No water wine berry amounts

[CatsCradle13]

Today at 1:43 AM

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Hi Everyone,

New to the winemaking community! I posted this in the general forum and realized that there was a whole forum dedicated to country wine! I was wondering if anyone has experience with the quantities of fruit (in pounds) that when juiced/pressed yield one gallon of juice.

I read some past posts and came up with:

9 to 10 pounds of Blueberries Juiced - 1 gallon
10 pound of Blackberries Juiced- 1 gallon

I would love to know about strawberries, cherries, currants, raspberries etc.

I know that is it more standard to mix the juice with water, however, was curious to know the quantities for no water wines. Anyone with some experience and or a juicer/presser let me know your findings!

 

[hawkwing]

I wish I could say for sure but I got 20L of Raspberry juice from about two coolers worth of berries frozen in sour cream and yogurt type containers. Time to revisit that wine and see how it’s doing.

 

[Rice_Guy]

some literature percentage moisture numbers:
strawberries, , 90%
cherries, , , 88% pitted commercial product
currants, ,
raspberries, , , 84% red
blueberry, , , 83%
peaches, , , 88%
watermellon, , , 93%
grape, American var, , , 82%
apple, , , 85%

I would love to know about strawberries, cherries, currants, raspberries etc.

NOTE: normal target is to have between 0.5 to 0.75% acid in wine (calculated as tartaric acid). A fruit with high percentage acid as currant may be undrinkable unless the TA is reduced. The Jack Keller recipes do this by cutting with water. Another technique is add K bicarbonate or Ca carbonate.

 

[G259]

Aaah! That's the fun of wine, mix it up, see what you get, lol!

 

[Scooter68]

Knowing how much of a given fruit it takes to get a gallon of juice is really just a part of the answer you need. Rice_Guy gave you on of the other key parts of the answer - the acid content. Blueberries for example are often so acidic that even with just 6 lbs per gallon, I have to reduce the acidity a bit.

I would suggest that a large part of what you need to consider is What YOU like. Some fruit has such a strong flavor that you can get an excellent wine (In my personal opinion) with maybe only 4-5 lbs per gallon. Others may need to be 100% pure juice. The key to that is what YOU like.

Here's a couple of examples from my personal experience.
Black Raspberry wine (WILD BERRIES) One of my earliest efforts at country wine making it turned out fantastic. I used 4 1/2 lbs of berries because that's all I had. That wine flavor would knock your socks off AND it had Legs. Several times when I racked it I though the wine had stained the glass of my carboy, but No, the juice was just so strong that it took a minute or two to leave the carboy sides.

I soon there after made a peach wine with about 5 lbs of peaches - Let me put my description for that wine in a nice way. It was Light on the palate. (Wimpy) It was from a can peaches some fresh grocery store peaches and a bag of frozen peach slices. It was a flop to me. Now I only use fresh peaches from a local orchard and I use at 7 lbs of peaches per gallon and only enough water to dissolve my sugar. I also have to use more peaches and a little more water to get my 3 gallon batch up to at least 4.5 gallon at the start of fermentation - a LOT of lees. I never steam juice my fruit or press the juice out. I prefer to have as much of the actual fruit pulp as practical in the wine must.

I only make country wines and, unless forced to, I don't mix different fruits in a wine batch. The one exception was a "Triple Berry" wine made from Domestic Red Raspberries (1.5 pounds) 2.5 pounds of Wild Black Raspberries and 2,.5 pounds of wild Blackberries. (1 gallon batch) That wine was also very high on my list of favorites.

Again that's my personal rationale that I use. You have to find out what works for you. Some like those light on the palate wines while other perfer to use no water at all and even use their juice warmed up to dissolve the sugar. I land in the middle ground. Even though I raise blueberries myself, I only use 6 poung per gallon because the flavor is very solid and the acidity is manageable at that rate.