Steam-Juiced Blackberry

[smokegrub]

In the past, I made a blackberry wine on the whole fruit and fermented to dryness. Despite the fact that the fruit was removed after 5 days the wine had a distinct bitterness that was unleasant. A year later the wine is a bit better but still more bitter than we would prefer. This year I used steam-juiced blackberries and the final product is excellent. I have now made a steam-juiced blackberry, a cranberry and a peach. All have been outstanding. Next up a wild cherry and a pear. I am now a strong advocate of steam juicing.

Here is the recipe used for the blackberry:

Blackberry 2008
15 1/2 qt blackberries (steam juiced)
Sugar (SG 1.090)
6 1/2 t yeast nutrient
3 1/4 t pectic enzyme
3 1/4 t acid blend
6 Campden Tablets (crushed)
Water to 6 1/2 gal
Lalvin RC 212
Back-sweetened with sugar (SG 1.01)

Placed the juice, water, sugar, pectic enzyme, acid blend and Campden in primary. Pitched hydrated yeast 24 hours later (total volume approximately 7 gal). Within 12 hours fermentation produced lots of heavy, dense foam and a not so pleasant odor. Skimmed and removed dense foam twice. Heavy foasm was gone within 24 hours and replaced by "fizzing" and a light, white foam. Racked to secondary when SG was 1.054. Racked and topped up with about 3/4 bottle of banana wine. Made a mistake and added 6 more Campden. One month later racked and topped up with a couple cups water and 1/2 bottle dry blackberry wine; SG was 0.996 (ABV about 11.8%. One month later back-sweetened with sugar to SG 1.01.

 

[NorthernWinos]

Yummm! Sounds so good.

About how many pounds was the 15½ Qts. of blackberries.....?????

I made a batch with Vintner's Harvest Blackberry Fruit Base and 2-500mil bottles of WinExpert Red Grape Concentrate....It had a funky smell at first, figured it was from the RC-212 yeast....We would decant it and the odor would go away...Now the odor is completely gone and the wine is very nice.

I have made some progress in having Blackberries or Black Raspberries...
[I have the holes prepared for planting next spring]

Guess that's a start anyway.

 

[smokegrub]

The 15 1/2 quarts juice came from 32 1/2 pounds blackberries. I have another 15 1/2 quarts awaiting use. These were wild blackberries and my hands took a couple of weeks to heal!

Consider the cranberry as a future candidate. It is one of my favorites. I will be visiting Wal-Mart and the local grocers the day after Thanksgiving to see if they will have berries on sale.

 

[NorthernWinos]

32# of precious Blackberries = 15½ qts juice + 1 pint of blood from wounds.....

That was quite a haul of Blackberries....

 

[Waldo]

And worth every drop of blood wasn't it?

 

[smokegrub]

The blood loss wasn't too troubling. Picking the thorns from my fingers for days, that was a pain, literally! : )

 

[Aaronh]

I got a Steam juicer a few months ago and I am verey pleased with mine. I have done chokecherry , crabapple and raspberry out of it so far with great results. I made some raspberry for my friends mother and It had cleared faster than welches concentrait batches do.
I used RC-212 on the choke cherry and raspberry. I really like this yeast strain for its nice suttle peppery notes and really made the raspberry flavor robust. I fermented dry and itstill has a nice sweet taste. Also the acid lvls of the raspberry must were high enough to were i didnt need to add any acid blend. Seems alot of the fruit way up here is high in acid and i wish it was the other way around.
I have read into the RC 212 high nutrient consumption and heard its best to put in your normal nutriant amount for arobic fermentation then right before you use your airlocks to put in a little extra.When theyeast is way into the alcohol produceing stage it is pointless to add nutrients. I had no smell/fermentation problems with this yeast off my two trials using this method.
Anyways , not to go off topic.... I have only heard of a couple folks who dont like steam juicing. I think it is great and makes the house smell good too

Edited by: Aaronh

 

[smokegrub]

One of the advantages I love is that I can seal my juices in quart jars and proceed with the wine when I want. I realize you can do that by freezing many fruits, but sealed quart jars require far less space and no refrigeration. Plus, during fermentation, there is no squeezing of a fermentation bag!

 

[PolishWineP]

We really enjoy the ease of wine making after steaming our fruit. Well worth the effort.

 

[Cracked Cork]

Smokegrup, out of curiosity, since you steamed the fruit why are you adding camden tablets? Crackedcork

 

[smokegrub]

Although the juice is sterile, the water is not. Because so much effort went into this wine I want to err on the side of caution.

 

[Wade E]

Good plan, ya never know whats in the water. We have a town not to far from here that just discovered that they have uranium in the water and the government knew this for a year or 2 and never told anyone.

We have our water tested almost every year and all is in check but for the price of a little k-meta why chance it not that the k-meta would get rid of uranium though!

 

[jobe05]

We get a report from our town about once a year on the water conditions. Generally it says that they have reported problems and the water didn't meet certain standards and then they post the reasons. They even go on to say that the residents should have boiled their water before drinking it.

We get these reports about 6 months after the fact.

So it's not that we are rednecks................... we just drink the water!

 

[Cracked Cork]

THanks Smokegrub, we dont have any problems with our water and have been concentrating on adding KMeta with raw fruit but not steamed and I wanted to make sure I wasnt missing something. Crackedcork

 

[NorthernWinos]

Our water tastes great and has no iron like most wells around here....We are load up on Calcium tho.

We had the well drilled in 2001 and get it tested every year....it has 13 part per billion of nitrates....doesn't seem like much. They just dropped the recomemded levels to 10 part per billion a few years before....So we are not suppose to feed this water to childern under 6 months....that was the only warning we got.

I add WinExpert Grape Concentrate to many of my fruit wines, so always add Sulfites to that must....as well as to any wine must containing apple juices...Just to be sure.....