Concord grape Wine

Kitchen Brewery started out (in my mind) as a beer blog, but I've been following the fruit. When the dandelions came up I made dandelion wine. My mother in law happens to have some grapes growing in her yard and we decided to make wine from them this year. I went into this brew with almost no idea about how to make wine from grapes. My plan was to mash them up, hope there was enough juice, and pitch some yeast.

I went to the homebrew shop, got some corks, sanatizer, a corker, and asked what kind of yeast would be good with concord grapes. They told me people have bad results with concord grapes because they don't have enough sugar and they have a musty flavor. For the flavor they said champagne yeast was good because it neutralizes off flavors. I got my equipment and then asked around about it on the home made wine making community on google+ and found a recipe thanks to Benjamin Hansen. I also looked around and found this from Jack Keller: http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/reques10.asp

 I used the first recipe which is much like the one I got on google+ and it makes up for the low sugar in concord grapes. I also leaned that red wines need to age 2 years in the bottle. I am sure this is why I hear stories about people who say wines from wild grapes taste bad. Beer brewers just are not used to waiting so long. I know I'm going to have a hard time with it.

Rinsing the grapes 

 I followed the recipe and found that concord grapes really do need the added sugar.  My gravity reading before pitching the yeast was 1.100 and to prevent any intrusions the fermentor is being guarded closely.
 :-)