Blackberry or Blueberry Port

[grapeman]

Wade was talking about fractional crystalization or freezing alcohol to boost it. Joeswine is talking about concentrating orange juice- totally legal and acceptable. And yes, I am Appleman over at FVW - Co-Admin over there.

 

[ckassotis]

Interesting. So to be sure I understand...

So freezing say, some blackberry juice and using this method to create a high-sugar high-alcohol wine is completely okay. I guess I see parallels here to just using concentrate that is made in more conventional ways.

So the other method is to freeze the alcohol itself, which concentrates both the flavors, sugars, and alcohol? I guess I don't see the fun in that anyway, why not just make it strong to begin with?

 

[grapeman]

You can make it strong until the yeast dies off from the alcohol poisoning. You are not considered *******ing so it is legal. Go make some port!

 

[ckassotis]

Marvelous. Once the yeast die off, you can just fortify it anyway from there! I picked up some Everclear 190, and have some Blackberry brandy. My brother is picking up some aguardente in Italy, which is what they use in Porto, but it (and brandy) are relatively low abv compared to Everclear. Will have to taste test them all when it comes time to decide!

 

[Wade E]

The only good Black berry brandy I know is polish and is called something like Jeznowka (spelling?) The other ones to my knowledge are pretty nasty!
As far as the nutrient gose put that in right in the beginning. The energizer should be stepped while fermenting like 1/3rd up front in primary, 1/3rd when the yeast has eaten about 1/3rd of the sugar and the last 3rd when the yeast has eaten about 2/3rds of the sugar. Thsat will keep the yeast the happiest and get it further then dumping it all in at the beginning.

 

[Turock]

An interesting side-note to the discussion of taking juice, freezing it, and taking off the concentrated juice and leaving the water behind----this is the way to make "fake" ice wine. I never tried it because you need quite a bit of freezer space. You could use 2 liter pop bottles. I'd be interested to hear how wine would turn out from this process---then I might HAVE to get some freezer space to try it. I'll bet it would be top shelf wine!!

 

[ckassotis]

Hmm.. interesting thoughts. I'll have to keep an eye out for that, Wade!

Thanks for the nutrient/energizer info as well. I think I added a bit too much sugar up front, so I went with a yeast starter last night, will see how it looks when I get home today. Hopefully I'll walk into a wonderful yeasty smell.

@ Turock. I wonder also at how that compares with the "real way" of letting the fruit freeze and then crushing from there. Might be an interesting experiment! Perhaps I'll buy some vignoles this season and give that a shot with them.

So, I do have some extra fruit for an f-pac. What are your thoughts on the best way to go about this. Try to mash them up as well as I can, get the most juice of of the berries as possible (currently frozen, which should help I think), and then put it on the stove to concentrate it a bit before adding? I'm still a ways away from this, but thought I'd get your thoughts on it.

Thanks as always!

 

[Midwest Vintner]

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

No, what Joe seems to be talking about is concentrating juice to make a stronger tasting wine. The other thing is to concentrate alcohol, which is illegal.

 

[ckassotis]

Yep, grapeman explained that above a bit. Wasn't realizing the distinction between them at the time.

How are things going at your winery? I stopped by there just after you opened, when I was bringing some friends for their first Hermann visit. Hopefully you guys are doing well? Selling lots and making new, fun stuff?

 

[joeswine]

Extracting the concentrate

Thanks for the help in clarifying that but the idea it is to extract the pure juice and leave behind the water, testing about freezing your fruit and then making your fpac' same idea although that's not the way I do it it can be done that way thanks for the clarity

 

[ckassotis]

Looking good tonight! Yeast are happily chowing down, and the SG is dropping. The smell is quite good, rich blackberry. Can't quite smell the malt right now, but I think the yeast smell is masking that a bit.

The other thing I noticed tonight was that the color has already darkened considerably, to what looks like a deep purple. So far so good!

 

[ckassotis]

Just was reading this other thread:

http://www.winemakingtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15732

Any thoughts on using the everclear vs. something else? I was intending to use everclear, but this thread makes it sound like that isn't the best bet after all.

 

[WVMountaineerJack]

When we make ours, we get all the flavor from our fruit that we need, then backsweeten and add everclear. We use everclear because it has the least water in the bottle. You may get some more flavor from brandy but you are adding a lot more water with brandy than you would with everclear. If your wine is a little weak on flavor the brandy might be your best bet, if you did a good job with the base wine you shouldnt need it. CC

 

[ckassotis]

So, the port has a bit of an off-odor tonight. I can't quite place what it smells like. Any likely contenders? The fermentation is about done, down to 1.004. So there is still a bit that could ferment, but the abv has to be at least 15% by now. Could do the calculation, but started at 1.130. The pressing bag was removed yesterday. Could be that the yeast have died, and they are contributing to the off-smell. I racked it into a new container through a filter bag to remove any additional bits that had escaped the first bag, but wasn't sure what to do from here. Thoughts?

 

[Wade E]

Sounds like everything went good. I woudnt be worried unless you were smelling a strong sulfur smell. There are so many different smells a fermentaion will give off and most are really indescribable!

 

[ckassotis]

Thanks, Wade. I was getting a bit nervous, hah.

Would you recommend just sulfiting and stabilizing then, and moving forward with the sweetening and fortifying?

 

[ckassotis]

So after doing a bit of reading, I think it might be described as a bit of a sourish smell. I know I have pH and TA written down at home, but I read that this could be due to having too high acid in a wine. I think I recall it being a bit higher than I normally like, but I figured I would be meeting that high acidity with high abv and sugar at the end.

So let's assume that is the case. Too late to add a bit of calcium carbonate? Will it go away over time once I fortify and sweeten? I can post more concrete values later, but it sounds like that could be the issue.

 

[ckassotis]

Any input on this? Possible causes for the sourish smell/taste?

I tried some calcium carbonate last night, but not sure what I should have been expecting. It certainly lowered the acidity, but not sure if it was supposed to correct the sourness or if only time will do that.

Alternatively, I could sweeten, and perhaps the sweet in combination would solve the issue? Not really sure where to go from here. Seems like not adding all that water up front that JK calls for might have messed me up a bit. Since I wasn't, I should have been correcting for factors that probably don't need correcting in his recipe.

At any rate, would appreciate some input on this.

 

[woodlan]

greyday ; that is the way I do it..