beautyberry wine anyone?

Here's the outcome:



Tony

Very nice color. I like the colorful label also.

Weird color for the wine judging by the color of the fruit, is the berry color inside this color or did it get slightly oxidized?

No, actually the photo is pretty close to the real color. The inside of the berries is white/cream colored. I was disappointed the color from the skins didn't come through more. The bright red it initally had in the fermenter (primary andsecondary) did disappear when I first added kmeta/sorbate though. Will take Waldo's suggestion and add grape concentrate next time.

Oh Wade, I found a medium/smallish plant in the woods near the house. I tagged it and it has your name on it. Next spring I'll dig it and send it your way. We'll see if these can grow up in Connecticut.

Tony

Id love to try it Tony! They sure are pretty thats for sure. What ratio of fruit per gallon did you use and would you add more next time. Your the only person Iv seen on many forums to bring this fruit up.

I ended up getting 9.5 lbs of berries and made a 3 gallon batch - so 3+ a
smidge lbs per gallon. I might up it to 4 lbs/gallon if I had enough, but it really has
plenty of flavor and body with just what I used so I don't think I'd go much over that.

Cool, so they are pretty powerful then!

I was doing a search tonight looking for a Beautyberry Wine recipe and happened upon this forum. I have a big beautyberry bush in my yard and was looking for something to do with the berries. Oh, by the way, I don't think beautyberries taste like mulberries. I also have a mulberry tree but getting a few of them ahead of the birds is a triumph in itself.


I'd like to try your beautyberry wine recipe if you care to share. It looks like a nice wine.

Welcome JWM, Im sure Tony would be glad to share his recipe with you as thats what w do here, help each other out! What would you compare this fruit with then?

Welcome Jerry!

The recipe went along these lines:

9.5 lbs berries (cleaned then frozen)
Pectic enzyme - 2 tsp
bentonite - 2-3 tsp
Yeast nutrient -1 tsp.
Sugar to a sg of 1.085
Lavlin 71B-1222 yeast
Water total ended up about 3 1/2 gallons with berries in the primary

Put about 2 gallons of water in the primary and whisked in the bentonite powder to get it dissolved really well. Then added the pectic enzyme and stirred that really well. The pectic enzyme helps break down the berries even more (in case you didn't already know)

I thawed out and put these in a hop bag (or paint strainer bag will work), dropped it into the primary and squeezed it a bunch to crush up the berries some. Let this sit overnight (~12 hours).

In the morning the yeast was made into a starter (yeast, warm water and a bit of sugar) and once it got going it was added along with the yeast nutrient and water to just under 3 gallons. I don't remember exactly how much sugar I put in, but aimed for a specific gravity of 1.085. I dissolved it in water before adding, so ended up with about 3.5 gallons total in the primary when all was said and done.

It worked for about 5 days and fermented dry and this was transferred to a 3 gallon secondary for about 1 month. It was then racked to a bucket, k-meta and K-sorbate was added and it was put back in the carboy and bulk aged.

Tony

almost the same color of my loquat wine after bottling drink most of it,then forgot about it,know its kinda like a chardonnay,but very much on the sweet side.I will try to post a pic of the last half gallon.Better find more batteries before refilling my glass

Thanks Tony. I'll give it a try. I doubt however that I getthat many of the little berries.

Wade, I went out and tried a few of the little berries and to be honestthey didn't have much of a taste at all.

This is just my first time to see and hear about them. So I've done some research about it and I found a recipe and procedure how to use those in wine making. I'm not so sure if that is really what is in the recipe but you can take a look of it, so that you can make sure of it.

www.ehow.com/how_5803122_make-bird-beauty-berry-wine.html

Aloha Tony,


Bear with me, I'm a little excited as these berries grow ALL over my area.


I almost cut down one of these bushes/trees in the back yard of a home I just moved in. Folks told me they were trash trees and "poisonous". I told my husband to chop it down, but Googled real quick and saw "jelly and wine".So I halted his demolition.


Did you come up with any particular way to harvest the berries? Did you have to remove any parts of the plant that may be poisonous or add off-flavors; in other words....Were fruit stems, leaves, ok if they ended up in the fermenting bucket?


Generally speaking, how many pounds of fruit did you yield from one bush/tree?



how long did you bulk age before bottling?


Can you describe the taste of the wine? Any similarities with any other kind of fruit wine?


Are you happy with the results of the recipe? Would you make it again? He's asking me how did your wine taste? I'm putting some berries up in the freezer until I can try your recipe.


Many thanks for sharing.


CCQ

QUOTE: " according to wiki


<H3>Insect repellant</H3>


American beautyberry or Callicarpa americana has been found to be a natural insect repellent. It has found to be repellant to mosquitoes, which can carry yellow fever and malaria, as well as the tick, which carries Lyme disease.
<H3>Wine uses</H3>


It has also been used to produce wine.










your choice bug spray or wine " END QUOTE
From what I've researched, the leaves have the mosquito repellant characteristics. [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igKeqZjxPYQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igKeqZjxPYQ[/ame]


Eat the Weeds, episode #40 (link above) discusses this plant and its edible qualities.


I have found little on the web about a wine recipe, still looking.

Beautyberry also known as Callicarpa, found in different species and it originates in America, China Australia and some parts of Asia. Yes, these berries are highly astringent in nature but made into wine and jelly. In America it is even known as bird Beauty berry due to the reason that birds do eat these berries. < id="gwProxy" ="">< ="jsCall();" id="jsProxy" =""><div id="ref">

CCQ, sorry for the delay in getting back to you. Here's some of my observations:

I'd say if nothing else, just from a decorative standpoint of the berries and their unique purple color they'd be worth keeping. They generally grow in the shade, but the more sun they get, they produce more and larger berries (and the larger the bush grows). Of course, they're still about 2/3 the size of a large english pea, so "larger" berry is relative. It appears to take about 2 years before the plant starts producing berries.

The berries form clusters around the stems at the base of the leaves so harvesting was done holding a bucket in one hand and holding the branch in the same hand (bucket under the branch). Then used the other hand to pull the cluster toward the end of the branch and they all pretty much fell off into the bucket. The clusters seem to ripen from the inside of the bush outward, so it can take several weeks picking them in stages to get them all if you really want to do it right. I ended up with a lot of leaves which I pulled out afterwards. Floating the berries in a large pot of water helped separate dead berries and stems and leaves and rinse them. I froze mine and when thawing out it's easier to get the smaller stems although some still got fermented.

I used about 3lbs per gallon last year, but will probably increase that to 4 or 5 this year. Most fruit wines generally call for 6-8 lbs of fruit per gallon but this one seem to hold up in terms of taste and body with what I had.

From one large bush (about 8-10' high and 10-15' diameter - it's actually 2 plants next to each other) and several other smaller bushes I picked about 8 one gallon freezer bags full this year - roughly 4-5 lbs per bag. It seemed to be a bumper crop this year for them. The largest bush however got more sun this year (the tree it was under and several around it were cut down).

The one I did last year, bulk aged about a year before bottling. I generally do this with most my wines to let all the sediment settle out.

It's a very unique flavor actually. Waldo tried some and he said it tasted similar to plum. My first taste, while it was younger, I thought it was more "raisony" (see earlier in this post). Wade hasn't reported back on the bottle I sent him to try.

I'd say if you have enough berries, try a 1-2 gallon batch and go for it. That's the best way to see if you like it or not.

Tony

Not sure why someone reported a 7 year old post but it is what it is.

I think that was me....sorry...fat fingers...was trying to hit reply....