Your role as a home winemaker doesn’t stop until you’ve put that bottled wine to bed.  It’s important to keep your focus all the way to the very end of the process without skipping any steps that you may think are not important, but all that hard work you put into making that wine could all be for not if you are complacent about the final steps.
Even though it’s just about the last step and you’ve been so patient up until now, bottling is just as important as any other step during the home winemaking process.  You’ve been very diligent about sterility and cleanliness up until now, so why stop now?  Regardless of whether or not you are using new wine bottles or recycling old ones, it’s important to take the time to clean and sanitize your wine bottles, as putting your homemade wine into a dirty bottle is a recipe for disaster.
The only equipment you really need is a bottle washer, a bottle brush, and a bottle tree (and soap, of course). The bottle washer shoots a very strong blast of water into your bottles, which is perfect for removing soap residue or other solid particles.  It has a garden hose-type thread on the end so you can easily attach it to outside faucets or laundry faucets.  If you need to attach it to a kitchen faucet-no problem!  Just purchase the handy “kitchen faucet thread adapter”!
The bottle brush is pretty self-explanatory: you need a skinny brush that will fit into the neck of a bottle in order to clean any soap or solid particles off the insides of your wine bottle.  Once you’ve given your bottle a final rinse with the bottle washer, you can hang it on the bottle tree to drain and dry.
For both recycled and new wine bottles, you want to give them a good rinse in hot soapy water.  For recycled bottles, it’s important to use the bottle brush, as there could be solid particles left behind from the previous wine.  For brand new wine bottles, you probably don’t need to use a bottle brush, since the only likely thing in the bottle after shipping to your home is cardboard dust, and that will come right out with a good rinse.
Of course, it never hurts to use the bottle brush, so if you’re worried about it, brush away!  Finally, give all wine bottles a good shot of the bottle washer/jet and let dry on the bottle tree.  Keep in mind, if there are any labels on your old bottles, you’ll want to soak them in hot water and scrap off the label bits!
Once you have the wine bottles soapy clean, it is time to give them a quick sanitizing bath. It’s fairly easy, and it’s quick. There are many products you can use to sanitize these bottles, but one I’m partial to is Basic A. The reason being, it is a no-rinse cleaner. All you need to do is dip the wine bottles in a solution of Basic A, then allow them to air-dry on the bottle tree. The actual sterilization happens as the solution evaporates from the bottle’s surface. Once the wine bottles are drained and dried, you are ready to go.
Cleaning and sanitizing your wine bottles is an important step in the winemaking process and one not to be glossed over.  It’s just as critical to the quality of the wine as any of the other steps performed along the way, so don’t waste all your previous efforts by not giving due-diligence to a step that can have such a critical effect.
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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.

As you progress in your wine making practice, you may find yourself making wine from grapes (if you aren’t already).  Taking it a step further, you may find yourself gaining access to grapes that are still on the vine, allowing yourself much more control over things like: when the grapes should be picked.
Now that you’re diving into the realm of viticulturalist, you’ll need to become familiar with one piece of wine making equipment that is a must-have for all those making wine from grapes.
The wine refractometer is a piece of equipment that you must have if you will be in charge of determining when to pick your grapes.  Before you harvest your grapes, you want to be sure the grapes have matured to a particular sugar level best suited for a well-balanced finished wine.  Wine refractometers act to measure the Brix present in the grapes, thus allowing you to determine if they are ready to be harvested or if they need to remain on a vine for a longer period of time.
Wine refractometers work by using light to measure the density of water-soluble compounds in a sample.  What these devices are actually measuring is the refractive index of a fluid sample.  Basically, as light travels through a sample, it will move faster or slower depending upon how dense the fluid is.  The denser the sample is, the slower the light will refract, and the higher the value on the refractometer is read.  In other words, the more sugar that is in the sample, the more dense the sample is, thereby the reading on the wine refractometer will be higher than if it was a sample of pure water (less dense than a sugar solution).  Here’s more information on how a wine refractometer works.
Wine refractometers come is various styles and designs and all are functionally very similar.  To operate a wine refractometer, you’ll need a grape sample.  Ideally, you’ll want to take multiple samples throughout the vineyard to check for variation in maturation times (you may want to harvest different sections at different times).  You’ll want to try and harvest those grapes that are all at the same stage in their maturation process, in order to create a more balanced wine.
Next, squeeze the grape into a plastic bag in order to release the juices.  Then, place a couple of drops onto the refractometer, close the attached cover, and peer into the device while holding it up to the light.  The reading will be clearly marked on striations inside the device, allowing you to determine if the grapes are ready to be harvested or not.
There is a lot to learn once you’re at the point of harvesting your own grapes, however, the refractometer is certainly one piece of equipment you’ll never want to be without.
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.

Perhaps you’ve been making homemade wine from juice or other fruits up until now, and you’ve recently decided that you would like to start making wine from grapes.  It is important to know your options in regards to how you plan to process your grapes, so you don’t end up with green or other off flavors from the grape stems and other debris.
We’ve already covered grape presses in another post, but I’ll briefly remind you that a grape press is a piece of equipment required to actually press the grapes to extract the juice from the fruit.  It is certainly a piece of equipment you’ll need for making wine from grapes, but for the purposes of today’s post, we’re going to focus primarily on the grape destemmer.
Prior to using the grape press, you first need to destem your grapes, as well as get rid of any leaves, bugs, or any other debris that may be hanging on for dear life to the grapes. There are basically two ways you can do that: 1) using an motorized grape destemmer; and 2) using a manual grape destemmer.
The Marchisio Crusher & Destemmer is a motorized grape stemmer that allows you to process up to 2,200 pounds of grapes per hour.  Basically, there is a set of rollers that act to gently crush the grapes in order to loosen the stem from the skin of the grape.  Then, the crushed grapes are passed through the grape destemmer, which effectively removes up to 90% of the stems that were loosened from the grapes by the crusher.  Finally, the stems are separated from the juice and pulp of the grapes by being discarded out to the side of the destemmer, while the pulp and juice remains at the bottom.
The manual grape destemmer is a very similar product as the motorized version, and crushes the grapes in a very similar fashion.  However, the main difference between the two grape destemmers is that the manual version is powered by a crank wheel powered by human force, whereas the motorized grape destemmer is powered by a machine.  If you’re looking to save a little money or perhaps add a little extra “elbow grease” into your winemaking experience, the manual grape destemmer may be the best option for you.
Crushing and destemming is very important for making wine with grapes, and must be done in a certain manner so that you do not over extract your grapes to reveal too much bitter tannin or potentially green flavors if the grapes aren’t fully seed ripened.  Choosing the appropriate grape destemmer for you will put you well on your way to making a quality wine from grapes.
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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.

I have seen a couple people asking about the plastic taste and smell in wine and beer that sometimes shows up. I have been making wine and beer since the early 80’s and have found through my research, (I’m a Chemical Engineer) that if you use concentrated Chlorine bleach with plastics or rubber (hoses, filters, pumps, gaskets etc.) that it can very easily be absorbed into these materials and then releases the chemical compounds that smell and taste like water from a garden hose exposed to sunlight.
Over the years I have lost two kegs of beer and one batch of wine to this, even though I am careful. Now, I eliminated Chlorine bleach from my wine and brew room and never use it for cleaning any surfaces either. It is relegated to the laundry only.
Hope this bit of advice saves your batches from the dreaded garden hose effect.
Name: Mike S.
State: Shanghai, China
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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.