CrankyFrankie

Not unlike beer making, the first task of wine making is to collect the appropriate bottles. I did this, like I have always done with beer making, which is to drink my way into an adequate supply of good bottles. All the while I was doing this, I was watching the apples begin to ripen and fall. I collected them into old plastic milk crates and built up a bulk supply the equivalent to the capacity of about one and half times that of a 40 gallon plastic trash can. The number of trees, length of the apple season and my commercial wine consumption all seemed to be in good harmony as I soon had the quantity I needed to start the actual wine making.

Once I had the correct quantity of apples, I was instructed to fill one of the milk crates up with a few apples and then beat them through the plastic lattice work of the bottom of that crate into the crate it was under it. I did this for a few hours until the apples had been crushed. I put them all in the plastic trash can. In this crushed state the original bulk volume was reduced to about two thirds the capacity of the 40 gallon bucket. I then added a few gallons of commercial apple juice, water and cane sugar according the recipe orally passed along to me by may wine making mentor. I then stretched a white T-shirt over the opening of the trash can and put it in a corner of my kitchen. Note that no yeast was added. In a few days, spontaneously, a fermentation began. It got quite active for a few days then subsided.