Beautyberry Wine

[Stressbaby]

A little reading sheds some light on the color issue. This link indicates that the jelly undergoes the same color transformation that my wine did...to what they describe as a garnet color. Batch #2 has that color I would say.

I've seen descriptions of the taste of the fruit range from earthy to sharp and tart to elderberry-like. To me it is mildly minty and slightly sweet but mostly unremarkable. However, it is widely said to make good jelly and perhaps where there is good jelly there may be found good wine.

We popped open the first bottle from batch #1. Pic below. It is drinkable. Keller describes astringency which I don't have at all. Faintly minty and a little earthy. Batch #2 had some banana and grape concentrate for body, it will be interesting to compare the two.

 

[wineon4]

Sure looks nice, very nicely staged for the photo good job

 

[Stressbaby]

Thanks wineon4.

A strange thing happened...we didn't finish the bottle (we try not to finish bottles on Monday night) and I put it in the fridge. This morning it is cloudy as can be. I looked back at my notes and this wine was cold stabilized for 2 weeks at ~37F.

Any thoughts on why it is cloudy?

 

[winetortoise]

My first beautyberry wine appeared with this color. It is a tad sweet, notably dry, and quite tangy. The flavor is musky and with a musky smell, but it also smells like bubblegum as it warms up. There is some okay sour taste as well, but it mellows as time goes by. I'll make a mostly similar recipe next year, when Spring starts here in Florida.

 

[Flouridern]

Wine time

I am a wine making rookie. What recipe did you follow ? My son attempted to make beauty berry jelly but made an awesome syrup instead. Thx Floyd

My first beautyberry wine appeared with this color. It is a tad sweet, notably dry, and quite tangy. The flavor is musky and with a musky smell, but it also smells like bubblegum as it warms up. There is some okay sour taste as well, but it mellows as time goes by. I'll make a mostly similar recipe next year, when Spring starts here in Florida.[/QUOTE]

 

[winetortoise]

I am a wine making rookie. What recipe did you follow ? My son attempted to make beauty berry jelly but made an awesome syrup instead.

On my first attempt to make jam it also resulted with syrup. I don't really know how to make jelly, I'm guessing you add pectin or gelatin. Just use less sugar, and a long cook time but at a very low heat. Heat seems to turn them to syrup with the presence of sugar. I think it's because they are so soft and small amd the interior is very mushy.

For the wine, I viscerated the berries and then added them to the stock pot, and covered the mush with water. I slowly heated this to a gentle simmer to bring out and preserve the flavors. The reason I "juiced" it this way is to increase the flavor and bring the color out more, although it seems to gain color whether you cook it or not. Trust me though if you simmer the mush first the flavor is much better. This juice itself is not bad, although not very sweet so I mix in a little other juices for that purpose.

I then add additional water to the recipe, at least as much water as I started with to cover the mush. With other wines people avoid watering down the juice, however this wine will end up with a very strong, offensive flavor if you only ferment with enough water to fully saturate. For sugar, thats all up to the individual, depending on how high you want the alcohol content. Admittedly I go for alc. percentage on the higher range. For my taste, I like this wine to be somewhat dry but also a little sweet. So in that regard I add extra sugar. I add this sugar to the pot after tasting the beautyberry juice to make sure it has the right proportions. It tastes very strong at that point, which shows you first hand that you will need to add additional water to the volume. I never weighed the berries, so I cannot provide a formula. I simply start with a large amount and after saturating and heating I go from there by taste. From there you can consider the volume of wine you want based on the amount of juice you have, and if you have more berries you can increase the amount of wine produced by adding more to the pot. The color appears very deep pink/purple at first, but during fermentation it becomes lighter, like in the picture.

 

[winetortoise]

Thanks wineon4.

A strange thing happened...we didn't finish the bottle (we try not to finish bottles on Monday night) and I put it in the fridge. This morning it is cloudy as can be. I looked back at my notes and this wine was cold stabilized for 2 weeks at ~37F.

Any thoughts on why it is cloudy?

Was it completely dry? It seems unreasonable that yeast could have started reproducing again. Maybe it was beginning the vinegarization process. As Im sure you know, one tiny unnoticed fruit fly can do the trick. But I've also noticed that vinegar can happen without a fly getting involved, as though a vinegar culture was sneaked into it beforehand. Anyway, time would tell if vinegar is the culprit. It is quite cloudy while its undergoing becoming vinegar.