Blackberry and elderberrie wine

[Haggisathome]

Hi peeps ...

At present I have 700 grams of elderberrys and 1.7 kg of blackberrys , add to that 2 kg of sugar. Any tips or ideas on the best way to get the most out of them ? . Also what sort of quantity of fruit per gallon of wine ? . I have always just thrown in the maximum amount I have and know this is at times a waste of fruit, luckily I get a lot of it for free by picking it my self , but I would rather get the most out of it than get small quantity... if that makes sense .

Thanks for any input

Scott

 

[Chippy_Tea]

I cannot help with your question as I am bone idle so make mine from juice - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=49462

 

[An Ankoù]

I haven't made wine for a long time- the main reason being that I don't really mind what I drink as long as it comes in pints. However, my Bible in the day was First Steps in Winemaking by C J Berry. It's got loads of recipes and I never had a bad one. I see there's one at amazon.co.uk for £2.64 free delivery. I'd snap it up if I were you. I seem to remember it was 3-4 lb of fruit and 3lb of sugar to the gallon. So chuck in all the fruit. But as I say, it's been a long time.

 

[Haggisathome]

I haven't made wine for a long time- the main reason being that I don't really mind what I drink as long as it comes in pints. However, my Bible in the day was First Steps in Winemaking by C J Berry. It's got loads of recipes and I never had a bad one. I see there's one at amazon.co.uk for £2.64 free delivery. I'd snap it up if I were you. I seem to remember it was 3-4 lb of fruit and 3lb of sugar to the gallon. So chuck in all the fruit. But as I say, it's been a long time.

Thanks for that tip , just downloaded that book and will be reading it later on

 

[Slid]

I last made wine from picked fruit when I was still living at my parents' house in Glossop and I left there 36 years ago. I do recall that elderberries are very slow to lose their very high tannin content, so I suggest you use something like half what you have of them and all the blackberries. Also I would suggest adding around 3/4s of your intended total sugar at first and feeding the rest in during fermentation. I also had CJJB's book and also the follow-up recipe book, which, sadly, was perhaps less useful than I thought at the time. I would add further, that country wines are, in my rather ancient experience, never degraded by adding some actual grape juice, replacing some of the sugar. You can use concentrates in the form of a kit, or now actual grape juice.

 

[TheBigWoo]

2 kg of fruit is a good starting point, maybe 1.5 kg blackberry and 500 g elderberry, but the mix is up to you, with about 1.2 kg of sugar. Which reminds me, I've several kg of blackberries and sloes in the freezer, I must dig them out and see if I've enough for a 5 gallon batch.

 

[Haggisathome]

I cannot help with your question as I am bone idle so make mine from juice - http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=49462

Thanks for that dude

 

[tonyhibbett]

That combination makes an excellent wine I call hedgerow barolo. Most of the tannin in elderberries is in the seeds so I ferment the pulp just long enough to extract the colour - about 3 days.

 

[Nicks90]

I've made many gallons of hegderow wine over the past few years, I always go for 50/50 between elderberries and blackberries (but I have done 30/70 too)
I pour all the fruit in a pan and dump a few litres of boiling water on and give it 10minutes on a rolling boil. Stir in any additional sugar for higher abv.
Then pour in to the fv and top up with cold water. Add a campden tablet and leave overnight.
Bung the yeast in the next day and brew it on the pulp till the main activity has finished - 3-5 days.
Rack in to dj's and leave for 4 weeks and rack again. Leave for 6 months then bottle.
My personal opinion is it takes a year before it really shines, as the elderberry needs a good while to condition
Jobs a good un

 

[BeerCat]

I would add all that to some red grape juice( instead of water) and some red grape concentrate. I made some excellent elderberry like this. 6 months later was superb.

I froze the berries, defrosted and added straight to fv.

 

[Haggisathome]

Thanks all , ten mins ago the yeast went in ... I did for some strange reason add some raisins in to the mix as a substitute for red grape concentrate . The smell off the must was wonderful , I am looking forward to sampling it in a years time .

Thanks all for the input

 

[tonyhibbett]

Keep it dark, as the blackberry rapidly loses colour when exposed to the light. Best stored in bulk before bottling, because there will be sediment over time.

 

[Rodj]

The nicest blackberry/elderberry wine I’ve ever made was made in March 2018 from frozen 2017 blackberries and elderberries. It was wholly experimental. Having not-quite unpacked or recovered from the chaos of moving house I wanted to get something going from what I had available:
● 5168 g blackberries
444 g elderberries
fruit mashed with a potato-masher (not the best way, by far)
juice of 2 small & 1 large lemons
pectolase
yeast (Young’s super wine yeast compound)
made up to 12 litres
SG at this point was 1014
● strained the fruit mush off after 11 days
SG = 1005
● 1600g ordinary white sugar
SG = 1058
● fermented down to SG = 1002
● 2552g ordinary white sugar
SG = 1062
● fermentation stabilised to almost zero at SG = 1026.
Bottled at SG = 1026 and monitored it carefully (bottling included a small PET bottle for squeeze tests and screw-cap wine bottles). All bottles kept boxed in the dark to preserve the beautiful ruby colour. (When I give a bottle away I wrap it in several thicknesses of brown paper for the same reason, with an explanatory message to the donee.)
It continued to ferment very slowly in the bottles and became pleasantly petillant, then stopped fermenting.
Chilled, it is absolutely gorgeous.

 

[CeeGee]

My recipe comes from ‘Booze for free’ by Andy Hamilton.

2kg blackberries/elderberries (equal quantities)
1.5kg sugar
Half cup of very strong black tea*
4 litres water
Juice of one lemon (I use 1tsp of citric acid)
1 campden tablet (crushed)
1 tsp yeast nutrient
Red wine yeast

Freeze berries overnight (or longer if still gathering), then put into a fermentation bin and allow to thaw. Give them a bit of a squish to get lots of juice out, but try not to crush the seeds too much. Add the sugar, boil one litre of the water and pour it over, stir until sugar has dissolved. Add the rest of the water (cold) and all the other ingredients. My method differs only in that I leave it all for twenty four hours before I pitch the yeast to give the Campden tablet a chance to kill off any remaining wild yeasts and to disperse.

Let it sit in the bin for three-five days, then strain into a demijohn (I strain it into another bin first using a sieve and a muslin cloth, then pour into demijohn up to the shoulder a I make less mess that way). I have a litre plastic bottle that I fitted with an airlock that I put any excess into, then I top up after the most vigorous fermentation has finished up to the bottom of the neck of the DJ, more or less.

Rack after a month or so, let it ferment out. I’ll usually rack again after a few weeks, perhaps a month or two, maybe again if sediment still forming, then hide it away somewhere dark for a few months with a safety bung in it to clear fully before I bottle. Leave in the bottle as long as possible before drinking; pure blackberry less so, ready and drinkable in six months or so.

*If you decide to make pure elderberry wine, don’t add the tea; elderberry has plenty of tannin already. If you make pure blackberry wine, add more tea!

The idea of the half and half is that blackberry wine can be a little sickly, elderberry can be very tanniny, the two together balance each other out.

Quick to make, very labour UNintensive, but requires patience in spades before you drink it!

 

[Haggisathome]

Hi again ...

Not sure if I am doing this right , could some one advise please ? . My hydrometer was broken when I started the wine so don’t know what the SG was , my new one has arrived and I thought I would take a sample to see were the wine was . It tastes sweet and the reading from the hydrometer is confusing me , if I read this right the wine is at now at 1.140 and that’s at day 5 ! I know my temperature is a bit on the low side . I put in 1.2 kg of sugar in the mix , should I rack it off and try and find some were warmer ? Or is it going to be a slow brew ?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

It can take many days to ferment fully so at 5 days its probably only half done.

As for your hydrometer here is a rough guide.

White arrows - 1.090 - 1.070 this is roughly were a wine will start.

Blue arrow - .995 this is where most kits will say you can move on to the finishing stage.

Black arrow - .990 this is usually as far as it will go and it will be a dry wine.

 

[Haggisathome]

Thanks dude , that makes more sense to me , what hydrometer do you use ? Yours looks better than mine

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Its not mine i grabbed the picture off google and added the arrows, mine looks very similar its just a cheap one from Wilko store.

Here - https://www.wilko.com/en-uk/wilko-floating-hydrometer-for-wine-beer/p/0022575

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