Hi, I recently ran across a recipe to make prison wine using oranges as the key ingredient. Seeing this as an excellent opportunity to take advantage of my universities huge orange groves i started two gallon bags of it. The problem is that they aren't perfectly airtight and havent been balloning up like the recipe described. I was wondering if there will still be enough fermentation to yield a worth wile amount of alcohol or if the oxygen that has been getting into the bags means that the project is a wash. Any ideas? Thanks.

Now that brings back memories. I have seen some of the jail wine. The reason they make wine from oranges is many southwest jails give one orange per meal to the inmates. Oranges are cheap in the southwest. They hide the oranges and take them back to their cells. Sugar is also readily available on every table. Since containers are so difficult to obtain they use anything they can get their hands on for a container. Old soap containers, plastic bags from nurses stations etc. You can imagine the type of plastic bags they are using.

Wine has to have oxygen to ferment. Basically an open container. Once wine ferments out you can close off the air, allowing just a little to escape.

BTW. I was an employee, not a prisoner.

If you want to experiment as you enter the wine making hobby I would get a gallon carboy. (buy wine in a gallon glass carboy and drink the wine) Then for about a $1 buy an airlock. The airlock allows the bubbles to escape and keeps air from the wine.

The best way to do a real good job on your first try is to measure the specific gravity with a hydrometer and add sugar until the you get about 1.095 SG. The best way to get it started is to use some wine yeast. You can get a packet of wine yeast for about $1

Years ago I made some pretty decent drinkable orange wine just as an experiment.