You can make your own wine for FREE!

Wine A Little - You'll Feel Better

UPDATE: Please check my new wine making website for more detail on wine making.   How To Make Homemade Wine

Is there such a thing as free wine?


Two of the greatest things:

o    Free Stuff
o    Wine

Is it possible to make wine for free?   If you already own the wine making equipment, the answer is yes!

The Hard Way:   Grow your own grapes and nurture them for three years before you get your first usable crop.  Make wine with these grapes.

The Easy Way:   Get wine ingredient kits from Amazon, for free.

Here is how you can do this:

Step 1: Apply for the Amazon Credit Card, where you can buy things with “Points”.  With this card, you earn points for your purchases.   Buy stuff on Amazon, 3 point per dollar you spend.   Use the card at restaurants or to by gas, 2 points per dollar….   All other things, one point per dollar.

Step 2:  Notice everything you buy with Cash, or your Debit Card.   All of those things, you will buy with your Amazon card and rack up points.   It is very important to realize that you must pay your card down in full each month, so that you don’t pay any interest!   

You were paying cash for this stuff anyway, now you are funneling the cash through your card.    You can keep a low credit limit, just so you don’t get yourself in trouble….  If you have a $500 credit card, there is no reason you can’t pay it off in full 3 times in a month for an impact of $1500!
 
Step 3:  When you have enough points, you can get a great Vino Italiano wine kit from Amazon for about $45, shipped.  You are buying the wine with the points that you earned using your card by purchasing stuff you had to buy anyway.   It would take 4500 points….  Sounds like a lot of points, but is it?
 
Here is how it can add up:

• Heating your house with Heating Oil, buy the oil with your Amazon card for about 400 points for 100 Gallons of Oil.  The average Oil tank is 275 gallons…  You need to heat your home and spend this money anyway, right?
• Does it cost you $50 to fill up your car every week?  That is 100 points a week, 400 points a month!
• Pay your Cell Phone with the card…  
• Pay for your food at the supermarket with the card  Do your holiday shopping with the card!   If you buy from Amazon, it is 3 points per Dollar… For example, if you spend about $1000 for holiday gifts on Amazon and pay for them with your card, you will earn 3000 points!
• You can see how this can add up.   It may take a month or even a few months.   But, provided you keep paying your card in full, the wine you will be able to buy will be free.

If you look at my previous post on Wine Making, you will see what equipment you have to buy to get started, but once you own the equipment, you are good to go.  The Vino Italiano wine kits come with everything you need, including the corks, except the equipment to make the wine and the bottles.  You can also get the bottles for free, by becoming friends with the owners of a local restaurant you regularly frequent and ask them to save used wine bottles for you.   Save wine bottles from the wine you drink, as well.   If you were to buy new wine bottles, you would have to wash and sanitize them anyway.  So, why not recycle the used wine bottles yourself...

Just make sure you pay your card off.   Once your maxed out, you are not able to earn more points.   If you carry a balance, there will be interest, and you are defeating the purpose of doing this….

Which is to make wine for free.   And take it from me, free wine tastes delicious…  I hope you enjoy this.   Feel free to comment if you have any questions.

Chicken Cutlet Parmesan Recipe

This is always a winner.  It's so easy to make... Anyone can do this.  Even so, many are intimidated.   This recipe uses both Italian seasoned breadcrumbs and Panko breadcrumbs...   Although the Panko breadcrumbs are not Italian, they add something wonderful in texture to this classic dish.   If you don't have access to Panko breadcrumbs, you can just use the Italian seasoned breadcrumbs and you will also be delighted.

Note: use plain Panko breadcrumbs, not Italian Seasoned. 



Chicken Cutlet Parmigiana
 

• 1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
• 1 Cup Italian Breadcrumbs 
• 1 Cup Panko Breadcrumbs
• ½ Teaspoon Salt
• 1 Cup of Flour
• 3  Eggs
• 1 Large Package of Thin Sliced Chicken Cutlets
• Marinara Sauce
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Olive Oil for Frying
• Pasta of your choice

Directions:

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan on Medium Heat
2. Beat the eggs and put them in a bowl
3. Combine the cheese, salt and both kinds of breadcrumbs and mix well.  Pour breadcrumb mixture in a pie plate, or something similar.
4. Pour the flour in another pie plate.
5. Take each chicken cutlet and coat with flour, both sides
6. Dip the floured chicken cutlet in the beaten egg and thoroughly coat.
7. Dip the egg covered chicken cutlet in bread crumb mixture.   Flip it over and thoroughly coat.
8. Fry the coated chicken in the olive oil.   Flip it and cook until golden brown.
9. After all of your chicken in fried, coat the bottom of a tray with sauce.  Layer the chicken cutlets and sauce.   Top with the Mozzarella and cover with foil, so that the foil is not touching the cheese.
10. Bake for 20 - 30 minutes, until cheese is melted and bubbling.
11. While the chicken is heating, boil the pasta of your choice and heat up the remainder of your sauce…
12. All should be ready at the same time.
13. Enjoy with a nice glass of Chianti, or Nero D’Avola

Roasted Garlic - Italian Aroma Therapy!

Ahh…  Roasted Garlic!   Is there anything better?  I say there isn’t… 

Here I will teach you how to make roasted garlic, so that you can use it in all of your roasted garlic recipes.

As the smell of the garlic roasting permeates your house, all I can say is this is Italian Aroma Therapy at its finest!  

Roasted garlic is incredibly easy to make.  You can add roasted garlic to just about any dish, sauce, bread, casserole, or dressing. Use your imagination!

You can roast extra bulbs of garlic and store them in a covered container in the refrigerator.  They store for up to a week.  This way you will have roasted garlic on hand whenever you need it.  All you have to do is squeeze a clove out of its skins when needed.

Ingredients:

•    2 large garlic heads
•    Organic extra virgin-olive oil
•    sea salt
•    pepper

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 

Directions

Trim the roots from the bottom of the garlic bulb so that the garlic will not roll when placed in the foil. Next, trim a thin slice from the top of the bulbs to expose a little of each of the cloves. 

Drizzle olive oil over the tops of the exposed garlic and salt and pepper to taste. 

Place cut-side up on some aluminum foil. Fold the foil to make a foil tent.  There should be some room for air to circulate within the tent, but it should be sealed, so that the moisture of the garlic will steam it.

Bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours or until garlic is a golden brown and the cloves are very tender. Baking time will vary depending on the size of the bulbs.

Remove the garlic from oven.   Be VERY CAREFUL when opening the aluminum foil.    Steam will come out and can burn you.

At this point you can add the cloves to any dish you like or spread it on your Italian bread.

Enjoy!

How To Make Homemade Wine At Home – Start Here!

How To Make Wine At Home – Start Here!

 

So, you want to learn how to make wine at home and don’t know where to start….

I recommend that you start making wine at home, you should probably start from a wine making kit.   That is a great and easy starting point.   As long as you can follow directions and have patients, you will get great results.

Caution:  Wine making is addictive…   once you start, you will want to make more and more…  It is fun!  ….   You will amaze your friends…   and it is easy… 

But, I know what you are thinking….  I don’t know if I will like the wine..   I think it is harder than I can handle, and I don’t want to sink a lot of money into it…  

Don’t worry…   I was there to…    If you could bake a cake from a cake mix, you can easily make wine from a kit.   It just takes longer…

You will need some basic wine making equipment.   That equipment can be used over and over again…   The initial cost for a basic winemaking equipment kit is about $100 US. 

But consider this… 

With what I am going to recommend you start with, you will spend about $175 - $250 total for both the equipment and a basic wine kit…   That will yield you about 25 bottles of wine..   This wine, in my opinion, will be comparable (of better!) to wine that costs $10 to $15 a bottle in the store.   So, at $10 a bottle, you will get approximately $250 or more of wine…

After that first wine kit, you will reuse the same wine making equipment.   So, if a wine kit costs you about $40, and you get 25 bottles of wine, each bottle will cost you $1.60 a bottle,  not including the cost of the actual glass wine bottle, which I encourage you to reuse your bottles, so that cost is free.

Of course, you can get more premium quality wine kits for about $100 US, but even at that cost you are still under $4 a bottle….

So, first you need to get a basic wine making equipment kit….

This is what you most likely would start with:

A Wine Making Equipment Kit includes:

• 7.8 gallon primary fermenter with drilled lid and airlock. – This is a plastic bucket that is food grade with a top that is drilled to accept an airlock.
• 6-gallon glass carboy with rubber stopper ( I know they sell plastic ones, but I would recommend going for the glass one.
• A racking tube with tubing
• Bottle filler
• Twin lever corker to cork your bottles
• Triple scale hydrometer
• B-Brite Cleanser
• Wine bottle brush
• Long Handled Spoon
• Carboy Brush
• Airlock

That is the basics…   But I recommend that you get a little bit more than that….

• Potassium Metabisulphate – to sanitize things
• Carboy Handle – so you don’t drop your glass carboy and have shards of broken glass all over the place.

 

You can also get all of these things at your local homebrew shop.    

Next, you will need a wine kit….  For your first kit, I recommend two options.

The Higher Cost Wine Kit Option

You can pick a high end wine ingredient kit that costs a bit more, but will give excellent results, like this one:

The Lower Cost Wine Kit Option

Now, for the low cost and surprisingly great option:

Vino Italiano Ingredient Wine Kit.

I would recommend going with what you like, but I would personally recommend the Rosso Magnifico Kit, or the Merlot Kit.   If you like Italian Red Wines, you will like these…

You may want to get some medium toasted oak from your local homebrew shop to kick up the Vino Italiano Kit a notch…..   Highly Recommended, but not necessary.

Now… Here is the deal…  With amazon, you will get Free Shipping!!!!!   FREE SHIPPING on that order…  It may cost you $44 US for the kit, but free shipping…  and if you do the subscribe and save, you will get it for even cheaper!  Sign up for a 6 month Subscribe and Save.  If you don’t think the wine is good, you can cancel the subscription before the next one comes….    I don’t think you will, however, want to cancel…  Now, I need to also tell you I have no affiliation with Amazon or Vino Italiano….  

Ok.   Now you have your wine kit and the wine making equipment….   Here is what you need to do:

1)      Clean everything really well using the b-brite cleanser…  Then sanitize with  a metabisulphate solution made by mixing the powder with some water… I make a gallon of this solution and save it for months in a screw cap jug.

2)      Make the kit precisely following the directions with these important exceptions, if you are making the Vino Italiano Kit and ONLY if you are making the Vino Italiano Kit:

Vino Italiano Wine Kit Exceptions

Make the kit to 5 Gallons instead of 6……   Put the concentrate in the bucket, but only fill with water to the 5 Gallon mark…  The Specific Gravity Reading on the Hydrometer will be a little high, but that’s good!  Your wine will be about 13 to 14 percent Alcohol.  

Optional Exception:  Add about ¼ cup of toasted oak chips from your homebrew shop to the carboy before you transfer from the bucket into the carboy…   Let the wood chips stay on the wine until you rack (transfer) again.    Now, I don’t like overly oak flavor in my wine… Most American wines I find over oaked… But a little oak add something…

Note: other brand high end kits that come with oak, I half the oak in those kits.

Another exception for all wine kits….   Age your bottles for 3 to 6 months before trying some, or bulk age in the carboy for 6 months before bottling.    If doing the bulk aging, you will need to top up the carboy with additional wine, especially if making the Vino Italiano kit, since you are making 5 gallons of wine in a 6 gallon carboy….  Either that, or get a 5 gallon carboy to bulk age in. 

Bottom line is you need to age the wine…   Just because the kit says it is finished in 4 weeks, doesn’t mean that you should drink it in 4 weeks.   Age it at least 3 months after bottling.   6 months, even better… you will be delighted with the results…  

You will need to have realistic expectations, however. The Vino Italiano kit will not make you a $40 bottle of wine.   It will, however, make you a $10-15 bottle of wine.   If you are looking for the $40 bottle of wine, you need a higher end kit…   The best wine I ever made came from Mosti Mondiale renaissance kit called Rosso D’avola.    This kit, while it needed at least 6 months or more aging, was better than some wines that cost $100 a bottle, in my opinion…

Welcome to the wonderful world of winemaking! 

More to come…   Especially how to get FREE WINE!