How To Make Homemade Concord Wine

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Concord For Making Homemade WineI have about 2 gallons of homemade Concord grape juice in canning jars. This juice isn’t clear and contains pulp but doesn’t contain any preservatives. Can I make wine with this and if so how??

Name: Cindy
State: GA
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Hello Cindy,

Absolutely, you can make homemade concord wine with your canning jars of concord juice. I also wanted to take the time to provide an easy and delicious recipe for this wine below.

The first thing to understand is that in the case of making wine with concord as the fruit, you will want to use 100% juice to make the wine. No water will be added. So the most homemade wine you will be making with the concord wine recipe below is 2 gallons.

The second thing to understand is that the fact the juice is cloudy or has pulp in it is not a problem at all. In fact, it could be considered a good thing, as the pulp will allow you to get more body from the concord juice and into the wine. The cloudiness and pulp will clear just fine through the fermentation process.

How To Making Homemade Concord Wine
You will want to add to your 2 gallons of concord juice the following:

CONCORD WINE RECIPE:
1 Cup Cane Sugar
2 Tsps. Yeast Nutrient
1/4 Tsps. Pectic Enzyme
1/4 Tsp. Grape Tannin
2 Campden Tablets (crushed up)

Shop Wine Making KitsWait 24 hours. During this time keep your container of wine must covered with no more than a thin towel. On the next day you will add the wine yeast:

Wine Yeast Lalvin RC 212 (to be added 24 hours later)

The above is based on a 5 gallon concord wine recipe listed on our website:

Homemade Concord Wine Recipe (5 Gallons)

This above information on how to make homemade concord wine is enough to get you started, but to continue on you will want to follow the home wine making procedures at the following link, below. These directions assume you are dealing with fresh fruit, but that’s okay. You can still follow them for making your wine with just the concord juice:

How To Make Homemade Wine

Hope this information on making homemade concord wine helps you out. If you need more help, please contact us. And when it’s done, please let us know how your concord wine turns out!

Happy Winemaking,
Ed Kraus
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Ed Kraus is a 3rd generation home brewer/winemaker and has been an owner of E. C. Kraus since 1999. He has been helping individuals make better wine and beer for over 25 years.

27 thoughts on “How To Make Homemade Concord Wine”

  1. I make homemade concord wine from grapes squeezed and usually make a 10 gallon batch at a time! The recipe I use, came from and old Italian fellow! The recipe consists of 3 gallons pure juice, 6 gallons water and 27 lbs sugar, with no chemicals at all and have had results of 12% to 17% alcohol content, of crystal clear wine!

    • can you enumerate on the process, I am ;72 years old and made concord wine without ingredients other than sugar but lost my Grandmother’s recipe.
      Steps I remember:
      1. separate stems from grapes
      2. place grapes not crushed with their hulls on in 5 gallon crock
      3. let stand 48 hours outdoors covered with cheese cloth
      4.put pulp and grapes into cheesecloth suspended from back of ladderback chairs and let hang/drain, catch juice
      5. let juice stand 48 hours, until some light fermenting seen
      6. add one pound of sugar per gallon of grape juice and let ferment for 7 days
      7. bottle in one gallon bottle and cork

      What am I missing? The wine would be amber color with 18% alcohol. Jim

    • Hello, Years ago we knew an Italian grandpa that made his own wine probably from Concord grapes. He had 3 barrels in the cellar, 1empty, 1 full, and drinking from the other. The wine was excellent, we wish he was still here to give us the recipe. I hope your wine is the same as his because those old recipes are hard to come by since they were just passed down with nothing on paper. How do I make it? Thanks

    • Back in the day I used Welch grape juice, yeast and a one gallon jug. We called it Rubber Wine because we didn’t use balloons.

  4. In the recipe for homemade concord grape wine, there is no mention of beginning specific gravity. Is this not necessary? Or will the juice always come out OK?
    Thanks

    • As a wine maker I’d ALWAYS recommend you check the sugar levels with a hydrometer (sacrometer). Recipes can usually work because some done them and they worked (for them).

      Use the tools. I’d recommend you check the acid level also.

  5. I love your site thankyou for sharing all your helpful hints and recipes Question I have a gallon of elderberriers in the freezer can i make homemade wine with thiease?

  6. Bill, because the beginning specific gravity reading is partially dependent on the sugars in the fruit, it is hard to pinpoint what the start SG will be. How much sugar a fruit will bring to a recipe can vary for a number of reasons, most of them being Mother Nature related. Having said this, you can always add sugar based on hydrometer readings. If you take a hydrometer reading before you add any cane sugar and know what reading you want, you can calculate how much sugar you want to add to reach your target beginning reading. Our sugar scale hydrometer works great for this purpose:

    Sugar Scale Hydrometer
    http://www.eckraus.com/sugar-scale-hydrometer.html

  8. This is my first year trial, with fresh concord grapes. Any suggestions/input would be very helpful. I have no idea on where to begin.

  9. Hi! I have concord grape juice, but it has been boiled to extract the juices. Can I use this for wine making? I still have some raw grapes and I will just crush those ones.
    Thank you for the info!
    Cheers,
    Camille

    • Camille, the biggest problem with boiling the grapes is that is can cause the juice to oxidize. Using an oxidized juice to make your wine could result in off flavors. It can also separate the tannins and color out of the fruit. The best way to treat the fruit is to lightly crush them or chop them. Having the pulp included in the primary stage of fermentation allows you to extract more color and flavor.

  11. I recently made my second batch of Concord wine. It turned out quite well but after 3 months of again, large flakes of sediments fell off on the bottom of the bottles. Wine was clear before bottling and it was filtered as well through medium core filter.
    The wine is still clear and sediments are not effecting wine quality because they are not suspended (except the last glass poured).
    I wonder what could cause the sediments to fall out and what can be done to prevent it? Thank you.

  12. My wine has a gravity reading of 1.002 and activity has stopped. We have gone through each reason for fermentation failure, but having trouble determining what caused it. It fermented well for three weeks then when we racked it, it slowed down tremendously and then stopped. However, the color is clearing very nicely and it has a pretty good taste. I read somewhere that temperature could cause the gravity to be off. Is it possible for the fermentation to be done?

  13. I purchased concord juice from a winery.The wine came out fine but the color was kind of orangish. Was this because the grapes did not stay on the skins.

  14. I have a juicer that steams the juice out of grapes. Will this affect the flavor of the wine? Makes an awesome grape juice.

  15. I am making my first batch of concord wine. It has been 6 weeks and the wine is not clear. What should I do now?

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