Homemade Wine 101 (Citrus- Kumquat wine)

What do you do when your father-in-law has a bumper crop of sweet, juicy kumquats?

Yep.... you eat as many as you can. But then you still have TONS left over... whatcha gonna do?Make Kumquat wine!! (remember homemade prison wine 101?) <---click to read about it.

1.) Gather your wine makin stuff.

enough fruit to have 6 cups prepared fruit.

6 cups sugar.

1 gallon distilled water.

a big container to let it brew/age in.

(I use a 2 gallon glass jug thingie with a lid.)

Prepare your fruit.

For citrus or in this case kumquats this means.. wash em... then cut them in half.

Make sure your container is clean & disinfected. I do this by washing it in hot water or the dishwasher.. then adding 2 tablespoons of bleach in it then filling it with water and dumping it out.

2.) dump 6 cups of sugar into your clean container.

3.) add your gallon of distilled water.

4.) stir well

Keep stirring until all of the sugar is dissolved.

5.) dump in your 6 cups of prepared fruit.

6.) give it another stir.

Let your little helper clean the spoon.

Wrap your container with plastic wrap. You want to be able to swirl or stir your mixture once a day for 30 days... During this time it will fizz, you want the air to be able to escape but you also want to keep fruit flies and such out. Those pesky fruit flies can send your batch of wine south fast!

Set your container in a cool dark place (or be like me and just leave it on your kitchen counter) and let it brew for 30 days. You want to stir it at least once a day (or just swirl it so the fruit mixes around a little bit)

After 30 days...

scoop out the fruit and toss it out to your pigs (drunk pigs are a riot!!) or just throw em away of you dont have any pigs.

Strain your wine through a couple of layers of cheese cloth.

Then bottle it.

I let mine age for at least 6 months... the longer the better.

Enjoy!!

Go forth and make wine!!!!