Domestic Production of Alcoholic Beverages: Brewing and Winemaking

The production of alcoholic beverages at home in our country is synonymous with tradition, especially when referring to beer. In fact, it is well known that beer is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the UK and many people like to try their hand at making their favourite drink at home.
In recent years, however, domestic wine production is also becoming increasingly popular.

Whether it is to be given to relatives or friends or to guarantee your own supply at home, only one thing is certain, to produce alcoholic beverages at home you need specific tools and knowledge. You just can't do it by improvising; you need to know what steps to take, what equipment to use and what additives to put in to achieve an adequate result, both in terms of taste and aroma.
Softening tannins, removing precipitates, stabilising foam and encouraging fermentation are all steps that do not always happen spontaneously and successfully.
One has to know how to choose the right improvers, know their characteristics and dosages, and choose the most reliable suppliers.

The United Kingdom, in this regard, can boast of many companies operating in this sector and able to offer anyone who wants to try their hand at craft beer or wine production, everything necessary to obtain a good result. An example of this is Aeb-Group, one of the best supplied for the production of these products.

Having made this assumption, we present a quick excursus on everything you need to know about home brewing and winemaking.

What is required for homebrewing

From where do you have to start in order to brew at home? Of course from the selection of all the necessary materials.

The indispensable ingredients are malt, hops, water and yeast. Knowing this list, however, is not enough; it is necessary to know how yeasts behave, to be able to distinguish between top-fermenting and bottom-fermenting yeasts, to assess the quality and characteristics of malt, and to be informed about dosage. These are the basics from which every master brewer, even a self-made brewer, must start in order to know how to mix ingredients to achieve the desired result and obtain his or her style of beer.

But knowledge is not enough; to this must be added the basic equipment needed for home brewing. Pots, fermenters, hop extract, densimeter, paddle and crystal tube are just a few examples of the equipment that is necessary for home brewing.
Then, to these must be added the tools needed for bottling, such as stoppers and glass bottles.
We are talking about tools that can be conveniently sourced at home, but can also be purchased, so as to have semi-professional kits available.

Which steps must be followed for home brewing?

To brew beer, it is necessary to follow some specific steps.
The first step is generally to open the malt, which must then be combined with the hops to prepare the wort. The latter is boiled in a large pot filled with water for about an hour.

Once this is done, the mixture must be cooled, then the yeast added and the wort left to ferment for the necessary days. The fermentation time varies depending on the yeast used and the style of beer chosen. It can be short or last up to several weeks.

To remove the impurities that normally form in the wort, in the middle of fermentation, it is a very good practice to transfer it into a second fermenter.
Before bottling, sugar must be added to the wort so that it releases the carbon dioxide that gives the beer its characteristic fizz.
To finish, simply decant the beer into bottles and hermetically cork them with a corking machine.

What does it take to make wine at home?

The process of wine production does not differ much from that seen above.

First of all, to get started, it is necessary to have the appropriate equipment: some are the same as for beer, such as pots, glass bottles, corks, corking machine; others are specific to the production of wine, such as starter for fermentation, active yeast, mostimeter and demijohn.

How to make wine at home

First, one must start with the selection of raw materials. This step, in wine production, is extremely important. You have to choose the variety of grapes according to the wine you want to produce and the final colour you want to achieve.

Next, it will be necessary to “sieve” the individual stalks to select only the ones that are good, unblemished grapes and separate them from the leaves and stalks.
The ripening point of the grapes is also important, the fruit must be neither too unripe nor overripe. Only in this way can good wine be produced.

After the selection of the grapes, they are pressed, either manually or with the aid of a crusher. From this stage, the must, the starting point for making wine, is obtained.
The must should then ferment in a special fermenter. At this point, however, the first distinction must be made.
Red wine requires maceration of the red grape skins in the must. White wine, on the other hand, does not require this process. Instead, the skins must be separated from the must.

There are two ways to activate the fermentation: wait for it to happen naturally or add a starter and yeast to facilitate the process.
Both steps require care and attention, first of all in the choice of the environment in which fermentation takes place, which must be aseptic and free of organisms that can transfer to the wine. In the second place, the yeasts to be used must be chosen carefully.

The fermentation of the two wines also differs in temperature.
Homemade red wine usually ferments at 25-30°, whereas for a white wine 18-21° is sufficient.
The wine fermentation phase does not have a fixed duration, but is calibrated according to the presence of sugars in the must. These are measured with a mostimeter.
The fermentation phase can therefore only be said to be complete when all the sugars have been transformed.

After the first fermentation, it is necessary to drain the must, purify it, before passing it into special demijohns where the slow fermentation takes place.
This is the ageing phase, which can last weeks and requires continuous filtering of the wine to make it pure and remove all precipitates.

Once this stage is over, the wine is ready for bottling, where it will finish its transformation process with maturation or ageing; this may vary depending on the wine you want to obtain and the grapes used. The general rule, however, is that the greater the ageing, the greater the aromas obtained in the wine.