Natural flavors for blueberry wine

[kywine3202p]

I am starting a few fruit wines this year - one of them is blueberry, which I'm making 3 gallons of it. I'm making the blueberry out of a concentration I got at my local wine supply and after reading the instructions, they recommend putting a natural flavor in to wine before you bottle it. Is there a specific "blueberry wine flavor" or can I get it at the grocery store? I'm also making peach, strawberry, cherry and watermelon. Should I get natural flavors for that also? Thanks!

 

[Tom]

Buy about 3-4# of fresh/frozen blueberry. Put in pot simmer breaking the fruit. Cool add. You MUST use sorbate and will take a few more rackings

 

[Boatboy24]

My gut tells me that if you have to add 'natural flavor', then your concentrate is not of very high quality, or they are instructing you to dilute it more than you should. Having said that, I used a blueberry concentrate to back sweeten my blueberry port (along with some merlot concentrate). But that was so I could sweeten, without diluting flavor.

So, I guess it would be helpful to know what style of wine you are making. Dry? Sweet? Fortified? Something really cool we've never even heard of?

 

[kywine3202p]

Hey Boatboy 24, the blueberry I'm making it Vintners Harvest. The directions said I can make 3 gallons or 5 gallons. I choose 3 gallon.

 

[brewbush]

Hey Boatboy 24, the blueberry I'm making it Vintners Harvest. The directions said I can make 3 gallons or 5 gallons. I choose 3 gallon.

I would personally stabilize the wine with Sorbate and do what Tom suggested. Make a F-pac with the blueberrys. I have used "natural" flavoring blueberry that you can buy from many online vendors. I only used a very small amount of the bottle to 5 gallons just to "turn up" the blueberry aroma and flavor. Glad I did, it still had a slight off, artificial taste. Go with fresh fruit and tell yourself you will need to let it clear/rack for a few more months.

 

[kywine3202p]

Thank you, brewbush!

 

[wineforfun]

I am working on a strawberry wine right now and made an fpac per Tom's instructions. I think that will be your best bet for some added blueberry flavor.

I forgot about the "cooling" part so hopefully that won't hurt things.

 

[knifemaker]

Brewers best had flavor extracts, and all of them were so bad, artificial, fake flavoring, that would absolutely ruin anything they were added to. They now have a line of natural extracts, so I bought a few to try. My advice is save your money and buy additional fruit so that you can end up with something that you can really enjoy. Dale.

 

[kywine3202p]

Thanks, all of you!