A Crash Course in Home Wine Making Equipment

Primary Fermenter
Get a big plastic bucket – with a hole in it. Why? So air can get out. Obviously.
Carboy
This is a glass container (typically five gallons). This is the standard container for home wine makers.
Plastic Buckets
You’re going to want to have some five to seven gallon buckets, for all sorts of wine related stuff like racking and mixing up all the stuff.
Airlocks
You need these, really. They let carbon dioxide out of the wine. They have a valve. For the non-mechanically savvy like myself that’s all you need to know.
Corks
Naturally Cut Corks – these are pretty much the real deal when it comes to corking wine, but they’re pretty expensive. If you’re new to home wine making these are too steep of an investment. At least they were for me.
Agglomerated Corks – these are awesome as long as you don’t care about the wine’s longevity. They don’t last too long, I wouldn’t waste my time with them.
Synthetic Corks – as the name makes pretty obvious, these are synthetic. What do we like about synthetic stuff? It won’t corrode. Durability is our friend.
Corker
I really can’t stress this enough – if you are new to making wine at home please do not waste your money buying one of these. When you go pro, then buy one. Until then rent them from a wine shop. They’re too expensive to justify early on.
Carboy and Bottle Brushes
Pretty self-explanatory, these are used to clean out bottles and your carboy. They’re real cheap too.
Hydrometer
It took me forever to figure out how to use this stupid thing – but, put simply, it measures the sugars in your wine by using ‘specific gravity’. Your own wine making kit will have information for you about the numbers you’re specifically looking for.
Siphoning Tubes
Another extremely self-explanatory device. They siphon your wine. Since you don’t want to try and pour a five gallon bucket of wine by yourself. Use a siphon.