Blackberries are just starting to ripen this year after a colder than normal summer. Went out and picked berries for about 2 hours and ended up with around 27 pounds. I will make a larger batch this year since last years Blackberry Wine turned out pretty well. This year, however, I won’t use my steam juicer and am hoping for more of a blackberry flavor in the final product.
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Process:
Weight out 20 pounds of blackberries and put them in my large brew pot. I then added enough water to reach the level the blackberries were at. I heated the blackberries up to 150 F and let them steep for 30 minutes. During this time I used a hand mixer to break up the berries as well as I could. When the 30 minutes was up, I added the berries to my primary bucket. I then added water to reach 5 gallons (allowing about a gallon for the fruit cap and sediment on this wine). Measured the gravity of the blackberry juice and it was 1.021, so I added 11.5 pounds of sugar to get the OG up to 1.1000. After adding sugar the volume was up to about 6 gallons. I then added the yeast nutrient, pectic enzyme, acid blend, and Campden tablets to the primary bucket. I sealed the bucket to sit and sterilize until I add the yeast.
8-30-11: Put into primary with Campden tablets. Original Gravity measured at 1.100. Will add yeast in 24 hours.
9-1-11: Pitched the yeast.
9-14-11: Filtered and racked the wine into 4 1-gallon carboys and one 1/2-gallon carboy. OG Measured at 1.002 giving a strength of 13.9 %ABV.
4-29-12: Bottled into 46 12-ounce bottles. FG measured at 0.994, 14.1 %ABV. Tried to measure the acidity, but because it is a dark colored wine I didn’t see any color change occur.
Tags: berries, blackberries, blackberry, wine