One of our members, Tom, just sent me these pictures and said it was AOK to share them with you.

He created his own ‘Bearkat Red’ – a Feb 2009 vintage. Here’s Tom showing it off:

If you look closely, you can see the image of the Bearkat scooter on the bottle…

Besides the wine being great, notice that he made an awesome label, and topped the bottle off with a capsule to give it a finished look.
Here’s what Tom sent me in an email…

My son in law Jeff is a graphic designer.I have restored a couple 60′s vintage off road scooters and he thought it would be fun to make the label with the Bearkat.The bottom of the label says “It takes you there and brings you back”,which was a sales pitch for the Bearkat. The wine came out as a rose’ with just a little fizz.
My wife says it tastes like rose’ champagne.
Thanks again for all the help.
I couldn’t have done it with out your input.
Regards,Tom

So – what are YOU waiting for? Hop on over to www.How-To-Make-Wine.net and get started on your own private vinatge today!

If you want to learn how to make wine, one of the essential things you have to do is invert your sugar before you add it to your juice.

What is sugar inversion?

Before I get to that, let’s start with what yeast has to do to begin fermenting your juice, or more accurately, the sugar in your juice.

Yeast has to first break up household table sugar into two parts: glucose and sucrose. Once the yeast has used some energy doing the breakdown, then and only then can it start actually consuming the sugar and turning it into alcohol.

Inverting your sugar means that you are going to give your yeast a “head start” by breaking down the sugar in advance. This is an important step in learning how to make wine.

How do you do this?

Use about a cup of water and dissolve as much sugar as you can in a saucepan on the stove. Turn on the heat and get the solution close to boiling and add sugar until you can’t add any more – in other words, no more sugar will dissolve.

Now add the juice of 1 lemon. The acid in the lemon will “crack” the sugar molecules and break it down into sucrose and glucose, exactly what our yeast would have to do. Let your sugar mixture cook for about 15 minutes close to boiling (watch it carefully or it could boil over).

Now let it cool to room temperature and use this mixture to add sugar to your juice. You want to add enough to get the specific gravity up to about 1.1 before you put your yeast in.

If you want to learn how to make wine, first learn to invert your sugar. You will be surprised at the difference in flavor!