Blackberry or Blueberry Port

[Turock]

Using 20# for 2 gallons will be very good flavor and sounds like a good plan. I hate thin wines and always try to get fruit wine makers to stop using water and go all fruit. A big,chewy blackberry wine is almost like eating a blackberry pie---no wine flavor--big blackberry flavor. I would think a port made that way would be fabulous. As you go along with your plan, hope you'll let us know the result.

 

[Wade E]

Not to be a stickler but like I said before the act of freezing anything after alc has been done no matter what you call to extract a higher alc is a form of distillation and is illegal so please do not discuss it on this forum. I am not going to delete this but from now on please either email each other about this act or take it to a forum for distillation where they can deal with the consequences of this.

 

[ckassotis]

Interesting. Knew nothing about it, prior to this thread. There are some strange laws regarding wine making. I was told by a winemaker here that now that he has a commercial winery, they mandate that he uses tartaric acid alone rather than a blend or any other type to modify acid levels, even in fruit wines where a blend would be more appropriate. Odd.

At any rate, going to go forward with 8 lbs per gallon I think, which seems to be in line with what other people are doing, and reserve 4 pounds for back-sweetening/flavor or for an f-pac, however I decide to do that.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

When using that amount of blackberries you are going to probably have a high acid level at the end, you can balance it with sugar but also have to balance the alchohol with the acid and sugar. We have had good luck just stirring in the sugar, using a drill stirrer if needed after degassing and then adding everclear so we dont dilute the blackberry taste. Also, the extra light dried malt extract is an excellent addition for body and taste. One thing to consider when making your own F-pac is you can make your wine cloudy again by adding fresh juice or even after cooking it so adding pectinase before you add it to your wine and before fining helps alot.


Crackedcork

 

[Turock]

Yes, CK that was something I failed to mention but CrackedCork reminded me. When you begin to reduce water additions , your acids are going to be higher. It's a good plan to use a PH meter and adjust your acid at the primary so that you don't end up with a flawed wine that you're now going to use for the port. Get the PH around 3.3-3.4 Use calcium carbonate.

8# will be very good. Check your PH.

Wade--Ok, will do.

 

[ckassotis]

Thanks for the input!

I will keep my eye on TA and pH readings from the start so that I can adjust them if I need to before it sits for long lengths of time.

I will certainly try my best to balance with the sugar and alcohol, but having a balanced wine is a pretty crucial point. Thanks for the tip!

Ah, thanks for the fpac tip also. Would you ferment, then stabilize, then f-pac, then fortify and then sweeten? I was between the f-pac idea or just juicing them and using them to back-sweeten after fortifying it. Or perhaps I am misunderstanding the whole f-pac idea.

I have a handle on some 190 proof Everclear, so I will use that to fortify, if nothing else. I have a brother in Europe right now, so I have him checking to see if he can find any aguardente. That would be fun to use. However, I did read something about the need in a fruit port of everclear, due to the already somewhat diluted flavors. If nothing else, I'll use the 190 proof EC for this and use aguardente to try some grape port in the future, since it has a considerably lower abv. Would be fun to use though, for sure.

 

[mainecr]

I started blueberry port in August of 2009.
Using JK's recipe for starters and made an F-back from the juice of canned blueberries. Fortified to 18% using brandy, and tucked away for 2 years. Good thing I had lot's of other wine!
My wife has put it on the no give away list...first time anything has been listed on the no give away list.
We first opened a bottle to celebrate my Dad's 80th bd. It's really good! Still have 10 bottles left...yummy!

Just finished the last bottle of 2008 pear. Bummer!

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

My other recomendation to you that I forgot to add is to get a freakin 3 gallon carboy and make 3 gallons and not fool around with 2 gallons. This is not one of those wines you start to drink a week after you bottle it so by the time its really good and ready you are going to run out of it and kick yourself in the rear for not going ahead and committing to making a full batch. Its also a good excuse to get a couple of carboys, never pass up an excuse to get more carboys. I broke one, got 2 to replace it, I got 3 extra carboy crates and was allowed to fill them, I put a lot of wine in carboys to age for alonger time and got to get more carboys, any excuse you can use get yourself some real carboys and skip the gallon batches, especially something like a port that is going to take a lot of work anyway.

Crackedcork

 

[Wade E]

I truly hope you are happy with this but Im telling yopu from experience when you get to higher abv you will want a stronger fruit flavor then 8lbs per gallon! In 3 years I bet I will be able to say "I told you so!

 

[ckassotis]

Wade, are you not the admin Wade from the FineVineWines forums? That blackberry port recipe that Jobe made with Waldo, and I think that you tried and seemed to think was quite good used the 8# per gallon. I guess I just wonder about using more than 8#. The JK recipes normally seem to be pretty spot on, and his typical fruit wines use 4-5ish/gal.

Totally respect your opinion, just never seen a fruit wine call for more than 8, and only seen 8 for a port-style. Hrm.

@ Cracked, I will consider it, but the cost of berries is the prohibitive part for me at the moment. I can get them at Sam's Club for a reasonable price, but being a poor graduate student, I'm stretching my budget going with 20#! Haha. Perhaps I can stretch it though, seeing how I should have a refund check coming, if all goes well. We'll see!

 

[ckassotis]

In fact, Waldo posted a blueberry port recipe in that same thread that only called for 6#. Am I misunderstanding something?

 

[ckassotis]

So i was mistakenly under the impression that the f-pac addition was adding more fruit back to extract flavor. After reading Tom's post, I realized that it instead was the simmering of fruit into juice and then straining, then adding that back to the carboy. I was thinking they were two different things. Guess that makes the decision between the two a bit easier! Haha.

 

[Wade E]

The recipe that Waldo posted was modified on the second batch as they both (Jobe&Waldo) decided it needed more fruit. The second batch was totally awesome and I still have second bottle of Jobes in my cellar! That being said if you make a good Fpac it will resolve the problem but in doing so you will diluting the abv down on wine where you are trying to achieve a higher alc so you are stepping backwards. I usually do the fpac but with a port I just use more to begin with. Its your wine so do what you want though.

 

[Turock]

Just be careful not to get it too dilute by adding water to get to the 3 gallons. The result will be too dilute. When we make blackberry wine, we are using 10-12 pounds of fruit per gallon--no water. The result is a big, chewy wine. I would think this is what you'd want in a port because you want high flavor.

Everclear is a good idea--it's what a lot of people use to get the abv up where it's needed.

 

[ckassotis]

Yeah, I understand. Please don't think I'm trying to be disagreeable, just trying to understand where you're coming from and how to possibly modify what I was planning. Absolutely always looking for advice and critiques!

So my plan #2 was for 8# per gallon, for 16# total for 2 gallons. Then I was plotting an f-pac of 4#, to equal roughly 10# per gallon. I do realize that that would be diluting the alcohol, but it should enhance everything else, right? Is there any problem with that? Let's assume I would be fortifying anyway, (which with a port, I would be). Wouldn't I just need a bit more alcohol? I suppose that that in itself would dilute the flavors a bit, if I needed to add more alcohol. Though, with 190 proof Everclear, I can't imagine that the difference would be that great. Any thoughts?

So you said you typically skip the f-pac for a port? I recall Jobe doing some testing on that, and he seemed to think that it was the best way to sweeten it back up after the fact. I guess this is due to some of the flavors burning off during fermentation?

So if Turock uses 10-12# per gallon with no water, I guess it seems like 8# would be almost entirely no water. Unless I'm misunderstanding. In fact it seems like if I followed the recipe, I would be ending up with more than what they claim if I added that much water to the juice that Turock suggests I will have. Hrm.

So, I could do a few things. I could try and up the berries a bit, maybe to 10#, with another 2#/gal for f-pac. I could add them all at once, but Jobe's posts made it sound like you really needed to add some juice back to give it a rich flavor. I could alternatively try and just increase to 3-gal, like was mentioned. Either one will hurt my bank account a bit, but sacrificing the quality of a wine that will be a significant investment of time,etc. just isn't worth it. So, any thoughts on all that?

 

[Wade E]

The less fruit you use the more water youll need to achieve your desired amount of wine so 8 lbs will require more water then using say 10 or 12. The fpac will work fine, another optionto add flavor later is to use something like Marcopolo concentrate which is all natural and is a great product for exactly this!

 

[ckassotis]

Started today! Got a bit over 20 pounds of fruit, and only added a little bit of water through my sugar addition. Sitting at ~2 gallons, hard to tell exactly with the straining bag in the mix. Have the malt and Campden in, will add pectic enzyme in the morning as the recipe suggests, and then proceed with a yeast starter tomorrow night and get it added to the must. Smells quite good!

 

[Wade E]

Should be a damned good one! Keep us up to date on this. Are you using energizer and or nutrient? Blueberry naturally contains benzoate so I recommend using both when doing Blueberry or Cranberry.

 

[joeswine]

Freezing the juice

ACTUALLY ITS THE RIGHT CONCEPT,AS I POST SOMEWAYS BACK, SOMEWHERE IN TIME,IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY,TO ACHIEVE A REAL CONCENTRATED FLAVOR,EXAMPLE,TAKE A CONTAINER OF FROZEN ORANGE JUICE,FREEZE IT,TAKE IT OUT,TURN IT UPSIDE DOWN ,LET IT DEFROST IN A CONTAINER THAT IS A LITTLE LARGER THAN THE JUICE CONTAINER,WATCH IT DEFROST,THE FIRST TO DRIP OUT IS THE PURE CONCENTRATE LEAVING BEHIND THE ICE>>>PURE CONCENTRATE,VERY SIMILAR TO THOSE OF YOU WHO FREEZE YOUR FRUIT BEFORE PROCESSING,CONCENTRATING THE JUICE AND DEHYDRATING OUT THE WATER.

 

[ckassotis]

I feel fairly confident that this is the thing Wade said was illegal and not to post about. Haha.

I was planning to use energizer and nutrient - I didn't know why though! Haha. Thanks for the tip. Do you add the energizer at the same time that you add your yeast?