How To Make Instant Pot Wine
Food N Service
How To Make Instant Pot Wine
Instant Pot Wine. A novel idea, right? We’ve all seen a meme or two running around Facebook wishing that “One of those Pinterest chicks could throw grapes in a crock pot and make wine.” Well, how about one of those Pinterest guys? (That would be me lol). I love PInterest. That is all.
I used to laugh every time I saw this because I wanted it to be so true. Well, I kind of figured out how to make instant pot wine, but out of grape juice…not grapes. So I’m pretty close enough lol!
This Guy (ME!) Figured out How to Make Instant Pot Wine
Yes! I totally decided to put in the effort and figure out how to do it! This meme inspired me to try to figure out how to make some Instant Pot wine I LOVE a challenge.
Believe it or not, it’s not as hard as you might think it is to make Instant Pot wine, but it does take a little bit of patience.
You’re not just going to wake up one day and start throwing juice in your Instant Pot and expect to have wine by the end of the day. That’s not how it works; however, starting the process off in your Instant Pot will GREATLY reduce the amount of time it takes to have drinkable wine in less time than normal.
So, let’s just cut to the chase and get started with the whole process! Let’s face the facts: It’s what you came here for you – to learn how to make Instant Pot wine.
Ingredients Needed to Make Instant Pot Wine
To get everything started, you’re going to need just a few things to make your Instant Pot wine.
- Welch’s Grape Juice (64oz bottle)
- 1 cup of sugar (granulated)
- a funnel
- 1 packet Lalvin Red Wine Yeast (They also have White Wine Yeast)
- Instant Pot with Yogurt Function (I have a 6qt DUO Plus IP)
- Clear Packing Tape
Directions to Make Instant Pot Wine
- Open your bottle of juice and remove 1 cup of juice from it and set to the side. Once this is done, use your funnel and add 1 cup of sugar to your bottle of juice. Place the plastic cap on it somewhat tightly and shake vigorously to help try to dissolve most of the sugar. This will take about 1 -2 minutes.
- Open your bottle of juice again, and add a packet of the Lalvin red wine yeast into it. Close the lid and lightly shake back and forth inside of the bottle.
- Once done, pour the juice from the bottle into your Instant Pot inner pot liner. (PLEASE BE SURE YOUR POT IS ACTUALLY INSIDE OF YOUR INSTANT POT!). Remember that cup of juice we put to the side? Pour that inside with the rest of the juice. Do NOT throw away your plastic juice bottle. You’re going to need it!
- Close and lock the lid of your Instant Pot. Press the Yogurt button, and then press less. The Less heat on the Yogurt function will keep the heat stead around 80ish degrees fahrenheit. This is less than a human body heat. This heat zone will keep the yeast super happy in the sugary mixture inside of your Instant Pot. This is SO important! So please…make sure you use the Less heat on the Yogurt function. DO NOT CLOSE THE VENT ON YOUR LID! We need it open so the wine can breathe.
- Now you need to have some patience!! You’re going to run the time for a total of 48 hours!! Each day, let it run for 24 hours. If you have two Instant Pots, then this is perfect as you can still cook with your other one! ?
- Every 6-8 hours, you want to alternate opening the lid vent and closing the lid vent. The yeast will be eating that sugar up inside of your grape juice to create that yummy alcohol content for us. It will be producing a LOT of carbon dioxide. I love doing it in the Instant pot because it can LITERALLY handle any kind of pressure that builds up, hence why we are alternating the opening and closing of the vent on your Instant Pot.
This is what your Instant Pot wine will look like after 20 hours have passed. As you can see, the deep red color of the grape juice is gone, it’s more cloudy because of the yeast having a feast up in your Instant Pot, and you can see a ring of bubbles around the glass. The bubbles are the carbon dioxide that the yeast is producing.
If you take a taste of it, it’ll be very fizzy and have a carbonated taste. However, it won’t really taste good. Of course, in the nature of science, I had to take a sip lol. It was a little gross. Not horrible, but it’s yeasty tasting with a bit of alcohol, and meh.
However, the nose of the wine (the smell) is starting to form. You can smell the alcohol starting to form! I was excited because I was on the right path. Alas, it’s not ready yet, so back in the IP it goes.
- After your 48 hours is up, you can transfer the wine “juice” back into your plastic container. Take the plastic lid and place it on HALF way. You don’t want it to seal tight. Remember, the yeast is constantly releasing carbon dioxide and the pressure will build up and blow the lid off of the bottle. Then you’ll just a mess to clean up!
- Secure the plastic cap on the bottle with the clear packing tape. Refer to the image below to see it better. Place a piece of tape across, and then place a piece of tape around the neck to keep the tape in place.
This will help create a venting area for the carbon dioxide to release from the bottle. Now, you can get a nifty little aerator for the job instead of plastic and tape, and it will make you look goober cool, but it’s not really necessary at all. At least, in my own opinion it’s a waste of money.
Now, this is kind of a crappy photo, but I wanted you to visually what your potential wine is going to look like after 48 hours of bathing in the heat of your instant Pot. You can see the CO2 bubbles still at the top. In fact, if you tap the bottle, you’re going to be able to see the CO2 bubbles all around the bottle form.
Place the bottle in an area that doesn’t have a ton of light. I placed mine behind my Instant Pot underneath my cabinets. It’s dark, and a great room temperature for the wine magic to happen.
You Gotta Have Patience for your Instant Pot Wine
Now comes the waiting game. Yes, I know. You want to go ahead and start drinking it and show it off to your friends about what you created, but you can’t. You need more time.
TYPICALLY, you can wait up to a month to drink it to be at a fabulous spot. However, you can drink it way before then. I found that after 8 days of being int he bottle, I really didn’t notice the fizziness anymore. Just a tiny tiny bit.
So I wanted to put it to the test: I let Stephen and Ellie try it. They were TOTALLY pleasantly surprised! The nose of the wine has hints of chocolate and dark cherries, and it had a very palatable wine taste. Stephen said he could go ahead and drink the whole bottle, and Ellie stated that she might want to give it an extra day or two to calm down the CO2. She still tasted a tad bit of it in there, but she rather enjoyed it!
As I was pouring the wine, I didn’t see any bubbling action happening as I previous did in inspecting the different stages of the wine.
There was just a bubble or two from the pouring action into the glass. So I poured the wine back in….waited 2 days, and was happy with the outcome!
Look mom! No bubbles! I happily drank a glass of it before the other two could enjoy it with me because I was just too excited. LOL! Yasssss! Don’t judge me, I needed some alone wine time with my first ever batch of wine.
I seriously didn’t think this was going to work at all. I was expecting a failure, but I was patient and played that annoying waiting game. Honestly, it was so much better than some of those cheap bottles of wine that I’ve bought. Dare I say, even better than the 2 buck Chuck from Trader Joe’s!
Look at that beautiful color that formed form the Grape Juice! So fierce and fabulous.
Guess what? You can do this with almost ANY TYPE OF GRAPE JUICE to create different flavor profiles. So with the different juice varieties out there, you’ll be basically making a yummy wine cooler!
Cheers to you, Instant pot in helping me make some Instant Pot wine! You’re really are worth every penny that I’ve spent on it! You can make gifts for almost everyone you want to ass a gift.
Now, I need to go hit up some sales at my grocery stores to buy more juice!
Pin the Instant Pot Wine on Pinterest!
