First time making wine-Blackberry

[WildernessWill]

Hey Guys,

Long time drinker, first time maker. I recently came across the mother of all blackberry rows. After numerous cobblers and jars of canned preserves, I have decided to combine my loves of drinking and foraging wild food. I am on a really tight budget and visited my local home brew shop today.

I picked up a 5 gal carboy, 6 gal bucket, airlock/stopper, tubing, hydrometer/beaker, star-san and the ingredients the guy at the shop said I needed. There are a lot of "grandpa recipes" when I googled a blackberry wine recipe. I can't tell you how excited I am to find this forum and have really been learning a lot quick!

I am going to go with Tom's Blackberry recipe thats on the sticky. I really like the ratio of fruit to sugar. I realize that this recipe will not fit my equipment's capacity. I am going to reduce it by 1/6 and hope for the best.

Questions;

Can I rack back into a sanitized primary, then re-rack into carboy or do I have to invest in another carboy?

The berries are super ripe, when I rinse them I am going to lose A LOT of juice? Can I strain off juice before rinsing or is bacteria gonna wreck my batch?

Is it neccesary to add tannin to this wine?

Can I recork used sanitized bottles or do I need new ones?

Is red grape concentrate the frozen juice tubes?

I know the questions have probably been asked before. This seem like a lot to learn and I want to to do it right. I went out and picked 17 lbs of berries today, still has to be another 20-30 lbs hanging. I will try to post pics and update this thread as I go along.

Thanks in advance for all the help guys,
Will

The lady and ole Leroy helping out in the harvest!

 

[Wade E]

Welcome WW, you must have accidentally hit the red triangle right above the post reply button. That submits the post but hides it for us admin or moderators to look at and decide if the post is ok for the general public to view. I fixed the post for you.
1) Yes you can rack back into a sanitized primary so as to clean & sanitize your carboy, just limit the time it has that amount of surface area as best you can and make sure there is sufficient sulfites in the wine especially with lighter wines as they oxidize much easier or should I say they show oxidation much more!
2) There really isnt much need to rinse the berries, do you think vineyards wash off their 1.000's of lbs of grapes before fermenting them? No, they dont. If you think they have been sprayed with insecticides then maybe but even then the vineyard owners still dont. Just make sure to use sulfites in the primary to kill any bacteria and hold off any wild yeast so that your wine yeast of choice which also has a much higher S02 tolerance can take hold and get started.
3) You dont have to use tannin but it will help in the long run to balance out the wine and also help in the preservation of this wine as wine with higher tannin levels will age much more gracefully.
4) Absolutely!!!!!!!!!!! Almost all of us here try very hard to not buy bottles to use in our wine making. I typically only buy the very hard to find Bellissima bottles for Ports and other Dessert wines, You dont find them around much for free unless you live near a winery that gives away its empties from wine tastings and lots of them do so if you have one near you I implore you to visit ad ask! Otherwise we get bottles from friends, restaurants, glass recycle stations and even dumpsters. The savings are huge and worth the work!! Get yourself some Oxyclean )Walmart Sun brand is pretty much the cheapest) for cleaning and then right before use use a strong sulfite solution of 3 tbs per 1 gallon of water to sanitize each bottle and your equipment.
5) Sort of but that is a sweetened product so youll have to substitute that for some of the sugar needed.
Below is a link to what is really referred to. Hopefully the link is right and that sire is having link issues lately but it is a great place to get supplies.
http://finevinewines.com/XProdListMain.asp

Looks like you have a great helper there!!!

 

[mmadmikes1]

we opened a bottle of 2 year old blackberry last week and it was great. good luck, blackbverry is my favorite because it cost so little to make and turns out so good

 

[Wade E]

It can usually cos a lot of blood though getting those precious berries!!! Ouch!!!!!

 

[Calvus]

Just out of curiosity going with that tannin question, I have 5 gal of blackberry right now that will get its final rack in 3 weeks or so. I didnt add tannin and I heard that blackberries were pretty high in them already. This I am sure varies greatly depending on location though. When I taste in a few weeks and I dont like the acid or tannin levels on my palate can I add at that time or would that complicate the aging at this stage of the game 2 months in.

 

[mmadmikes1]

I have a bloodless patch

 

[LanMan]

I have a bloodless patch

Thats cheating

 

[Wade E]

Some tannins are pre fermentation and some are post tannin additions and yes if you add them they might need a bit more aging time depending on when and how much you add. Blackberry isnt one of the fruits that dangerously low in tannins but most fruit other then grape can still benefit from tannin additions. Acids can be added any time and should be tested pre fermentation and after to see if the wine needs cold stabilizing or some other method or removing if need be. Adding wont add anymore time to age.

 

[Calvus]

Some tannins are pre fermentation and some are post tannin additions and yes if you add them they might need a bit more aging time depending on when and how much you add. Blackberry isnt one of the fruits that dangerously low in tannins but most fruit other then grape can still benefit from tannin additions. Acids can be added any time and should be tested pre fermentation and after to see if the wine needs cold stabilizing or some other method or removing if need be. Adding wont add anymore time to age.

Thanks for the info. I may add some depending on the taste come the next rack since it will bulk age for another 8-10 months before bottling. I had a pretty high starting SG so I anticipate letting it sit for a while. Patience is so tough.

 

[WildernessWill]

Thanks for all the info guys. I picked 10 more lbs today and am going to start the process tomorrow. I will keep this thread updated as I go and will probably ask a bunch of questions along the way. I too have a bloodless patch. The vines were trimmed back and hang picking level along a fence!

 

[WildernessWill]

So I crushed 23 lbs berries today, put them in a big mesh bag. Made the yeast nutrient souloution and added 1 crushed campten tablet. Put berry bag in primary. It is huge...prolly consumes 2 gallons. Added sugar syrup, then topped off with h2o. I checked my SG and it read 1.10. Added a bit more h2o to get 1.085 or pretty close to it. I am waiting 12 hours to add my pectic enzyme.

Questions

1. Right now my fluid volume is 4 gal. I am using a 5 gal carboy. Is the extra space gonna screw me up? Will more juice leech out of the fruit bag?

2. I have only add one crushed campten tablet initially. I have read all over this site I need 1 per gallon. Since my fluid volume is 4 gal, do I need to add 3 more crushed?

3. The recipe states wait until SG gets to 1.015, the rack into carboy. Any idea on how long this is?

Cheers,
WW

 

[Calvus]

So blackberry being my first wine with a few errors along the way I can tell you what I would do different. I came up with about 5.5 gal of final liquid all together in the primary and wished that I would of done about 6-6.5 so I could have extra to top up with. There was quite a bit of sediment that settled out and I added just under a gallon of liquid to top up. Luckily I had 4-5lbs of frozen blackberries left so i extracted the juice and mixed with some grape juice to top with.

I would add extra sugar/water to do this and add the extra 4 campden tabs to discourage any unwanted yeast before pitching the yeast 24 hrs later.

I racked into the secondary after 6 days at an SG of 1.022 but I also started too high at 1.100 which is the other change I will make when doing this again. Take a reading after 4-5 days to see how it is coming along. Just be sure to punch the cap/bag down 2-3x/day since all the seeds really float well. Good luck.

 

[Arne]

1. When using large amounts of fruit, I usually use 2 primaries. Ferment down until you pull the fruit, then combine them. Just divide your materials and add to each one.
2. The directions say to add one for each gallon. You can add now, but should wait another 24 hours before addin the yeast.
3. It will probably take a week or longer to bring your s.g. down. You may also ferment to dry in the primary, then rack to your secondary. Just seal the primary up and airlock it when it gets about 1.010 or so.
The hardest part of this is it all takes time. You can not hurry it so you have to listen to Tom and his 3 P's. Patience, Patience, Patience. After you get a few batches under your belt and you have a little something to drink it becomes a little easer, especially when you find if you can hold off drinking, most of the wines become much better, even tho lots of em taste pretty good right away. Good luck, Arne.

 

[Kleftiwallah]

Your'e my first "responding to" Will.

Don't forget what they say about Michaelmas ! ! ! ! Cheers, Tony.

 

[NoSnob]

My Blackberry Wine

Will,
I began my blackberry wine (Tom's recipe) a few weeks before you did. I've been a kit wine maker so this was my first time using fruit. I used 36 lbs of frozen fruit (WalMart) and 10 lbs of sugar and a can of Welches frozen grape juice. When I realized what a huge recipe it was, I separated the fruit into two mesh bags and used two fermenters, dividing up up the additives as I went. Primary & secondary fermentation in both went fine. I used K-Meta. After racking twice into a 6 gal carboy and 1 gal jug, I topped it up using several Sterling Cab Sauv with great blackberry overtones. Then I back-sweetened, to taste, with a 1 and 1/2 cups of sugar solution. I wanted a semi-dry level of sweetness so sweetened just shy of that. It has attained a nice color and is aging. It improves with each tasting, but amazingly it actually tastes like blackberry wine!

My steps were not exactly as above, but I followed the recipe closely. Good luck with yours! We're lucky to have the assistance WMT provides.

You're fortunate to have access to your own fruit. Mine cost $2.50/lb. Ouch.
NS