Flavor packing a Blackberry wine

[myakkagldwngr]

I've got a five gallon batch of blackberry sitting now. A couple weeks ago I added a small flavor pack using 2 cans of Oregon blackberrys in light syrup. I also added a couple cups of sugar. It did go back to fermenting.
Now it has set at least a week with out bubbling so I piped off just a sip this morning and liked it, but decided to add another couple cans of berry syrup.
To make room, I racked off almost 1 3/4 750ml bottles and then used the syrup to top it off.
The 3/4 bottle, well I went ahead and sampled it and though the alcohol bite is pretty prevelant, it wasn't bad. Still needed the extra blackberry flavoring though.
My question is when sweetening a berry wine like this, how many times will you add to it, and how much sugar each time. I added two cups to the two 15 oz cans of berries and after heating it, strained out all the berry material.
Do you just go by taste till you like it?

 

[Wade E]

1st of all you have to use sulfites and sorbate to prevent it from fermenting all over again and thats your problem, it should not have fermented again. That said I add a flavor pack and sugar once and do it to taste which will be way different with each wine.

 

[B-well4200]

You should add sorbate before sweetening it. I love making blackberry wine. I have never used a flavor pack or added cans of blackberries after I fermented it,I have used a sugar syrup. What I have noticed with my blackberry wines is that the blackberry taste really comes out after I sweeten it. I'm not sure if that helps you at all but my blackberry wine really did not have alot of blackberry taste until after I added the sugar syrup.

 

[Tom]

There is no set rule on adding f-pac's. Winemaking is making wine to YOUR taste.
Add f-pac to your taste.
Add sweetness to your taste.
We cant help as to how much flavor to add because we cant taste it. Same goes for backsweetening.

 

[myakkagldwngr]

Thanks for the replies and advice. I've still got a way to go to get over the first learning curve with this new hobby.
All I know is, at least you can drink the experiments.

 

[smurfe]

As said, you have to stabilize first. When you added the additional sugar it started fermenting again and just raised the alcohol and probably didn't add much of anything to the sweetness. This will continue until you stabilize. You won't stabilize a sweetness level to you make the wine still with sorbate and sulfite.

 

[myakkagldwngr]

To make room I took almost two bottles out and stuck them in the fridg. Well, I've realized now that I've got to find more berries next year! I like it enough that I wish I had made ten gallons instead of five, but I picked all the berries in my yard over a period of several days.
Next year,,, next year.

 

[St Allie]

Another option could be to use a high fruit based cordial/syrup from the supermarket to sweeten with.

It won't matter if it has preservatives in it, as you don't want it to ferment anyway.

Allie