Most of the ingredients and tools you need to make Instant Pot wine are already in your kitchen, but you may need to place an online order for a couple items. Ingredients
64-ounce bottle of grape juice (we used Welch’s) 1 cup sugar ½ a packet of red wine yeast (this is that online order thing you’ll probably need to get) Buy It: Lalvin Wine Yeast, $6.60 for a 5-pack
Tools
Instant Pot (duh) with yogurt function Buy It: Instant Pot DUO Plus, 6-quart 9-in-1, $89.95 A funnel Two 32-ounce mason jars (the blogger version simply reused the grape juice bottle, but we divided the recipe so a couple of us could take home the wine to taste test over the Thanksgiving holiday) Two mason jar lids with aerating function, such as reCAP (again, the blogger skipped this and reused the grape juice bottle lid taped on loosely to allow carbon dioxide to release, we thought these aerating lids were easier) Buy It: 6-pack fermenting lids for wide mouth jars, $10.99 (note, there are many brands and varieties you can choose from)
Okay, we’re ready to make our wine!
Mixing the Wine Ingredients
Your bottle of grape juice makes a handy vessel for combining ingredients without dirtying a bowl.
Processing the Wine in Your Instant Pot
Let it Rest
We did it! We managed to wait 48 hours for this process to finish. Now to wait some more :(
Taste-Testing the Wine
Here’s the part of I was most excited about. I hoped to taste the wine each day to report every subtle change. My notebook and pen set next to my jar of wine on the kitchen counter (next to my decanter of bourbon, should I need to rinse my mouth after tasting) ready for action. Spoiler alert: There hasn’t been much to document (I’m on Day 25, why is this taking so long?), the flavor remains about the same, but the level of fizz is changing, so I’m optimistic science is still happening and we’re working toward a more delicious end result than what we have right now. Since there haven’t been a ton of changes, here are notes from a few of the days throughout testing from my Test Kitchen co-taster and myself.
Day 10: Still quite fizzy with a lot of sediment on the bottom (should I stir that? I didn’t today). Tastes like grape juice flavored with yeast. My husband wants to taste it, I tell him it’s not worth it.Day 13: From my Test Kitchen co-taster, “I tasted today and it’s still fizzy and tastes like grape juice.” I’ll keep holding, but not sure this process is worth it.“Day 18: From my Test Kitchen co-taster, “Better today, but still fizzy. Still not a quality wine.”From my kitchen: This is the day I started to notice a difference. There was again a lot of sediment on the bottom of the jar, this time I gave it a gentle stir. It’s still fizzy, but less so and I’m finally getting hints of wine flavor that are less pure grape juice. There was even a touch of dry mouthfeel after swishing it around. I suppose this could happen with unaltered grape juice, too. It still smells like grape juice with yeast, which is oddly reminiscent of peanut butter and jelly. My husband wants to taste again so I pour him some and he agrees, strangely tastes like peanut butter and jelly.Day 19: I stirred the sediment again (the photo above shows you how much fizz is still in there) and still see some fizz. Taste is the same as Day 18, but today I attempted the seemingly-snobby wine swirl to test its legs. Nope, no legs, just a cloudy film left on my glass. The appearance of the wine in my glass is also cloudy/milky. Do I have to keep drinking it?Days 20-24: I just don’t want to drink this. I see it sitting there, notebook at the ready, but I can’t.Day 25: From my Test Kitchen co-taster, “Ugh I think it got worse. I turned the jar a few times and it got fizzy. Still not a good flavored wine.“Note: This was the first time she stirred her wine and she thought it got worse. Maybe we’d be better off not stirring and skimming wine from the top? We’re not sure what the best course of action is, but we unintentionally tested it both ways and neither of us liked what we were getting.
The Verdict
Not worth it. I’m definitely not saying decent Instant Pot wine is impossible, but it would take a lot more testing, and frankly, I’d rather grab a bottle of wine for under $10 that I think tastes better and leave the wine making to the pros. Or heck, there are wine delivery services that could bring wine to me faster than this. Did you have better luck making wine in the Instant Pot? Think you know where we went wrong? Let me know and I’ll toast your success with a sip of wine from a purchased bottle. Cheers!
