Blackberry Wine

[Ernest T Bass]

A neighbor gave me three, one gallon freezer bags of blackberries (frozen). I would like to make a blackberry wine with enough flavor that you would know it was blackberry. How much water should I add to the blackberries? From past experience, a gallon freezer bag of blackberries weighs approx 5 pounds. I would like to make 3 gallons, but I'll settle for less to get the flavor. Could I add a quart of blackberry jam and make 3 gallons or how much jam do I need to add, if any?
Thanks for your time and help
Semper Fi

 

[Duster]

If you don't mind adding some Welch's 100% juice red grape concentrate to it you could get away with 3 gallons. I have heard that black berries can make a full flavored wine but if I had your luck I would do 15lbs black berries and 2 cans of concentrate, then add at least 1 more can of concentrate as an F-pack.

 

[Rodnboro]

In my limited experience, blackberries have lots of flavor and can be cut down a bit. If you have 15 lbs of blackberries, I think you can make 3 gallons with no problem. I made some blackberry last year with 5 lbs per gallon and it turned out ok. BUT, as you probably know, the more fruit, the better off you are. Adding the jam is a good idea.

 

[Deezil]

I would mash the fruit up really well as it thaws.
Add pectic enzyme when its almost room temp & let it sit overnight.

Sometime the next day, take a TA reading... Only add enough water to bring your TA into the right range - .60 to .65%

Then take a SG reading and adjust your sugar to 1.085-1.090

Pick a yeast - i'd probably go with a 1116 or 1122

And off to the races, you go.
Cant promise you how much wine you'll get, but the wine you do get will have the foundation to be something great with the parameters in alignment

I pretty much follow this same process for every fruit wine

 

[rodo]

I love Blackberry jam but every straight Blackberry wine I have tried has just been too intense. IMHO you could go light on the fruit and still have no problem telling it was Blackberry.
The Mystic Berry that I just bottled is 1/3 Blackberry 1/3 Blueberry 1/3 Fredonia. The Blackberry taste still comes through nicely.

 

[Turock]

We make it with no water, which ends up to be about 10 lbs. per gallon. You'll probably need to adjust your acid as blackberries can have a lot of acid depending on growing conditions and if they're wild or domestic.

Best culture for blackberry is one that metabolizes the malic. This reduces harshness that can plague blackberry wine. 71B metabolizes up to 20% of the malic, while Maurivin B metabolizes up to 56% of the malic. You can add oak at the primary if you want.

After the wine is fully aged--right around the one year mark---and you're ready to bottle, try some vanilla in a bench trial. Vanilla added to wine smooths it out so nice and is a nice little trick to get rid of harshness and gives nice vanilla notes to the wine. Just don't use too much.

 

[koko65]

Hello all.

A friend at work recently purchased an orchard with many blackberry bushes on it. I'll be able to pick up almost any quantity for cheap as they are not so popular in this area. If I use either method with or without water, what should the acid level be? I only recently purchased an acid test kit and have never used one before. So I am not sure what my target should be. I have made plum and peach wine with good success every year... Maybe I just got lucky.

Onno

 

[Deezil]

We make it with no water, which ends up to be about 10 lbs. per gallon. You'll probably need to adjust your acid as blackberries can have a lot of acid depending on growing conditions and if they're wild or domestic.

Best culture for blackberry is one that metabolizes the malic. This reduces harshness that can plague blackberry wine. 71B metabolizes up to 20% of the malic, while Maurivin B metabolizes up to 56% of the malic. You can add oak at the primary if you want.

After the wine is fully aged--right around the one year mark---and you're ready to bottle, try some vanilla in a bench trial. Vanilla added to wine smooths it out so nice and is a nice little trick to get rid of harshness and gives nice vanilla notes to the wine. Just don't use too much.

What steps do you take to control the high acidity?

Didnt know about Maurivin B myself - is it one of the yeasts only available in 500g packs or?.. Sounds like a yeast i should look into..

Just curious

 

[roadwarriorsvt]

Vanilla added to wine smooths it out so nice and is a nice little trick to get rid of harshness and gives nice vanilla notes to the wine. Just don't use too much.

Turock,
The addition of vanilla sounds magnificent! I realize "How much is too much?" is up for individual interpretation, so what would be a ballpark starting point? And are you adding extract or beans? Thanks for your opinion.

 

[Turock]

We set our PH on blackberry at 3.4 We use calcium carbonate. Now, many people will say you need to add too much calcium carbonate to get a PH of 3.4 when the beginning PH is about 2.9 They say you can get chalky flavor from too much carbonate. I've also read that many times in white paper on the use of calcium carbonate.

However, we've been making many gallons of blackberry every year for many years and we always use calcium carbonate the whole way to get the PH up to our target without ever getting any chalky flavors. There's no way we want to add water to assist us in achieving our target PH, which is the only other option.

The Maurivin B is one of those cultures only sold in 500 gram packets. It's a good culture for a wine club to buy and then share among a number of people. Otherwise, use the 71B. Other cultures work well too, but you'll have harshness issues to deal with. You can tame them with use of vanilla or glycerin.

You can use beans or extract. If using beans, split them, attach nylon string (fishing line) to them and hang in carboy. One bean in a 5 gal. carboy is enough. Remove the bean when the flavor is where you want it. Extract works too---add it right before you bottle. I think you should do bench trials on it so that it's to your liking.

 

[mmadmikes1]

It is a taste thing. I use 3 beans in a 6 gallon batch. Hell I take the PH to 3.6 with calcium Carb and I like it just fine. Maybe it is the extra vanilla