Guide to Better Wine and Beer Making for Beginners

Almost anything that grows (and honey too) can be made by the most inexperienced beginner into a delicious wine: almonds, apricots, bananas, beetroots, bilberries, carnations, chamomile, cherries, cloves, corn, currants, dates, figs, ginger, golden rod, greengage plums, hawthorn, lichi fruit, marrow, oak leaves, oranges, pansies, rosehips, tangerines, tomatoes, as well as grapes, are a few of the 125 fruits and vegetables for which wine, beer and liqueur recipes appear in this A-Z guide. All you need is a little imagination, a few easily obtained materials, and this book, and in less than a month you can be enjoying your own vintage. Designed for amateurs, the Guide starts with the most fundamental questions of the choice of yeast, the best types of fruit and the simple equipment that you will need. The first chapters contain a detailed, step-by-step account of how to make three wines that cannot help but succeed: orange, apricot and apple. Explicit diagrams make the techniques simple to acquire. Even after this limited experience, the wine-maker is ready to go on to the more complicated grape wines (and even champagne!), instructions for which appear in subsequent chapters. You will also find all the information needed to 'nurse' the wine to the peak of perfection: racking, stabilization, clarification, fining, blending, bottling and storing are covered in sufficient detail to ensure a product in which you can pride yourself. Never losing sight of the fact that she is writing for novices who may not have a large amount of space or an elaborate set-up, Mrs. Tritton has made certain that everything of which she speaks is readily and cheaply available. She has prepared a special set of notes for American readers of the book giving American equivalents of some of the British products not available here, and a list of amateur wine-making product distributors.