'm not...Now that Dix is closed it seems even more worthwhile!

Notes to consider: 

-Making generic yellow lager at home that is exactly the same as industrial lager ie Molson Canadian is not easy....in fact, it's the most difficult style of beer to make at home ....but it's the cheapest beer to buy of all.

-Guiness style stout is among the most expensive beer to buy and it's easy and cheap to make at home 

-Industrial yellow lager is brewed to have LESS taste whereas craft brewed ale is brewed to have more taste.

-Homebrewers can easily make ancient, traditional and obscure beverages like ale, mead, braggot and metheglin that are generally not available in stores because in the old days folks used simple household equipment to make beer....just like homebrewers today.

-Making beer is about as difficult as making bread.

-The cost savings found in homebrewing are realized because of high taxes on store bought beer not because the supplies and labour are cheap.

-Most people find that overindulging in home and unfiltered craft brewed ales doesn't cause a hangover because of the vitamin B component of suspended yeast.

Compared to a similar quantity of store bought beer, you'll save money on your very first batch of beer....especially if you buy cheap used gear...the price goes down every time you brew thereafter. 

-Like most hobbies things can be as simple or as complex as one wishes....I've been writing on the subject of brewing with malt extract....more money can be saved along with the potential for better tasting beer realized, by brewing all grain beer, but it takes more time and skill.

-If you have a batch of beer that doesn't turn out well you can always distill it to make whiskey....but that's a subject for another blog.