Troubles with red berry wines...

[hounddawg]

Well said.

Thank you,
Richard

 

[Busch]

Howdy Ty; when you have this issue with so many types of wine I start to wonder about your YAN dosing on all your wines? If you are low on nitrogen you will produce H2S which initially obscures the fruity aromas/ covers the fruit/ can be removed, ,, and eventually reacts to produce assorted mercaptans which can have earthy or fried chicken notes and can never be removed. A key question here is do you make other types of fruit which do not have this defect? , ,,, My current nitrogen protocol is Fermaid O followed by K at 1/3 sugar reduction.

? Have you found anyone who can taste some of these batches and give an opinion? Have you entered any of these in a contest to have them judged?

I have made cherry and black raspberry. With these I am seeing blue ribbons at ten month age and a decline after a year to 18 months. My descriptor on the pandemic batches which sat an extra year in carboy is astringent/ drying the mouth combined with loss of fresh fruit/ sort of metallic. From reading on flavors my guess is with cherry and raspberry I have small chain tannin (catechin) which complex into molecules that are large enough to produce astringent notes. Blackberry has lots of phenolic compounds so I would expect similar behavior.

Hello - I just bought some fresh blackberries at the store and froze them till I was ready to try fresh fruit wine (been playing with juice concentrates till I get more learned). I planned on making only a couple gallons of wine out of it, but don't want to ruin it either so I wondered if you could dumb this down for me or have a simple blackberry recipe that might come out with a bold flavor.

 

[winemaker81]

Hello - I just bought some fresh blackberries at the store and froze them till I was ready to try fresh fruit wine (been playing with juice concentrates till I get more learned). I planned on making only a couple gallons of wine out of it, but don't want to ruin it either so I wondered if you could dumb this down for me or have a simple blackberry recipe that might come out with a bold flavor.

Does your wine smell like swamp gas, dog farts, or rotten eggs? If so, H2S is the problem, which is typically caused by yeast stressed by having insufficient nutrients.

 

[Busch]

Does your wine smell like swamp gas, dog farts, or rotten eggs? If so, H2S is the problem, which is typically caused by yeast stressed by having insufficient nutrients.

Great way to explain the smell!! Actually, I have not started yet with my blackberry wine. Honestly, I kind of don't know where to start using actual fruit and having a hard time finding a simple recipe for a couple of gallons of wine.

 

[winemaker81]

Great way to explain the smell!! Actually, I have not started yet with my blackberry wine. Honestly, I kind of don't know where to start using actual fruit and having a hard time finding a simple recipe for a couple of gallons of wine.

I replied to the wrong person -- @Ty520 is the OP.

But it appears the information is useful to you, so mission accomplished!

FYI -- fall 2020 I experienced my first personal encounter with hydrogen sulfide (H2S); in the distant past I helped others deal with it. As stated above, this is typically caused by the yeast being stressed due to low nutrients. The experience made me a strong proponent of ensuring the must has sufficient nutrients, and adding more 1/3 of the way through the ferment.

The first treatment for H2S is to stir very well and double (or triple) dose with K-meta. H2S is flammable, and while I'm told the amounts in wine are not a fire risk, it's noxious -- run a fan and open the windows!

That eliminated most of the smell, so treatment #2 was Reduless, a commercial product that introduces a measured amount of copper. I used a light dosage and it worked. Then I added K&C to get all the residue out of the wine.

Mine had gone on long enough to produce mercaptans, which is an unpleasant flavor. The treatment for that is ascorbic acid, which is very acidic to the wine. I used 1/4 of the dose I calculated it needed, and it took a month, but the flavor was fixed. For a while the wine was sharp, but it settled out after 3 months.

The moral of this story? Use a good nutrient regimen and avoid the problem entirely!

Moral 2: Treat H2S IMMEDIATELY -- it's one of the few things in winemaking that requires immediate attention. Then practice patience and don't bottle the wine until you're satisfied it has recovered.

 

[hounddawg]

Great way to explain the smell!! Actually, I have not started yet with my blackberry wine. Honestly, I kind of don't know where to start using actual fruit and having a hard time finding a simple recipe for a couple of gallons of wine.

6 t0 8 per gallon blackberry that you have frozen, dump into fermenter, pour pectic enzyme on it, once slowly thawed add a gallon water, take a drill and mix in a slush, then your yeast enzymes and yeast nutrients, stir till a slurry. on your tripe scale hydro meter find the ABV you want, run your SSG up to that, cover with loose lid , towel, stir twice daily when you get to less than SG of 1.000 or less strain and put into your secondary carboy and airlock, make extra so you have enough for topping off, rack every 3 months till about a year out, put in larger carboy back sweeten to taste, BINGO, now you know how to do from scratch, from scratch, and due to health I have moved to concentrates, www.colomafrozen.com
Dawg

 

[Arne]

6 t0 8 per gallon blackberry that you have frozen, dump into fermenter, pour pectic enzyme on it, once slowly thawed add a gallon water, take a drill and mix in a slush, then your yeast enzymes and yeast nutrients, stir till a slurry. on your tripe scale hydro meter find the ABV you want, run your SSG up to that, cover with loose lid , towel, stir twice daily when you get to less than SG of 1.000 or less strain and put into your secondary carboy and airlock, make extra so you have enough for topping off, rack every 3 months till about a year out, put in larger carboy back sweeten to taste, BINGO, now you know how to do from scratch, from scratch, and due to health I have moved to concentrates, www.colomafrozen.com
Dawg

Actually dawg has done a great job of explaining making a batch of wine. Now if you have any questions about this (and you most likely will) come back on here and ask or pm (private message) dawg. Hope you have great luck with it. Arne.