Blackberry Questions

[K&GB]

I'm starting a blackberry wine for Gina from fresh fruit. I've compared five recipes, one from this site and four from Jack Keller's, and the differences raise some questions. Here's the basic recipe I selected for Medium Bodied Sweet Blackberry Wine.


4 lb. blackberries, 3 lb. granulated sugar, 1 gallon water, wine yeast and nutrient.Crush in bowl, transfer to primary,and add gallon of boiling water, mixing thoroughly. When lukewarn, add yeast, cover, and set in warmplace 4-5 days, stirring daily. Strainonto sugar and nutrient. Stir well to dissolve sugar and pour into secondary fermentation vessel of dark glass (or wrap clear glass with brown paper) to shoulder, and fit airlock. Ferment excess liquor in small bottle fitted with airlock. After all foaming has ceased (6-7 days), top up with excess liquor and place in cool (60-65 degrees F.) dark place for three months.




This recipe directs an unfamiliar fermentation sequence, ferment juice and water for 5 days, then add sugar and yeast nutrient. There's no mention of initial targets for specific gravity or acid content. Should I measure these before fermentation begins or after I've added the sugar?


The recipe doesn't call for pectic enzyme or K-meta, but others do. I know Jack Keller doesn't call for an initial campden tablet when using boiling water and some of his ingredients are implied. Since other recipes call for 1 campden tablet and 1/2 tsp of pectic enzyme, I plan to add these. Should I add them up front orlater?


Finally, all Jack Kellers recipes for blackberry call for avoiding light during secondary fermentation. Any idea why?


Thanks, Ken

 

[K&GB]

Here's a question I forgot. Compared to the "Dry" recipes, this "Sweet" recipe calls for 3/4 lb more sugar, but there's no mention of why. Since there's also no mention of back-sweetening, I assume the author expects residual sugar after secondary fermentation is complete. But there's also no recommendation for a specific type of yeast. This could pose a problem as I used EC-118 yeast (only thing I had), which tolerates high alcohol.


Since I've already pitched the yeast, should I plan to use less sugar and back-sweeten, or just proceed as directed?

 

[jobe05]

Ken, you have a lot of good questions, fortunately you also have a lot of great choices to make.

If you can, which it doesn't sound like you can, don't use the extra sugar, if you have, it will finish a little hotter than normal, but will get hidden if you back sweeten a bit when it is finished. As a personal choice, I don't use the Camden tablet in the beginning......., again, thats a personal choice. I believe the yeast I use will over power any wild yeast that may be present and active.

If, when you are finished with this wine, and it turns out to hot for your taste, you can buy a small box (pint) at the local store and squeeze the juice to help back sweeten, dilute and flavor.

Edit: Leaving you wine to age in a dark place insures that it doesn't get washed out by sun light or artificial light. You also want to make sure that you are able to maintain temperatures whithin a 5 degree range for long term storage of any wine, weather in bulk aging stages or bottled.

Edited by: jobe05

 

[K&GB]

Thanks Jobe.


I haven't added the sugar yet, so I'll probably use 3/4 lb less due tomy choice of yeast. By waiting to add the sugar (still don't understand why) until the must has already fermented 5 days, I don't see a way to estimate final ABV, but I'm sure it'll be at least 12%.


I won't add any K-meta until secondary fermentation is finished.


I assume it's safe to add pectic enzyme AFTER pitching the yeast. But I'll wait until tonight (24 hrs) so I can stir it in. After 12 hours, the yeast is already taking off and smells great.


I know light in general is bad for all wines, but I guess I'll take extra care to keep this one in the dark based on the instructions.

 

[jobe05]

Sorry Ken, I'm rushing around here today and didn't address all your questions. If you haven't added the sugar yet, I would add enough to bring the SG to around 1.085 if you are sweetening back, 1.080 of your not. Sweetening back will dilute your must some so I always take mine up a little to start. YES!!!! Add the sugar now! At the begining. I don't know why the recipe said to wait......... Dunno.

1.085 SG to .996 FG will give you a little under 12% ABV (@74 Degrees). For a blackberry, that a little hot (for my personal taste). But after back sweetening, which will dilute, you will be about 11% to 11.5%. Wade thought me the trick of using juice to back sweeten. Just boil it down to condense as much as possible, add sugar and let cool before adding to the wine. And only add a little at a time till you get the sweetness you want.

Because you have already been fermenting for a day, your gonna have to take your best guess as to SG. Do you have a vinometer?

 

[K&GB]

Thanks again Jobe. Not sure why I didn't think of that. Since I'm not using a low-alcohol yeast, there's no reason to wait 5 days to add the sugar. Duh!

I should have just mixed it in to begin with.


Yes, I have a vinometer, but I doubt its accuracy. I'll measure SGand target 1.085 when I mix in the sugar. I only pitched the yeast last night, so it shouldn't have changed much.


That leaves testing acid. These blackberries were tart, so it seems like they should have plenty of acid. But my tongue isn't calibrated, so I'll check anyway.

Thanks for the tip (Wade too) on back-sweetening. Sounds great!

 

[Tomy]

My Blackberry is at 12.5% alcohol and has a pretty good kick which makes the blackberry taste seem thin. It has been bulk ageing 2 months, and I hope to tame it down a bit with backsweeting using Blackberry juice. the next batch will be made with 11% alcohol, and I'm sure will taste more ballanced. Tomy

 

[K&GB]

I mixed in sugar today and got right to 1.084 SG. I stirred well but I'm not sure if you're supposed to wait awhile to take the reading. Acid measured 7.8 with accuvine (best I could estimate the color). I also got a PH of 3.63 with my digital PH meter, but I'm not confident of the accuracy. It's been a couple of months since I bought and calibrated it, and Ijust realized today that the storage and cleaning solutions I got aren't the 4 and 7 PH cal solutions I thought they were. Ah well. Another order from George. I read somewhere that Waldo thinks blackberry wine benefits from oak, so I threw in some small chips left over from a kit. Not sure what they are, but they're dark. Didn't use much, and I plan to discard it after fermentation. Hopefully this will add complexity.


My next concern is aging temp. I have two options. I can age it in a jug at indoor room temp, roughly 80 degrees throughout the summer, or I can bottle it and put it in my wine fridge. Either way, the coolest temps I can offer this wine will be between 70-80 degrees for probably the next month. Afterwards, I expectYuma weatherto beHOT, so my thermostat will stay on 80. If the wine takes a few months to clear, then back-sweeten and wait for it to clear again, I'll be well into the hottest part of summer. Might just leave it in the jug.

 

[whino-wino]

I mixed in sugar today and got right to 1.084 SG. I stirred well but I'm not sure if you're supposed to wait awhile to take the reading.

As long as you stirredthe sugar in well and dissolved it, there should be no reason to wait.

My next concern is aging temp. I have two options. I can age it in a jug at indoor room temp, roughly 80 degrees throughout the summer, or I can bottle it and put it in my wine fridge. Either way, the coolest temps I can offer this wine will be between 70-80 degrees for probably the next month. Afterwards, I expectYuma weatherto beHOT, so my thermostat will stay on 80. If the wine takes a few months to clear, then back-sweeten and wait for it to clear again, I'll be well into the hottest part of summer. Might just leave it in the jug.

Since you're dealing with such warm temps I would probably do what it sounds like you plan to do and bulk age for now. Make sure you give your wine a dose of K-Meta (1/16tsp/gallon or 1 campden tablet/gallon) before you bulk age. At high temps like this you are increasing your risk of "little nasties" getting into your wine and ruining it.

For some reason all of the bad bacteria seem to like the 80° - 90° range.


My grandfather made wine and to keep it cool when bulk aging (and also to make it less tempting to "sample" the product) they used to dig holes in the dirt floor of their root cellar and bury the carboy underground. I've never actually tried this, but the concept does sound intriguing. If I were dealing with the temps that you are (I'm in north-central Minnesota and freezing my

off), I might actually consider giving this a try if I could locate a spot where the dirt is cool.


Edit: I meant 1/16 tsp of K-meta/gallon, not 1/4. That would be a little much I think.Edited by: whino-wino

 

[s.arkvinomaker]

Great choice of berry's. I've made a couple of blackberry wines
simular to the recipe you are using. One thing I have noticed about
blackberry and rasberry wines is they are a dominate fruit. Very fruit
forward. I like to keep a bottle of Wine Expert's Red Grape concentrate
on hand to balance this wine out at the time of finishing and bottling. It
may have a little bite at the end. The Red Grape concentrate smoothes it
out without loosing the Blackberry flavor. You can also use it to back sweeten with. One more tip. You would be amazed how well it tastes
aged a year!

Blackberry wine was my Christmas wine for 2007. I keep
a portion of the wine to blend with other wines.

 

[K&GB]

I checked SG last night and was shocked. It was down to 1.004 so I strained into glass. I was also surprised at the light color. Based on the dark color of the juice when I squeezed (and my stained hands), I expected the must to be darker. I had the fruit in a strainer bag and gave it another good squeeze before the transfer. Anyway, the airlocks are perking away. It filled a 1-gal jug and a magnum wine bottle. I'll post a pic when I can.

 

[K&GB]

Here's a pic of the blackberry. Looks darker in the picture than it really is.

 

[Wade E]

Yummy!

 

[Guest]

K:
1. Oak adds hints of other flavors and aromas to your wine such as coconut, choclat, pecan, floral aromas and others.
If you're not satisfied with theblackberry flavor and aroma in your blackberry wine, adding oak and other tidbits will alter it somewhat.


2. Adding sugar after fermentation is complete will not alter the original abv value. It will merly sweeten the must up again (backsweetening)


3. As far as how much sugar you add to your wine, that's up to you and what you'd like it to taste like.
I personally, like between 1.050 and 1.010 sg. That's not very sweet, kinda like a nice merlot but I don't prefer really sweet wines.
What you do is take your unsweetened, fermented must and start adding sugar, tasting as you add, till you reach the sweetness level you're happy with.
I don't advise anyone to follow someone elses sweetness taste.


4. Your blackberry wine will start out biter to some degree, especially if you used berries with seeds intact. Even when you add the sugar it'll still be a bit bitterso don't be terribly concerned. Aging will smoothout the bitternessbut won't add sweetness. Take care to sweeten to your taste and don't over sweetensince you can't remove"too much sugar".


5. I agree with the above author in-so-far as burrying the primary. It will maintain a stable temp so long as it's in a constantlyshaded location and air bunged.
You can try sealing the jar and submerging it in the water if that's available. Again. Alow me to stress that you should only attempt that after all fermentation has stopped, your must has been degassed sufficiently and you've applied an air tight seal on the bottle.


Last. My blackberry's always start out a bit bitter as I said, but after 3 to 4months in the bottle, they're not onlydrinkable, they really tastegreat!

 

[Guest]

One last thing...
4 lbs of berries is not enough to make a really dark, really heavy blackberry or raspberry wine. In my experience, you need 7 to 10 lbsfor a one gallon recipe.

 

[K&GB]

Update on Blackberry.


Made a mistake on this one. Forgot to stabilize. On 19 Apl I wrote, "Racked and sweetened. Had racked previously, presumably onto compden and sorbate." Such much for that. Never assume, huh? It started to ferment again and finished with a somewhat higher alcohol content. On 21 June, I racked again, added K-sorbate, and back sweetened again with red grape concentrate. I bottled this one on Sep 1st after adding a bit more sugar syrup. Amazing taste! A bit of bitterness noted, but otherwise really good.

Can't wait to open the first bottle of this one!


Ken