The Way To Make Wine

Geared to everyday wine lovers who want to drink well, save money, and impress their friends, this book reveals everything needed to make delicious wines-both reds and whites-from start to finish. A new preface on the new trend and options in home winemaking update this edition.

Simple Instructions and Superb Recipes from a Winemaking Legend With local breweries and wineries popping up everywhere, learning how to make wine is on everyone’s “to do” list. Utilize the guidance of home-winemaking legend Jack Keller. In the 1990s, Jack started one of the first (if not the first) wine blogs on the internet. His expertise is shared with you in Home Winemaking. It takes a fun, practical, step-by-step approach to making your own wine. The book begins with an introduction to winemaking, including basic principles, equipment needed, and exactly what to do. After the fundamentals are covered, you’re introduced to a variety of tested, proven, delicious recipes. More than just grape wines, you’ll learn how to make wine out of everything from juices and concentrates to foraged ingredients such as berries and roots. There are even recipes that utilize dandelions and other unexpected ingredients. With 65 recipe options, you can expand your winemaking season indefinitely! Jack’s simple approach to the subject is perfect for beginners, but winemakers of every skill level will appreciate the recipes and information. So get this essential winemaking book, and get started. You’ll be sipping to your success in no time.

Suzanne McMinn, a former romance writer and founder of the popular blog chickensintheroad.com, shares the story of her search to lead a life of ordinary splendor in Chickens in the Road, her inspiring and funny memoir. Craving a life that would connect her to the earth and her family roots, McMinn packed up her three kids, left her husband and her sterile suburban existence behind, and moved to rural West Virginia. Amid the rough landscape and beauty of this rural mountain country, she pursues a natural lifestyle filled with chickens, goats, sheep—and no pizza delivery. With her new life comes an unexpected new love—"52," a man as beguiling and enigmatic as his nickname—a turbulent romance that reminds her that peace and fulfillment can be found in the wake of heartbreak. Coping with formidable challenges, including raising a trio of teenagers, milking stubborn cows, being snowed in with no heat, and making her own butter, McMinn realizes that she’s living a forty-something’s coming-of-age story. As she dares to become self-reliant and embrace her independence, she reminds us that life is a bold adventure—if we’re willing to live it. Chickens in the Road includes more than 20 recipes, craft projects, and McMinn’s photography, and features a special two-color design.

Winemaking is so complicated! ..Or is it?Home wine making used to be simple. And now it is again! Our grandparents, and generations of grandparents before them, made excellent wines with minimal fuss, minimal equipment, and no added sulfites or additives. They made them not just from grapes but from all manner of available fruits, berries, honey, and other produce. They didn't spend a lot of money. They didn't overwhelm themselves with minuscule measurements and chemistry. They didn't dwindle down the savings to buy pricey containers for fermenting or for storing. They made wine in tune with the rhythms of nature, with basic equipment.They made Good. Simple. Cheap. Easy. Homemade Wine!If you've always wanted to make wine but thought the process or investment was beyond you, this is the book for you. This is the book that takes winemaking back to its roots. The no-fuss, no-frills method of wine making that uses everyday equipment you can buy right downtown. This simplified and basic process uses no added preservatives, sulfites, or unrecognizable ingredients. Just good, clean, wine-making for good, clean, fun-making wine!

Port and sherries, whites, reds, roses and melomels—make your own wine without owning a vineyard! If you can follow a simple recipe, you can create delectable table wines in your own home. It's fun, it's easy-and the results will delightfully complement your favorite meals and provide unparalleled pleasure by the glass when friends come calling. You don't have tore-create Bordeaux in your basement to be a successful home vintner-you can make raisin wine and drink it like sherry, or use it to accent your Chinese cooking. Raspberry or apricot wine lend themselves to delicious desserts. And if you are interested in more exotic concoctions, rhubarb champagne is the ultimate treat. The Joy of Home Winemaking is your comprehensive guide to: the most up-to-date techniques and equipment readily available and affordable ingredients and materials aging, bottling, racking, blending, and experimenting dozens of original recipes for great-tasting fruit wines, spice wines, herb wines, sparkling wines, sherries, liqueurs even homemade soda pop! a sparkling brief history of winemaking helpful illustrations and glossary an extensive mail-order resource section Whether you prefer your wine dry of slightly sweet, The Joy of Home Winemaking has all the information you need to go from casual connoisseur to expert home vintner in no time.

A complete guide to using the best ingredients and minimal equipment to create fun and flavorful brews Ancient societies brewed flavorful and healing meads, ales, and wines for millennia using only intuition, storytelling, and knowledge passed down through generations—no fancy, expensive equipment or degrees in chemistry needed. In Make Mead Like a Viking, homesteader, fermentation enthusiast, and self-described “Appalachian Yeti Viking” Jereme Zimmerman summons the bryggjemann of the ancient Norse to demonstrate how homebrewing mead—arguably the world’s oldest fermented alcoholic beverage—can be not only uncomplicated but fun. Armed with wild-yeast-bearing totem sticks, readers will learn techniques for brewing sweet, semi-sweet, and dry meads, melomels (fruit meads), metheglins (spiced meads), Ethiopian t’ej, flower and herbal meads, braggots, honey beers, country wines, and even Viking grog, opening the Mead Hall doors to further experimentation in fermentation and flavor. In addition, aspiring Vikings will explore: • The importance of local and unpasteurized honey for both flavor and health benefits; • Why modern homebrewing practices, materials, and chemicals work but aren’t necessary; • How to grow and harvest herbs and collect wild botanicals for use in healing, nutritious, and magical meads, beers, and wines; • Hops’ recent monopoly as a primary brewing ingredient and how to use botanicals other than hops for flavoring and preserving mead, ancient ales, and gruits; • The rituals, mysticism, and communion with nature that were integral components of ancient brewing and can be for modern homebrewers, as well; • Recommendations for starting a mead circle to share your wild meads with other brewers as part of the growing mead-movement subculture; and more! Whether you’ve been intimidated by modern homebrewing’s cost or seeming complexity in the past—and its focus on the use of unnatural chemicals—or are boldly looking to expand your current brewing and fermentation practices, Zimmerman’s welcoming style and spirit will usher you into exciting new territory. Grounded in history and mythology, but—like Odin’s ever-seeking eye—focusing continually on the future of self-sufficient food culture, Make Mead Like a Viking is a practical and entertaining guide for the ages.

Apple cider vinegar has a long history as a folk remedy for a variety of health conditions and, as a result, has achieved something akin to cult status among natural health enthusiasts. But many people don’t realize that there is a whole world of options beyond store-bought ACV or distilled white vinegar. In fact, vinegar can be made from anything with fermentable sugar, whether leftover juicing pulp or brown bananas, wildflowers or beer. With her in-depth guide, Kirsten K. Shockey takes readers on a deep dive into the wide-ranging possibilities alive in this ancient condiment, health tonic, and global kitchen staple. In-depth coverage of the science of vinegar and the basics of equipment, brewing, bottling, and aging gives readers the foundational skills and knowledge for fermenting their own vinegar. Then the real journey begins, as the book delves into the many methods and ingredients for making vinegars, from apple cider to red wine to rice to aged balsamic. Along the way, Shockey shares insights into vinegar-making traditions around the world and her own recipes for making vinegar tonics, infused vinegars, and oxymels.

Foraging is an innate part of human endeavor, and in earlier centuries one essential for survival. Apart from providing food, wild plants yield the fundamental ingredients to produce wine, which, to many people, has a civilizing quality. Detailed in this practical book are wines you can inexpensively make at home. These include: Wines created from flowers Wines produced from fruits Vegetable and root wines Grain, leaf and stem wines Country wines reach back into our ancestry and this book brings them alive in a practical way, enabling everyone to create wines that will enrich family life. "Wines don't have to be made from just grapes. From root to fruit, let this book be your guide to a whole world of country wines to discover. Learn how easy and satisfying it is to capture nature's bounty in a bottle while harvesting your own ingredients from your backyard and beyond for your own homemade country wines" —Brad Ring, Publisher, WineMaker magazine, www.winemakermag.com.