Week 8: Make your own Wine!

I’m so giddy about this weeks blog I don’t even know what to write. But I have so much to say!

So, this weeks blog was my first blog suggested by someone else. A very good suggestion at that. Ladies and Gents…

Week 8: Make your own wine

I did a bit of reading on this one and found out what ingredients I was looking for. With such simple things as Grape Juice, Yeast, Raisins, warm water and sugar, I think it really is stretching it by calling this concoction “wine”! It’s street name, if you will, is Prison Wine as prisoners used to brew it in the cisterns of their toilets. You just know this stuff is classy.

Anyways, off to tesco I went to get my ingredients. All tesco Value and spent about 5 quid in total. I’m aware that you can buy a bottle of pre-made wine for that in tesco but where’s the challenge in that? “Week 8: Drink some wine” doesn’t sound that great now does it

The challenge required a little skill in the beginning, getting all the ingredients together and making up the brewing machine (the bin bag hanging from string.)

It basically involved putting all of the above into 4 of these bagged onto each other

…like so…..

…and then hanging it up like this….

Note the straw coming out of the bags. In the instructions I was told that this was a must, otherwise the bag might explode. How exciting!!!!

So after all that was tidied up, I went off to play the waiting game. Which suits me down to the ground, I like laziness, I do.

So I left it 8 days in total, checking up everyday or two to see how the smell was progressing, quite sweet with a little hint of cat shit! Yum – my!

On the ninth day I went into the garage to strain it and as always made up another fancy contraption. I cut a small hole in the bottom of the bag, pouring into a pasta strainer, which went into a biscuit tin.

sorry the pics are the wrong way round. but whats the harm in a little old fashion head tilting.

Then came the bottling, corking and labelling steps. How bloody exciting…and at this stage, I could definitely say that the smell of the liquid was wine-like. I was very proud of my pink, cloudy, extremely sticky liquid. I wish you could upload smells onto the internet. You would be impressed.

Then I decided to put the taste to the test. I poured myself a healthy glass full. And took a sip. Hmm… it was kind of juicy more than winey but it did taste of alcohol so I feel that brewing of some sort did occur. It was kind of musty and sticky too. I wouldn’t say it tasted awful, cos it didn’t, but it wasn’t the best either. But I figured I was biased so I asked others opinion. I conducted the following survey, measuring my wine against two other reputable brands.

1. Lindemans

2. Two Oceans

3. PRISON WINE.

I conducted a blind folded taste test with the following results

Question 1: Smell cup number 3, what drink would you say this is:

100% of people asked, answered Wine!

Question 2: Smell each wine, which do you think smells the most appetising?

Wine 2, the two oceans, ranked best on this question.

Question 3: Taste all 3 wines and rank in order of preference.

100% said they would prefer Wine 3….Thats the prison wine!!!! FUCKIN SUCCESS OR WHAT!

*Total number of people surveyed: 1.It was my brother, he doesn’t like wine to begin with. So one might say he would choose the wine that doesn’t taste like wine, but to those I say, fuck you, I made wine and you’re just jealous!

So there you have it, I made wine, nice wine, drinkable wine.  And Here’s a lovely display of my efforts. Presenting to you Lydia’s Prison Wine: Mont de Joix (roughly translated to: Mount joy!)

The End

…..or so I thought!!!!!!!!!!

Pleased with my day of wining, I decided to head off and get a bit of lunch then get ready to go to work! After an hour or two I went back into my room to grab my keys to run out and catch the bus to work. To my horror, EVERYTHING was covered in sticky prison wine! Remember I told you about the straw in the bag, to stop it exploding. Well the same rule applies after the fucking bottling process apparently. When I corked the bottle. All the CO2 or whatever the hell it is still builds up, this made the thing fizz up, pop the cork out of place and spray all over my room. Usually i would find that funny and take pictures and laugh for a few hours but I hadn’t time, I had to go to smelly work. So i just had to clean up as much of the mess as i could and run. There was wine juice on the feckin ceiling!

…I’m scared… this stuff is in my belly…is my stomach gonna explode?!

Week 8: Make your own wine: AWESOME… and a little scary