Blackberry Wine - how I do it

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Jonny69

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Well folks, like it or not, it's coming up to blackberry season! This will be my third year making blackberry wine and last year's crop was amazing. Last night I opened a bottle I brewed last August and it was fantastic, so I thought I would share the recipe with you.

Method:

Put 2 kg blackberries into a clean bucket
Pour over 1.7 litres of boiling water and a mug of stewed black tea made with 2 teabags
Mash it to a pulp with a potato masher
Stir in 1 crushed Campden tablet, 1 teaspoon of pectolase, 1 teaspoon of yeast nutrient
Cover and wait 24 hours

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After 24 hours, strain it through a sieve, pushing as much liquid out as you can with the back of a ladle. Then squeeze the pulp through a muslin into a demijohn to make sure you get as much juice out as you can. Add 1kg white sugar and 1 teaspoon of Young's wine yeast to the demijohn. Fit an airlock. After 12 hours it should be frothing up and brewing:

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Once it calms down, maybe after a week, top it up to the neck with either red grape juice or apple juice. I did one with red grape and the other with sharp-tasting apples I'd scrumped off Isaac Newton's apple tree at work, which I think is the better of the two. Allow it to ferment out, which will take about month, then rack it off, shake out the fizz and let it clear by itself. Once cleared, I added half a teaspoon of sorbate and half a crushed Campden tablet to each gallon. I don't like to add too much.

Mine was drinkable almost immediately and I only managed to hold back 5 bottles, which I've been struggling to keep my hands off, but I opened one last night. It has changed slightly, you can taste a bit of age in it, so I think I will keep the remaining two bottles for next year to see how they turn out.

I would estimate it's about 14% and still slightly sweet. If you don't want it as strong, then reduce the amount of sugar to 800g.
 
a little amendment I use to do with mine was add a couple of bunches of elderberries along with the blackberries, and a litre of red grape juice.if you include all the stalks of the elderberriesetc you don't need the extra powdered tannin and the elderberries make the wine a little darker, more deep red.
I would soak all the berries for 2 days not one with 1 and a half teaspoons of pectolase, which helps the cell walls to break down and the juice to run out, and don't use a potato masher. Try not to squeeze the berries as it can cause starch hazes to form. If possible let the juice drain from the berries by enclosing them in a muslin bag and letting them drip, finally just give a gentle squeeze.
Go to the chemists and get a small bottle of tincture of capsicum and before you put the corks in add 2 or 3 DROPS. ( NO MORE ) to each bottle. Store for a year and you'll get a lovely warming Blackberry Port. Don't try drinking it under 6 months as it can be harsh with tannin.

If making red autumn fruit wines always try and include cleaned washed elderberries they add so much to the wine's taste. Blackberries on their own always seem to make a pink rosie coloured wine not a deep red.
 
Mine is really dark red, but I'll try it with the elderberries this year. Sounds awesome!

I've not had too much problem with hazing, but I don't mind cloudy wine anyway! The year before last I made a brew with our blackberry jam-gone-wrong. We mis-weighed the sugar and put in way too much, which made it inedibly sweet, but it set nonetheless. I decided to dissolve it and brew it up and it made a really nice wine with no cloudiness despite it being choc full of pectin from the jam sugar!
 
further tip. wrap the demi jon in brown paper to keep the light off the wine, otherwise it could turn a browny colour.
 
Iv'e got a 5 gallon batch on at the mo' made from Robinsons concentrate, i boiled it for half an hour to drive off the preservatives added the usual additives etc. Its taken nearly 5 days to get going and is just now starting to ferment but slowly. I did a gallon one last year and that went clear in the DJ once fermentation had done its thing so i re coloured it with another half botttle of blackcurrant juice and it turned out very nice indeed. :grin:
 
PMSL my apologies brain fart in progress was too early and i was out on the pop last night! Good pics tho' moley i'll nick those so i can show the 'locals' what i want here :thumb:
 
Not my pics, I borrowed them from the Wikipedia links given above them.
 
Going to go on my day off and pick some black berries. Going to take all that has been said into consideration.
Cheers. Happy brewing.
 
Brambles have started ripening in Norfolk, not in large quantities but one or two per bvranch. I think it will be a week or two before it's worth picking.
 
I'm in East London. There is a canal here which runs for miles and miles. Brambles on both sides for miles and miles. Will probably leave a week or two just so they ripen a bit. Still have hints of red in them and taste slightly bitter.
 
There are absolute shed loads of blackberries on Woolwich Common-picked 8kg this afternoon.

EDIT:Well that's mine tucked up in the FV,should be 4 gallons worth by the time the grape juice goes in.
 
Just popped out, walked across road 1/2hr later 2kg of blackberrys sitting in my fridge!!
Time for some more me thinks, the bushes are heaving (might go for broke and do 5gallon)!
:thumb:
 
Blackberry watch is well and truly underway....

Huge amounts of green fruit set on the bushes in Belfast, managed to pick about a punnets worth of ripe fruit the other night so I'm reckoning in the next week or two it should pick up!!!
 
I reckon it's about time for me to go and load up on the first batch. Not a lot of fruit out there, but there should be enough to do a few gallons.
 
Well pickings are a bit slim out here in SE - the blackberries are all quite small and there aren't that many of them. I managed a paltry 2.5 kg in two sessions, so only one gallon this year unless I can find another stash. I did bag 1.3 kg of elderberries though, so the second demijohn this year is elderberry with a handful of blackberries.
 

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