Black Currant (Vintner's Harvest Fruit Bases

[midwestwine]

About to start this kit and was wondering what the best yeast to use for it

 

[Wade E]

I like the Red Star Pasteur Red for this and that is the best one of the Harvest bases, It is a very good product and used to make it all the time before I found a local place that sold frozen berries and bnow I have 18 of my own bushes to havest soon I hope.

 

[deboard]

I have one of these cans and I'm going to do the 3 gallon recipe. I also happen to have Pasteur red yeast!

Wade, do you usually make a dry wine with this or a sweetened one? I'm hoping to make a dry but if it's not suitable then I won't.

 

[djrockinsteve]

Make it what you want. Maybe split it up at bottling time and bottle half dry and sweeten (add sorbate) and make a sweet batch.

 

[Wade E]

This is one flavor that is strong enough to be done either way. there is a ton of flavor with this particular kit and just so you know there is no actual fruit in this particular can so you wont need a fermenting bag with this one unlike most of the other cans of this stuff, it is by far my fav but havent tried the Elderberry. I made mostly sweetened but did have a glass worth dry when racking and it to was great, I really should start splitting up my batches like this and do 1/2 &1/2.

 

[deboard]

I've made the last couple batches to be sweetened, this one will be dry then!

 

[midwestwine]

Thanks wade i just happen to have a Pasteur Red on hand

 

[Midwest Vintner]

elderberry is pretty good, IMO. can't remember how strong it was with whatever we went with (3 gal vs 5 gal). we've been lucky enough to have family that donates to our wine hobby. of course we bring some for family occasions

 

[deboard]

Wow, just got this one going. I'm amazed at how much sugar it takes. My last few batches have been fruit/grape concentrate mixes and did not take as much sugar. It took 7.75 lbs of sugar to get my must to 1.086! This is in a 3.75 gallon batch (more or less). The SG before adding sugar was 1.008, when I dropped the hydrometer in my first thought was - is it done already?

Black Currants smell great though, and taste pretty good too. I've had them before somewhere, can't put my finger on it though.

 

[Wade E]

Its been a long time since Ive used one and that does seem like a lot of sugar to add for a 3.75 hgallon batch. Did you dissolve the sugar in very hot water first?

 

[deboard]

I boiled the water and let it cool a bit, but it was still pretty warm. The 3 gallon recipe on the can calls for 7lbs of sugar, so I wasn't really surprised too much, but it is definitely different than my last 4 batches.