The Joy of Home Wine Making
- ISBN13: 9780380782277
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Groundbreaking New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Port and sharries, whites, reds, roses and melomels — make your own wine without owning a vineyard!If you can follow a simple recipe, you can make delectabletable wines in your own home. It’s fun, it’s simple-and the resultswill delightfully complement your favorite meals and provide unparalleledpleasure by the glass when friends come calling. You don’t have tore-make Bordeaux in your basement to be a successful home vintner-you can make raisin wine and drink it … More >>
This book is entertaining and filled with a lot of useful recipes if you don’t particularly care about what the final product tastes like–that is, if you aren’t interested in trying to make a reasonably serious wine. If making something possibly drinkable out of a variety of fruits and vegetables interests you, this will be useful. If you want to make what most people reckon of as “wine” (i.e., fermented grape juice) the book is not of much interest.
Rating: 2 / 5
As a novice winemaker, I was looking for something to help guide me in making wine from something other than the premade kit. There are lots of fantastic thoughts and seem to be simple to follow.
Shipping was quick. This was a fantastic buy!
Rating: 5 / 5
This book tought me a lot about winemakeing, I would recomend it to any one trying to self teach winemakeing.
Rating: 5 / 5
I just bottled my first batch of Potatoe, Rasberry and Spiced Apple wines. To my surprise, it was really simple to make and turned out tasty even though it still isn’t fully aged. Garey was right, IT JUST TAKES PATIENCE!
The book is written with the beginner in mind (myself included), with a fantastic sense of humor and includes really excellent tips and many recipes to choose from. I only wish that I made more than one gallon of the Rasberry Wine, but. I feel more adventurous and willing to experiment now that my first batch turned out after nearly 6 months. In small, I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to start wine making as an enjoyable leisure activity without breaking the bank.
Rating: 5 / 5
I read the reviews on Amazon prior to buying this book but mainly I bought because it seemed to be modeled after it’s home brewing counter part, (The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing). I’ve been brewing beer for sometime and have spoken with several wine makers aboout making a transition to wine.
The first thing I noticed when I started reading this book is that it’s poorly written. I’ll provide some examples. There is a chapter in the beginning for making your first gallon of wine. The author starts with a list of equipment and then goes into instruction. She forgets to mention that you need 2 jugs, she gives you simple to follow steps but never clarifies why you need to do it. One part she tangents off of her destilled instruction to give you detailed syphoning (racking) instructions. Even the technique she gives you is horrible. She tells you to sanitize your mouth with alcohol and suck the wine to then of the tube then quickly stick in the jug. Gimme a break! If she wanted to offer a excellent technique there are plenty of better ones like an auto-syphon for $10 or to cap the jug and blow through a seperate hose.
Her poor writing style continues where she speaks goes off on other tangents about her husband, then suddenly starts using his name but never links the two things.
In later chapters she refers back to things she justified in the beginning like using PA (potential alcohol) instead of SG (specific gravity) readings. If you really go back she doesn’t ever offer a excellent explanation as to why.
Some of her instructions are just dumb. As I stated she tells you not to use gravity reading on a hydrometer because you don’t need it. She says to use PA. The she gives you methods for adjusting your reading for temperature by using SG. Huh!? Her rationale is that the only way to adjust the reading is by using SG then re-converting. This is idiotic. Both scales are completely linear. Even the adjustments she gives you are incorrect. She says add .9 instead of .009. This is fine for us experienced brewers and wine makers but this is in the beginners chapter of her book. Someone could be very confused by this.
Lastly the book seems to completely wrip off the title, format, etc… of Charlie Papazian’s book but is nothing like it. It leaves critical steps out, never gets passed being a beginners book, barely touches on grape wine making and is generally a poor instructional guide to wine making.
Charlie has a motto in his book, “relax, have a homebrew”. She tries to offer a couple of her own but they’re obviously just poor ripoffs from his.
Her index is missing several terms she uses frequently such as “PA”.
In summary you can learn everything this book has to offer by reading online “how to” articles. I suggest then going to some wine making forums and meeting people. Either that or find a better book.
Rating: 2 / 5