Blackberry Port 2007

[jobe05]

A friend is coming over today and we are going to be starting 12 gallons more of the Blackberry Port. Thawing 76 pounds of Blackberries:

Each bag has 5 pounds 10 oz in them and I have 15 bags in there thawing out. Going to follow the original recipe that Waldo gave me last year.

Blackberry Port
Blackberry port is seldom made, but well worth the effort. Use fully ripe berries, fresh or frozen. Makes one gallon (3.8 L).

Ingredients
6.0 lb. (2.7 kg) ripe blackberries
1 cup red grape concentrate
1/2 cup light dried malt extract
1 3/4 lb. (0.79 kg) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp. pectic enzyme
1 1/4 tsp. acid blend
4 pints (1.9 L) water
1 crushed Campden tablet
1/2 tsp. yeast energizer
1 tsp. yeast nutrient
1 pkg Lalvin K1-V1116 (Montpellier) or a port wine yeast

Wash
and crush blackberries in nylon straining bag and strain juice into
fermenter. Tie top of nylon bag and place in primary. Stir in all other
ingredients except pectic enzyme, yeast and red grape concentrate. Stir
well to dissolve sugar, cover well, and set aside for 8–
12 hours.
Add pectic enzyme, re-cover, and set aside additional 8–12 hours. Add
yeast, cover, stir ingredients daily, and press pulp in nylon bag to
extract flavor. When specific gravity is 1.030 (about
5 days),
strain juice from bag and siphon liquid off sediment into secondary
fermentation vessel. Fit airlock and set aside. Rack in three weeks and
again in two months. When wine is clear and well past last evidence of
fermentation, stabilize, add red grape concentrate, and set aside for 3
weeks. If no evidence of re-fermentation, rack again and bottle. Allow
at least a year to mature, but will improve for several years.

I will fortify as I did last year, except this year I got 2 quarts of Blackberry flavored Moonshine. This should be good.

 

[Wade E]

If that is the same recipe as the bottle you sent me Id advice following it to the T!

 

[jobe05]

Well, I can officially call my wine room "The Red Room" now, and why do zip lock bags have leaks?

I didn't take any pictures of the process (I like my camera more than that) because of the mess that 76 pounds of blackberries can make.

In order to put the straining bag in, we had to remove a gallon of liquid from each of the fermenter s, this should give it enough room to foam during the first couple of days. The one gallon jug started fermenting within a few minutes of adding the yeast.

I did make a couple of changes to the recipe, nothing major, just added 3/4 cup malt per gallon versus 1/2 cup, and I added 4 ounces of light toast French oak cubes. The first batch I added oak after all was said and done and it was just right, so the light toast should give it what it needs.

Starting SG is 1.100. I'll let that ferment down to 1.040 or so and add sugar to 1.080, let it ferment down and so on. I'll keep ya posted.

 

[grapeman]

Sounds good Jobe. How many times can you bring the SG back up without killing the yeast, and what happens if you bring it up to 1.080 and then the yeast dies at 1.065(or something). Do you end up with a really sweet port?

 

[Wade E]

We'll be waiting!

 

[jobe05]

Sounds good Jobe. How many times can you bring the SG back up without killing the yeast, and what happens if you bring it up to 1.080 and then the yeast dies at 1.065(or something). Do you end up with a really sweet port?

Shouldn't be a problem. KIV-1116 will got to 18% easily, and I had it go over 20% on the last batch.

With a starting SG of 1.100 going to 1.040 is only 8%. Bring it back up to 1.080 and letting it go back to 1.000 will be 19%, even dry at .994 is just a little over 19%. I want to shoot for 20%+ with this yeast. So fizzling out at 1.065 after the additional sugars would only give me 10% ABV........ I'm thinking thats not going to happen, what makes you think it will?

Also with the above said, I start the fermentation room temp at about 67 degrees, ferment temp around 72 degrees (perhaps a little less, not there yet) Toward the end, when I reach 16% + ABV, I will raise the room temp to 76+ degrees. I did this last time and the yeast seem to enjoy putting out 20+% ABV.

If not.......... isn't port suppose to be sweet?

 

[bovinewines]

Can I ask what you use to fortefy the wine with? And at what point would you add this...I'm assuming before bottling?

 

[grapeman]

Ok, I get ya. I though when you said" I'll let that ferment down to 1.040 or so and add sugar to 1.080, let it ferment down and so on." that you meant you would repeatedly bring it down and add more sugar. Once or maybe even twice wouldn't be a problem but after that, it would probably just be too much for those poor little yeasties. The juice should have tremendous color with that many of them in there. Can't wait to see the progress of it all.

 

[jobe05]

Bovine: I will fortify this with moonshine that has been infused with Blackberries. I have 2 quarts at 195 proof. I haven't done the math yet to see what that will get me too ABV wise, or weather or not I'l even need th full 2 quarts since I will try to ferment this out to near 20% ABV or better. I will add this after the clearing stage and leave it in the carboy for a while to settle down in order to know the final adjustments to alcohol, oak and sweetness

Appleman: By "and so on" I meant (and should have said), after the addition of sugar to 1.080, and after it comes back down to 1.010 I will only need a to add sugar a cup or two at a time, raising the SG by .006 to .010 at a time (which may be once or twice) or till the fermentation comes to a stop. Because Port does finish on the sweet side, I have some leeway as to the sugar I leave in it. So by "so on", I meant all the final feedings and adjustments to raise the SG as much as possible.

Edited by: jobe05

 

[grapeman]

Yeah Jobe, Ihad that figured out after a bit, just a little slow at times

 

[jobe05]

Yeah Jobe, Ihad that figured out after a bit, just a little slow at times

I wouldn't say slow........ I'm just not as descriptive as I should be sometimes. I always assume that people know what I'm talking about........... Which is not always the case.

Went down to stir them up a bit this morning and punch the bag down, here's what it looks like inside:

The buckets really haven't reach full fermentation yet due to keeping the room on the cool side. However the Gallon jugs are taking off nicely. With the Malt in the must, it foams a lot! And it's a heavy foam that takes a lot of stirring to get it back down. So once fermentation reaches a peak ferment, I will have to keep mixing the foam in as much as I can, like every few hours for a couple of days:

The smell and taste right now is incredible! After squeezing 38 pounds per fermenter, we had a little over 4 1/2 gallons of Blackberry juice in each fermenter, without the bag, just pure juice. Thats why we had to remove a gallon of the must after all additions of Malt and chemicals were added.

I suspect this one is going to be good........

 

[Wade E]

That just sounds delish there buddy, is there a conversion to use using malt instead of sugar or did you just use the hydrometer?

 

[jobe05]

I used the Hydrometer.

The funny thing about Malt if you have never used it, is that it is almost sugar like. I believe that when wet it takes on a different consistency than a powdered form and does impact your SG reading. I just put it in, mix with a drill stirrer really well and let sit for about a half hour before taking an accurate SG reading.

When we started yesterday, I had everything separated out, chemicals in little cups all mixed with water ready to go into the must when ready. I had the Malt in a 4 cup measuring cup, and due to the humidity in the room, it got a 1/4 inch hard crusted layer on the top of the measuring cup that was sugar like, very sticky and very tough........ Kinda like caramel but a little more brittle. It dissolved when mixed with the must, just took a little while. I like using malt for thickening the must when fermenting, but also for the flavor. Last year I put some Blackberry wine (finished) in a 1.5 liter bottle with about 1/4 cup of malt to see if it would flavor the wine, kinda like oak would flavor and it did! It tasted pretty good so I added that 1.5 liter bottle to my 3 gallon (second run) batch and bottled it. It'll be interesting to see how that comes out.

Edit: I'm thinking of doing a strawberry ........ Port like wine, but bulk age it with some malt to infuse that flavor. I think I would get something like a Strawberries and Cream flavor.

Edited by: jobe05

 

[jobe05]

Well........... I guess I have been talking about it way too long..... Now my mouth is watering for some Strawberry Port:

So I thought I would start a 3 gallon batch...............

And as long as I was at it, might as well go ahead and do the peach as well! Both of these will be Port style.

Got 30 pounds of Strawberries and 20 pounds of peaches.

Edited by: jobe05

 

[Wade E]

When you ay Port like do you mean high abv cause I personally dont think the Strawberry will handle a high ABV like the peach or Blackberry will. I upped the abv on the Watermelon White Merlot kit to 11% and I think that was almost pushing it to far. At 12% I would be throwing it in the cellar for a year and hoping that it would come back around. The Peaches will do well Im sure. I bought a Strawberry wine from the winery which makes a bunch of fruit wines all in the 12-13.5% abv range and all of them were awesome except the Strawberry as it just didnt civer the hotness. If you do it I hope it really comes out great and Im sure the Malt will definitely work great with all those batches and cant really see it going wrong with many fruits. Good luck with all those experiments and theres only 1 way to find out right?

 

[Waldo]

That Blackberry looks mighty fine jobe

 

[jobe05]

Thanks Waldo...... I got the recipe from a great guy who makes the best wines around...........

 

[jobe05]

Wade:

I wasn't going to start the strawberry or peach out more than 1.080 SG to see how it would handle the alcohol. Once I get to that point, I'll experiment a little to see if it can go up any higher. For both of these, I'm going more for the flavor than I am alcohol level, but if it goes that high, it would be an added bonus. Thats also why Im using 30 pounds of strawberries for a 3 gallon batch, 10 pounds of berries per gallon should help maintain flavor.

 

[Wade E]

I believe the peach would work well but not the Strawberry with the higher abv.

 

[jobe05]

Well I got the strawberry worken and the peaches steaming. I went down to check on the blackberry and heres what I found:



The gallon jug was over flowing a little into the air lock:

So I figured I would put it in the sink and use the Baster to remove some of the bubbles that were on top:

That was a mistake...... Just moving the bottle caused more of an over flow:

Then the Fermenter............................. sigh................

Small mess, easily cleaned up. Here is what it looks like inside:

Thats about 4 or 5 inches of thick heavy foam!

As much as I like using the Malt in this, it's a pain in the butt the first couple of days.