Home Winemaking Step by Step: A Guide to Fermenting Wine Grapes
- ISBN13: 9780965793643
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Written expressly for beginning and advanced amateurs, this guide explores home winemaking in practical terms, focusing on the latest fermentation techniques of both red and white wine grapes. This new edition is more user-friendly than ever, containing an expanded offering of tips and advice to help winemakers obtain the best possible yield as well as descriptions of new yeasts, chemicals, and additives available. Detailed information on equipment, supplies, and how to arrange a source for good grapes as well as mistakes to avoid makes getting started easy. Advanced winemakers will appreciate full explanations of sophisticated topics—such as malolactic fermentation, sparkling wines, concentrate kits, and blending—and listings of websites for supplementary information. … More >>
Home Winemaking Step by Step: A Guide to Fermenting Wine Grapes
If you’ve never before made wine from grapes but want to try it, or if you’ve been making it for years but simply want to improve your skills and your wine, “Home Winemaking Step by Step” is the single best resource for that task.
Jon Iverson has written a book anyone can use with confidence. His writing is straightforward, concise and lay-oriented, and both beginner and advanced winemaker will feel this book was writen for them. For the beginner, it is refreshingly complete. For the advanced winemaker, it contains nuggets of technique and insight that will prove valuable and useful.
Iverson’s treatment of acidity, cold soaking and stabilization, extended and carbonic macerations, malolactic fermentation, sparkling wine methods, fining, and oaking are pregnant with value. While most would agree these are advanced topics, Jon works them into the overall process so effortlessly that the beginner might never know he is being ushered through a collegiate. Similarly, the appendices are loaded with procedures, tables, insights, and resources all will find useful.
If you make or want to make grape wines, you really ought to have this book.
The is a clear and concise book about making wine from grapes, the best overall book for beginners and serious home-winemakers. It covers the entire process step-by-step with practical and useful advices. It is simple and yet does not neglect the underlying scientific and technical aspects. Quanities of chemicals and additives are all clearly outlined and adjusted to the volumes typical for home winemaking. The chapter on the use of oak additives is the best in print. It also contains excellent coverage on sanitation, the use of sulphites, racking and fining.
This is a great book to sit down and read through before you begin making wine from grapes. It goes through each step a winemaker follows, from the equipment to the yeast, from fining to fermenting.
It would have been helpful to have more photos and high quality illustrations in the book – you are restricted to simple line drawings when reading about the various things going on in the description. Usually they suffice, though, and you can figure out what to do.
This might not be the best ‘only one’ book for an all-around winemaker – it concentrates on making wine from grapes, while most home winemakers foray extensively into fruit winemaking. Also, it doesn’t have recipes in it, so you’ll need a companion book to figure out what you’re making. Still, this is a very valuable book and should be on the shelf of any home winemaker.
In 2002, I purchased Jon Iverson’s Home Winemaking Step by Step for the first time and found myself venturing into the previously-unknown world of winemaking. I started easy–a Seyval Blanc using EC-1118 yeast. Easy as it was, I was clueless as to how to start and what to do.
Enter Jon Iverson’s book. Iverson is a stalwart to the winemaking process and his book has become a well-established resource to newbie and experienced winemakers alike. Without realizing it at the time, I selected a perfect resource to launch me into the wonderful world of winemaking. Pretty much everything I needed to know was covered.
Iverson discusses red and white wines, wines from juice concentrate, crush, fermentation, aging, sulfite management, racking, and various test procedures that educate the reader on the basic chemical properties of wine. He discusses oak and gives educated and knowledgeable recommendations based on his experience. For those interested in delving into a more complex process, malolactic fermentation is also discussed in detail. A troubleshooting section is added to assist if problems occur and he even discusses the bottling process.
The current fourth edition provides added material. This new material includes:
– Enhanced material on grape harvest
– Expanded content on fermenting red and white juice
– New material covering tannins and enzymes
– Additional tables, tips, images, and drawings
– Updated Web site references
– Enhanced index
Iverson’s book is well balanced with information presented clearly and concisely. For seasoned winemakers looking for more detail, this may not be the book for you.
While I’m off and running making wine year round, I still find myself occasionally consulting this book as a reference. Detailed discussions relating to chemistry, vinification, and viticulture are not the scope of this book. If more detail is needed, an additional resource should be consulted.
This book is strongly recommended for new winemakers looking for a single resource as a guide through the world of winemaking. From juice in a carboy or barrel to wine on your kitchen table, Home Winemaking Step by Step will help you create wine you’ll taste and say, “Wow… I made that!”
Jon Iverson’s book, Home Winemaking Step-by-Step is not only well written and thorough, it just as importantly is current – infused with information and understanding of contemporary winemaking technology.
Jon’s writing style makes the subject of winemaking easy for the beginner to understand, and yet the book is comprehensive enough to serve as a reference guide for the more advanced winemaker.
I have been teaching winemaking for the past fifteen years. Home Winemaking Step-by-Step is the book I recommend to my students and to which I reference in class.