First blackberry wine

Decided to take advantage of the huge number of blackberry's growing in the corner of my field and make my first ever blackberry wine .
This is only my second ever wine - first is an elderflower wine from June - and my first using fruit.

Decided to keep it simple, so followed the brewbitz recipe here
https://www.brewbitz.com/content/9-blackberry-wine-recipe

3lbs fresh blackberry
3lbs sugar
5l boiling water
Mashed it all together and crushed up the berries in a 25l fv.
Added a campden tablet to kill off any nasties and now waiting for tomorrow before I add:
1tsp pectolose
1tsp wine yeast
1tsp wine yeast nutrient.

I'm about to go on holiday for 2 weeks, so it can sit in my office until I return and then get strained in to a DJ to finish off for another month.
By all means correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm planning on racking it in to a new DJ each week during this 4 week period.
Then add a campden at the end and leave it another few days and bottle it.

Then it's getting put away in my cold cellar for at least until next spring /summer!


Does all this sound sensible, or should I do it a bit different?
Also before it gets the yeast, should I tweak this to get better results - cup of strong tea- chopped banana - splash of lemon juice - anything else?

I also did the brewbitz recipe for mine, and it's lovely. The only bit i don't follow is this:

"I'm planning on racking it in to a new DJ each week during this 4 week period"

Racking should be done as few times as possible, plus you probably don't want to brew on the fruit pulp for more than 5-7 days maybe ?

I'm planning on doing this in a few weeks. I found loads of bushes today while out on my bike but they look like it will be another week or 2 till loads of them ripen. Scottish climate!

I found a few raspberry bushes as well but I don't think the yield will be enough to make anything.

I'm also planning this as I'm getting a kilo of blackberries every few days at the moment from the garden!

I've bobbed them in the freezer though to wait for a few elderberries to ripen so that I can use them for tannin and body rather than the tea. Using a recipe from Andy Hamilton's Booze for Free book.

Not made a wine yet, so interested to read your thread and compare. Let us know how it goes :)

i reckon i could have picked 6lbs easy on a walk today near mine, but tasted a few and they are still slightly bitter so perhaps a bit early?

Or will it not matter once they've sat fermenting on the sugar for 5-6 days? (the sweetness)

Al

while fermenting fruit will be pushed up to top of liquid and needs to be stirred back into must about twice daily.
alternative is to put fruit in mesh bag and submerge into must..
i ferment on fruit for four days, strain then put in jars, then can be left.

Bigeck said:

I'm planning on doing this in a few weeks. I found loads of bushes today while out on my bike but they look like it will be another week or 2 till loads of them ripen. Scottish climate!

I found a few raspberry bushes as well but I don't think the yield will be enough to make anything.

Click to expand...

Put rasberrys with rhubarb,,,, yummyyyyyyy. i use 3lb rhubarb to about half pound rasberrys.

Well I checked on it this morning and it has just started to foam.
And I'm now sat on my holidays after an immense BBQ and bottle of home brewed dark ale!

So it's staying untouched on the fruit for the next 13 days.
I'll either come home to something spectacular that can get strained in to the DJ, or a bid messy mushroom of disgusting goo....

The bottom third of our vast garden has basically been left to its own devices ( it's going to be redeveloped in the near future) and is one huge bramble jungle. I made two gallons of blackberry wine at the weekend, and the freezer is full of the buggers. I'm going to make as much as I can and freeze the rest for as long as they keep coming. The missus and me like a bottle or two of red with the Sunday night steak and I intend to make a year's supply. Stuff that waiting a million years to mature - we ain't wine snobs and it's ready as soon as it's clear. We've also got an abundance of elder bushes, but those aren't ready yet. Now that wine does take time to mature, but no problem while ever there's plenty of blackberry in the meantime...

I've got two new batches of new Blackberry wine on the go at the moment - my first wine experiment, as normally brew ales.

Similar recipe, racked my first batch off the pulp into demijohn after 4 days as per instructions in the 'Drink your own Garden' book I downloaded for Kindle.

Second batch just started fermenting so will be racking to demijohn on Friday night or thereabouts.

Interested to hear how yours goes !

Cheers spapro, I'm really looking forward to seeing what's happened when I get home.
Hoping it's a success or it'll be 3lb of blackberry's wasted. Not the end of the world, as that was literally 30mins picking in my field, bit even so... My Yorkshire-ness hates waste.

Nicks90 said:

Cheers spapro, I'm really looking forward to seeing what's happened when I get home.
Hoping it's a success or it'll be 3lb of blackberry's wasted. Not the end of the world, as that was literally 30mins picking in my field, bit even so... My Yorkshire-ness hates waste.

Click to expand...

I'm in Wetherby, are you still in Yorkshire?

I got just over 800g gathered yesterday evening, was left to stew overnight with some pectolase and mixed it up with sugar this evening and a litre of WGJ, i should get about 3 bottles worth out of it. Should be an abundance of blackberries here by the end of the month.

Hi!
I've got about 15lb tucked away in the freezer ready for my annual 30 bottle batch. I walk the dog in an area where I can pick a couple of pounds of plump, ripe berries in about 20 minutes, and a few days later there are new, plump berries waiting to be harvested. There are way more berries this year than there were last year. I think there'll be two 30 bottle batches made this year.

Bigcol49 said:

Hi!
I've got about 15lb tucked away in the freezer ready for my annual 30 bottle batch. I walk the dog in an area where I can pick a couple of pounds of plump, ripe berries in about 20 minutes, and a few days later there are new, plump berries waiting to be harvested. There are way more berries this year than there were last year. I think there'll be two 30 bottle batches made this year.

Click to expand...

Ye it's amazing how quickly they ripen - I honestly can't keep up with them, and that's just my own back yard! Looks like thousands will have to go to waste and I hate waste.

This is mine - got 3 demijohns full, beautiful colour !

Gunge said:

The bottom third of our vast garden has basically been left to its own devices ( it's going to be redeveloped in the near future) and is one huge bramble jungle. I made two gallons of blackberry wine at the weekend, and the freezer is full of the buggers. I'm going to make as much as I can and freeze the rest for as long as they keep coming. The missus and me like a bottle or two of red with the Sunday night steak and I intend to make a year's supply. Stuff that waiting a million years to mature - we ain't wine snobs and it's ready as soon as it's clear. We've also got an abundance of elder bushes, but those aren't ready yet. Now that wine does take time to mature, but no problem while ever there's plenty of blackberry in the meantime...

Click to expand...

I keep my freezers ready for other stuff by steam extracting the juice
from blackberries and elderberries with this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Steam-Juicer-Juicer-Steamer-Cooker-Juice-Extractor-10-2-in-26cm-/182568263915?epid=1854106609&hash=item2a81eaa0eb:g:ng4AAOSwaEhZEtXO
Pete

I picked just shy of 2 kilo's tonight in an hour, these where the same patches i picked a kilo from last week, these ones went to the freezer until i get another 3 kilo's and then it's a full five gallon batch.

OMG.
Back from my hollibobs and it's not a big mouldy mess!
Had a quick sample to test the gravity and we're at 1005 giving 11%
A weee taste and wow!!!!!!!!! It's like freshly drawn arterial blood and literally smacks you in the face with blackberry flavour!!!!!!

So yes, you can leave it in the fruit for 2 whole weeks and it will be fine.
Going to leave it for 2 weeks and then rack it for a final 2 weeks before bottling.
One question though, it really is like arterial blood, will it clear or should I put some more pectolose in it?

I'm looking forward to trying this out. We have plenty of brambles.