Mulberry wine ?

[BernardSmith]

Have never seriously tried to make mulberry wine but this year I want to make some and in my neck of the woods mulberries are just beginning to beautifully ripen. Here's my question for those who have successfully made a batch or two. The mulberries that I can forage have a tiny green appendage at the end. My guess is that this will add bitterness to the wine but my question is whether I need to snip off this "spike" or whether you leave this on and still allow the berries to steep in the wine until first racking. Thanks.

 

[hounddawg]

Have never seriously tried to make mulberry wine but this year I want to make some and in my neck of the woods mulberries are just beginning to beautifully ripen. Here's my question for those who have successfully made a batch or two. The mulberries that I can forage have a tiny green appendagei ,,, at the end. My guess is that this will add bitterness to the wine but my question is whether I need to snip off this "spike" or whether you leave this on and still allow the berries to steep in the wine until first racking. Thanks.

i can't help much, i have several mulberry trees, from childhood and still do so, i eat mulberries like a junky, i hold the stem and eat the mulberry and green appendage as you call it, as long as you pull the stem all of the rest is killer good eating, i have a fairly big tree and 4 smaller ones, the 4 smaller i could net,,, the largest one is better then 20 foot tall, i planted it many years ago and did not keep it topped, lesson learned the other 4 get topped every february, i just pull the stem off, hope that helps,
Dawg

 

[BernardSmith]

Thanks Dawg. I guess my question was not so much about whether anyone eats the stems as much as whether if I keep the stems attached to the fruit or rather if I ferment the fruit in a bucket for say, a week before racking the resulting wine off the fruit will those green stems impart an excessively bitter flavor - much like the way the green receptacle below the petals on dandelions does. But the issue is, as they say, moot. I have about 5 lbs of mulberries happily fermenting with those stems since yesterday and I am seeing the color drain from the berries into the must (now wine). At this time this liquid tastes as if the finished wine might be very delightful: most recipes call for lemon juice or citric acid to be added but I am planning on adding malic if the wine feels insufficiently acidic.

PS. I saw a Youtube video the other night about "cloning" mulberries and it seems that it is easy to get the twigs to root and if you plant the twigs you can get fruit the next year. Another garden project to add to my bucket.

 

[hounddawg]

Thanks Dawg. I guess my question was not so much about whether anyone eats the stems as much as whether if I keep the stems attached to the fruit or rather if I ferment the fruit in a bucket for say, a week before racking the resulting wine off the fruit will those green stems impart an excessively bitter flavor - much like the way the green receptacle below the petals on dandelions does. But the issue is, as they say, moot. I have about 5 lbs of mulberries happily fermenting with those stems since yesterday and I am seeing the color drain from the berries into the must (now wine). At this time this liquid tastes as if the finished wine might be very delightful: most recipes call for lemo, n juice or citric acid to be added but I am planning on adding malic if the wine feels insufficiently acidic.

PS. I saw a Youtube video the other night about "cloning" mulberries and it seems that it is easy to get the twigs to root and if you plant the twigs you can get fruit the next year. Another garden project to add to my bucket.

yep i've clomid many things, also spliced in things like fruit trees with different fruits , know why but granny smith green apple trees take about
anything you splice into the fork of green apple trees, when young i also tried splicing (grafting) tomato into a erb plant, shuss,, that was better the 40 years ago, hehe, young and dumb, but cloning erb was easy, again better then 40 years ago.....
Dawg
Dawg

 

[Rice_Guy]

Mulberry can do a very good wine if you doctor the acid flavors,
it can be a nothing if you run it with only a pH correction using acid blend,

To your question about stems, I haven’t had a flavor issue with green material, I currently juice them before fermenting, a decade ago I probably did a whole berry ferment ,,, HOWEVER I have had a light mold flavor when using the sheet on the ground to rake berries out of the tree, ,,, a guess is that old shrunken/ dried fruit gave the flavor.

This years pick came in at pH 4.68; TA 0.65%; gravity 1.050; Last years pH 4.36; TA 0.54; gravity 1.041; The sugars and acid change a lot in the day where it changes to dark purple so you are compromising fruitiness vs enough acid. It is hard to push the pH of mulberry juice to the low 3’s

The recipe
mulberry juice . . . 3.n kg
lemon juice . . . . . 0.5 kg
sugar . . . . . . . . . . 0.6 kg
acid blend . . . . . . 20 gm
yeast nutrient
K meta
water . . . . . NONE

A last note, to get rid of the pigment on your fingers or nylon bag, ,,,, it is easily decolorized with acid,, I ”bleach” with vinegar to get stuff white again.