Yes! It’s now time for me to do Wines! I have been brewing beer since February this year and everything is fine and dandy but I think that wine making is definitely more interesting that beer brewing. Of course, I am not saying that beer brewing is easy or anything, just that I find wine making more interest and the resulting beverage certainly more appealing to me. Well, I am sure that there are a lot of people out there who disagree with me and in Singapore, I am sure this is the case. You don’t see a lot of people drinking wine. They drink mostly beer.  But hey, I say each to their own. If you think that beer is a better beverage than wine, then by all means, go ahead and drink beer.

Anyways, the home brew store (that is iBrew) which sells the beer ingredients is also selling wine making stuff. However, if you visit their website, you will not find any information about their wine making equipment or ingredients listed there. I am not sure why but I guess it should be because their inventory is not finalized yet. Or perhaps they are just too lazy to update their website. Who cares? You can email to the owner directly and ask for the prices. He will be glad to assist you in every way possible. It is just too bad that the other homebrew store doesn’t sell any wine making equipment or ingredients. Okay, so last night, the stuff I purchased arrived and I have taken some photos of them.

Sorry about some of the poor quality photos. I took them in a hurry and it was at night, so the lighting is bad.  Please endure.

That’s the Pasteur Champagne yeast from Red Star. S$6.50 per pack! And it consist of only 5 grams of yeast. Talk about monopoly….

Back of the Pasteur Champagne yeast pack. They have some instructions for you to read up. Basically it is the same as the Cote des Blancs yeast - rehdyrate the yeast. If I were you, I would follow the instructions as well. Nothing too difficult to do.

Wine bottle corker. Not sure how it works exactly. I guess the handle is for you to push the cork down into the bottle.

Sorry for the blurry photos.  I am guessing that you open the two handles to put in the cork at the bottom.Then to ensure that the cork stays in place, you will have to tighten the two handles together. Yes, that’s me guessing.

Ya, that’s the hole where you put the cork and if you push on the single handle, the cork will be forced into the bottle. Again, I am guessing. But it makes sense right? And if I don’t try, I will never learn. That’s the lesson of life I am telling everybody to listen to.

Corks! Not too sure whether they are natural corks or synthetic ones. Anyway,  it doesn’t matter as I am sure that the Apple Wine I am doing won’t be needing such a long aging time.

These are the shrink things you put at the top of the bottle after you “corked” them. I believe that you use a hairdryer and make them shrink fit onto the bottle top. It comes with many many colours but I chose gold because it is very close to the Apple Wine colour. I bought 10 of these.

I bought another Straight-A Cleanser as I have used finished my previous batch. I have 10 used wine bottles to clean and this cleanser will definitely come in handy. Remember, this is a cleanser and not a sanitizer. The difference is that this clears away dirt and grim from the surface, which a sanitizer kills bacteria or spores on the surface. So unless you are planning to use a lot of elbow grease, this will help you get rid of those stubborn grim on your brewing equipment.

Got this 1kg of dextrose to add to my apple juice. This will add some strong alcoholic kick to the wine. If I am not wrong, for a 23 litre batch, this will pump up the alcoholic content by 2%. Who am I to say no to more alcohol?

That’s the used wine bottles which the owner of iBrew provided me with. Not it’s not free, I had to pay 50 cents for each. Ahhh…..businessman meh. Anyway, if you have any lobang for me to get free wine bottles, please give me a hoot. Very much appreciated.