So the girlfriend is picking a bunch of wild blackberry’s and trying to get enough so we can do a batch of wine or something with that just for fun. Admittedly we have little experience with wine seeing that we are on our second kit as of now and haven’t drank any of our first so help is appreciated.
We are shooting to gather 8-10 pounds and are maybe looking to do somewhere in the 2-3 gallon range. I guess any recipe would be good if we could scale it down.
Here is one of my recipes:
BlkBerry Wine
Makes 1 US gal
5lbs Blackberries
6 1/2 pints water
2.25lbs sugar
1/2tsp acid blend
1/2tsp pectic enzyme
1tsp yeast nutrient
1 campden tab (crushed)
Montrachet or K1-V1116 Yeast
Wash and drain berries. Using a nylon straining bag press juice into primary. Keep pulp in bag, tie the top and place in primary. Stir in all ingredients except yeast. Wait 24hrs. Add yeast. Stir daily and lightly press pulp. When SG has reached 1.025, strain juice from bag and rack to secondary. When fermentation has completed rack again to allow for clearing.
You will need to stabilize if you plan on backsweetening. What level to backsweeten to is a personal choice, but my wife likes it in the 1.015 range.
My preferred yeast for this recipe is Montrachet, but you do not want to stress it. I also do not recommend using it if you have soft water or if sulfur dust was used on the berries. If you have any concerns I would use the K1-V1116.
Awesome, thanks for that! We have a little under ten pounds now and might just pick a few more and double the recipe.
Questions:
So I’m stirring daily with the bag of pulp submerged in the liquid and then just squeezing/pressing it a bit to kind of extract some more flavor? Would this then be easiest in a bucket instead of a carboy and would a normal sized wine bucket be too big?
Is there a target SG for this?
When you say not to stress that yeast strain do you mean temp or gravity because the stated temp range is crazy wide.
These are wild blackberries that grow in a state park here in MN so I’m assuming there would be no sulfur dust on them but then again I’m not really sure what sulfur dust is.
Thanks again.
Forgot to mention in the recipe that I add a bit of tannin into my blkberry wine. Some recipes do not have this addition, but I feel the difference is noticable.
[quote=“mplsbrewer”]
1.085-1.090
I recommend not going over 1.090
PH, temp, nutrient levels, and sugar content can all be causes for stress.
[quote]4) These are wild blackberries that grow in a state park here in MN so I’m assuming there would be no sulfur dust on them but then again I’m not really sure what sulfur dust is.
[/quote] You shouldn’t have to worry about the sulfur dust. It is commonly used as a fungicide and insecticide for fruit.
Thanks again. Looks like we wound up with just over 10lbs so we might go ahead and try this out sometime soon. Probably as soon as I get a chance to run to Northern Brewer.
We have the powdered potassium metabisulfite which is the same thing as the campden tablets correct?
As for the tannin addition I noticed the sell liquid and powdered. Any difference? And how much would you suggest?
Sorry for all the questions but we really have no idea what is going on…
Not a problem. Hope you enjoy winemaking, its a fun way to test your patience. 
[quote=“mplsbrewer”]
We have the powdered potassium metabisulfite which is the same thing as the campden tablets correct?[/quote] Yep.
[quote]As for the tannin addition I noticed the sell liquid and powdered. Any difference? And how much would you suggest?[/quote] I use the powder. Its stores easily, but you have to dissolve it into a small amount of warm water before adding. I use an 1/8th tsp per gallon.
Be sure to use the fine mesh nylon straining bags for fruit wines.
I highly suggest giving your blackberry wine a full year to age before consuming. This will really bring out the fruit flavors.
Well we have two kit wines going right now, one of which is bulk aging in the secondary and one of which just came out of the primary, so hopefully those will tide us over until this one is ready. I think each should be about 6 months come November or December which is when we will probably bottle them.
As for patience right now I have a couple mini-batches of Imperial Stouts, a mini Barleywine, a full batch of Barlywine and a sour Flanders Red along with the wine kits so I’m working on patience. I’ll admit it was a weak point of mine before but I’m getting better by trying to have a bunch going on so I can just forget about some of the stuff and let the carboys collect so dust. That said I have been stealing a few samples of Denny’s Old Stoner Barlywine and am getting tempted to bottle it sooner than I planned…
