Elderberry Wine Anyone?

[ffemt128]

Well since I had 57 lbs of berries as of Fridayand an empty 3 gallon carboy, I decided to start a 3 gallon batch of Elderberry wine. Below is the recipe I used. It's kind of a hodge podge of different recipes. Anyway

11 lbs of previously frozen fresh elderberries steamed to produce 1.5+ gallons of juice.
1 can each of Welches Red and White grape juice concentrate.
40 grams acid blend to get must to .65%
2 tsp pectic enzyme (will add 12 hours after campden tablets)
3 campden tablets
1/2 tsp tannin
75 oz of sugar to bring sg to 1.085
water to 3 gallons.


Lavin 1116yeast

Everything was mixed Friday early afternnoon. Pectic enzyme wasadded Friday evening. Saturday morning I pitched yeast with SG at 1.085 and added energizer.


SGearly Sunday evening was 1.014.


I will transfer to carboy either tonight or tomorrow night time permitting.


Oh, on a side note I picked another almost 5 lbs of berries Saturday morning.

 

[Wade E]

Sounds like a winner there!

 

[Cracked Cork]

Following a recipe is nice, but, you should understand the reason behind each ingredient. In this recipe you are adding tannin to an elderberry wine. Elderberries are high in tannin. One way to knock down some of those tannins is to steam them, but in the recipe you just added them back so the steaming isnt going to have a lot of benefit? Also, we usually only get a gallon of steamed juice from 10 pounds of elderberries, pushing it past that might give you more of a cooked taste.

I got a couple of recipes on my website below just for elderberries that work pretty good.

Crackedcork

 

[Brewgrrrl]

I am so jealous - I can't find ANY elderberries growing wild in my area, so I'm left with the concentrates. Wah.

 

[Wade E]

I didnt even notice the tannin in there and cracked cork is right. If you ever dont steam them and just throw them in there then extract them out after no more then 4 days or your wine will get to tannic.