Blackberry juice concentrate from homewinery.com

[roger80465]

It's interesting that you can pay $95 for a blackberry pail from Walkers or $31.95 for blackberry concentrate from Homewinery.

It's nice that they put the instructions on the website, including how much sugar to add to get your target dryness:
http://www.homewinery.com/concentrate.pdf

Haven't made any wine from concentrate yet but that's a tempting price.

I haven't made the blackberry but have made the elderberry and it's quite good. Still young but really nice. If the rest of the concentrates are like the elderberry, they are a real bargain.

 

[dralarms]

It's interesting that you can pay $95 for a blackberry pail from Walkers or $31.95 for blackberry concentrate from Homewinery.

It's nice that they put the instructions on the website, including how much sugar to add to get your target dryness:
http://www.homewinery.com/concentrate.pdf

Haven't made any wine from concentrate yet but that's a tempting price.

Yea, uh throw those instructions away, add your juice, add your water, add the acid, add sugar to the proper sg or brix then add the yeast. My brother insists on using those instructions and right now is sitting on a clear concord finished at 1.070. Pancake syrup with a kick.

 

[StartingLateAt49yo]

Yea, uh throw those instructions away, add your juice, add your water, add the acid, add sugar to the proper sg or brix then add the yeast. My brother insists on using those instructions and right now is sitting on a clear concord finished at 1.070. Pancake syrup with a kick.

Definitely agree. Don't just dump in sugar from recipe. Use the hydrometer. It's not hard and it's fun.

You can always back sweeten.

Add your juice, water (3 to 5 gallons depending on your taste and the fruit, probably 4-5 for blackberry and Blueberry, 3-4 for apricot), add acid, then take your base SG reading with hydrometer. Write it down in your log /notes. Add small amount of sugar, stop, take an SG reading. Add a little more sugar, take SG reading again. Continue a little at a time until you reach your desired starting SG. Prepare the yeast and add it.

(When you make your next batch, you will be able to start with a larger amount of sugar per reading).

The only thing the sugar pounds in the instructions are good for is to give you an idea if you have enough sugar in the house, or if you need to run to the store and restock.

Regarding cost: if you are comparing five gallons of Walkers unconcentrated to this, homewinery is actually $46.95 plus shipping for 5 gallons of Walkers unconcentrated juice. (31.95 for 3.4 gallons……. 31.95/3.4=9.3971…………. 9.39*5=46.95). Walkers shipping will be much higher.

See my post above or http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showpost.php?p=576524&postcount=137


Many do like Walkers though….

 

[dorfie]

last i had talked the the owner of homewinery, he was going to get a higher discount for shipping of the concentrates. it's still high, for me, but it's lower than walkers.
As i am in Minnesota on the far west side, i don't think it would be worth me paying the shipping for walkers, though i wish i could...
homewinery though i would pay for, only buying in groups though to make the shipping more economical. guess I'm cheap haha
I am thinking of doing the Blackberry, Watermelon, Cab Sauv, and possibly the elderberry if i don't get any fruit. Really looking forward to the watermelon!
i am thinking with the Cab that i would test the TA and only dilute to the level the get it around .6 or so. since the recipe requires sugar and acid i think it must be diluted some from full strength juice.

 

[lottolearn]

homewinery.com vs vintners

Good morning I have never tried the juice concentrates from Homewinery.com but I have used Vintners concentrates before. What are your thoughts on the two. Which do you think is better? Thank you.

 

[dralarms]

I like homewinery.com stuff better.

 

[Julie]

I have not used Vintners but I have used Homewinery fruit concentrates and they make a very good wine.

 

[ceeaton]

Good morning I have never tried the juice concentrates from Homewinery.com but I have used Vintners concentrates before. What are your thoughts on the two. Which do you think is better? Thank you.

I've used both. The Blackberry from Homewinery is pretty good, though not a year old yet. It doesn't have a lot of body in my opinion. I made a Blackberry and Raspberry Vintners last fall and added some red grape concentrate to increase the body, but they are still bulk aging. Guess I could give them a taste tonight when I get home. Getting within a couple weeks of me having to rack them and add some more kmeta.

By no means am I knocking the Howewinery concentrate, I just think I'd add something other than sugar to up the SG and add some body if I use their concentrate again. Also my LHBS carries the Vintners concentrates, so no shipping costs involved, which is nice.

Edit: I was wrong, made a Blueberry and Raspberry Vintners concentrate. Both had a 1 Litre Red Grape concentrate (60 something brix) added. The SG on the Raspberry was 1.074, so no rocket fuel here. Right now it is dry (no sorbate or sweetner yet) and it is quite drinkable, but I can tell it will be better if I backsweeten a bit. Nice nose and lot's of raspberry flavor. Medium body.

 

[Jericurl]

I've used both and been happy with both.

What are you thinking of making?

 

[dcbrown73]

I absolutely love Blackberry since my grandmother made blackberry cobbler when I was a kid. I'm going to have to try this Eldberry wine. How exactly do you deal with making 5 gallons of wine when I only have three and five gallon carboys? (I have no room for more sizes until I purchase another home!)

 

[VinoKS]

I have been using their concentrates quite a bit in the past year, since I got turned on to it by reading WMT. I have made blackberry, watermelon, strawberry and red raspberry. I also made two batches of sweet cherry, back flavored with a pint of tart cherry concentrate...amazingly good and friends ran me out quickly, so I had to make a second one. I have blueberry and pear concentrate sitting in the freezer waiting to be made.

I have just been making 3 gallon batches, seeing what I like, then I will make 6 gallon batches of those. I have been bottling in 375 ml split bottles since these have been 3 gallon batches. I have used a single half-gallon of concentrate for each 3 gallon batch. I have been fermenting on 3 pints and back flavoring with the leftover pint. It has worked out very well this way. My wife likes sweet wine, so I have the luxury of using the reserved pint to flavor and sweeten with. I would use it all, if I wanted it finished dry. I have been very happy with their fruit concentrates.

 

[Julie]

@VinoKS, how is the watermelon? I keep looking at it but so far haven't bought it.

 

[VinoKS]

It turned out nicely. I added a pint of pure watermelon juice to it in addition to the reserved pint of concentrate to back flavor with. It's about 10 months old now and is really good. That one, I make sure to drink cold. As it warms up to room temperature, I feel the alcohol overpowers the flavor a little bit, as watermelon is pretty delicate. It is really good cold

 

[FTC Wines]

I've made their ( Home Winery) Blackberry, Blueberry, Elderberry & Cab, love them all. But as I've said before I use 5 pints per 5 gals. If Cab it's all Cab, if it's one of the 3 mentioned fruits I use 4 pints is the fruit, say Blackberry & 1 pint of cab. It makes an awesome wine. I adjust the acid/ph accordingly,. I also some times add a pound of raisins to the Cab & Elderberry. Really kicks it it up! Roy

 

[lottolearn]

Thank you for the response. I will probably try both blackberry concentrates and see which one turns out better. I will let you know how it goes.

 

[StartingLateAt49yo]

I've used Homewinery not Vinters, very happy with it.

If you like peach schnapps then try their Apricot (make it sweet). I like dry reds in general, but some guests/friends like sweet so I tried this. Comes out very well and I drink it 2 ways: 1-Mix the finished Apricot wine with vodka (or gin if you like), shake with ice. Or second way-- just drink normally from bottle as a sweet wine.

Of course you could (not LOL) make your own vodka too but that's another story...

From my log:
○ I used 3 gallons of water and 48 oz of apricot concentrate, instead of 5gallons and 64 oz.p
○ Instead of adding 6 pounds of sugar, I added sugar until I got the SG to 1094.

○ 1040: SG reading after adding 3gallons water, but before adding sugar.
○ 1094: SG reading after adding 3gallons water, AND after adding sugar.

 

[user 32114]

I HAVE USED MOST EVERYTHING I GROW ON MY LAND, BUT I HAVE USED FROM HOMEWINERY, , ELDERBERRY, APPLE, STRAWBERRY, BLACKBERRY, SO FAR, AND IF WE HAVE A DRY YEAR LIKE LAST YEAR I'LL BE USING FROM THEM, QUITE A FEW QUARTS TO MAKE 5 GALLON OF FINISHED WINE, I TRIED A COUPLE DIFFERENT BRANDS THAT COME IN A NUMBER #10 CAN (OR GALLON CAN) THOSE TOOK 2 CANS JUST TO MAKE A DRINKABLE WINE, BUT A QUART FROM HOME WINERY I STERT IN A 6 GALLON CARBOR, THEN COME TIME I FILTER RACK WITH STEVE'S ALLINONEPUMP.COM INTO A 5 GALLON CARBOY ANY EXTER I HAVE CORKS THAT FIT DOWN TO A WINE BOTTLE AS AN EXTER CARBOY, an I must say homewinery.com makes wine that it's all but impossible to tell from fresh picked, so 1 fact is as long as they are in business they will be getting some of my money, everybody don't have extra land to grow their own fruits an barriers, an muscadine like I do, I have 19 acers just for growing differ things, but what I don't grow I go straight to homewinery.com and the worse my health gets the more I'll be going to homewinery.com, and of course Steve's allinonewinepump.com so no more lifting heavy carboys,,
Richard::

 

[dcbrown73]

I had asked earlier, but didn't get a response so I want to try this again.

These homewinery.com juice concentrates seem to come for 5 gallon batches. I only have three gallon and six gallon carboys. How exactly do you handle this while protecting against too much head space?

I really don't have room for more carboys in more sizes. The juice pack seems to be around $30 and I really don't want to buy two just so I can use 20% of the second one. I suppose I could make a six and a three gallon and lose 20% of the juice, but I would rather limit it to just six gallons. (again, carboy issues and I would prefer to use the others for other types of wine)

 

[sour_grapes]

@dcbrown73 , you may not have gotten any response before because you initially said

How exactly do you deal with making 5 gallons of wine when I only have three and five gallon carboys?

Now that we know you have 6, there aren't any great solutions. One is to plan on adding 1 gallon's worth of marbles to your carboy. The other thing that comes to mind, which is what I would do, is to add a gallon's worth or more of another juice (at the right brix). Something that you think would go well with blackberry, like cherry or apple.

 

[cintipam]

Also, homewinery has some 1 qt containers available, but you need to email and ask them what is in stock.

Personally, I mostly use them by combining 1 concentrate with one juice bucket of the same type. I add more fluid by assorted fruit juices (only 4 gallons worth tho to give me a chance to prefix watery juice buckets which does occasionally happen) which add some back notes of fruit. I also add actual fruit from my yard. By the time I'm totally done (meaning approx 1 yr later) I wind up with between 11-12 gallons of very tasty wine.

Since that works out so well for me I bet you could use 1 concentrate, use fruit juice instead of water plus add a couple actual juice drink concentrates to pump it up a bit. Should be able to get 6 gallons easy that way.

OR, just add water and only make 4 gallons. It's easy to get a one gallon4/liter jug by buying Carlo Rossi wine in a type that should work to top ups for you. If you buy 2 jugs you've solved your problem longterm by using a 3 gallon and (2) one gallons. Gives you a chance to experiment too.

Pam in cinti