Seasonal Treats - September - Blackberry & Elderberry Wines

[LordEoin]

SO MANY BLACKBERRIES!! 


There's a great crop of blackberries this year, but if you've not picked them yet get to it. They right at their ripest, with some already gone too mushy.

I headed out along the road and within a half mile I had picked 2kilos, just what I was aiming for to make a nice wine
Blackberry wine is simple and sweet, second only to Elderberry in my opinion (which will also be ripe really soon)

SO MANT ELDERBERRIES!!  :O :O

It's also going to be a great year for Elderberries, which are very nearly ripe here at the moment.
When they're black and shiny, pick them as a whole head and later on in the kitchen remove the stalks.
Bring a big bucket, because the heads take a bit of space.

The ingredients I used for a gallon of wine are (in order of appearance):
2 kg berries
200 g SunMaid raisins (or any other oil/wax free raisins) - optional
1.2 kg table sugar
1 teabag  - optional
1 teaspoon of citric acid or the juice of 1 lemon - optional
1 teaspoon (5ml) wine yeast.

The reason I put both fruits into one thread is because the method and quantities for both are the exact same.
You can put whatever ratio of berries that you like.
All elderberry will make a really great red wine to rival any grape wine, making it all blackberry will make quite a sweet wine.
I generally make a gallon of each one on it's own and a third gallon of 50/50

The first thing is to rinse your berries and get all the bits of bugs, webs, dust etc out.
Put all of your berries in a big bucket and fill it with cold water. All the nasties will float.
Then remove any stalks and leaves. You can do this easily with elderberries using a fork or plucking roughly at the head with your fingertips.
Give the berries one more rinse out and you're set.

Next chop the raisins, add to the berries and put them all into a big pot and start mashing.
Once mashed, pour in a liter of boiling water and mix it all up.
Add your sugar and mix until the sugar is disolved.
Make a strong cup of black tea and add this too.
Bring this mix up to 72C to pasteurise it, then immediately remove from the heat and add another 3.5 liters of cold water with the citric acid/lemon juice added.

From here you can simply move the lot to primary, cool and add your yeast. Allowing it to start on the skins and racking/straining to demijohn after a week or so.

I prefer to get it all cleaned up now though, so i sieve it to remove the skins and seeds.
I ended up with a little over 5 liters which should be about right after moving it off the lees.
I split it between 2X5liter primaries. I really need to get me a 10L bucket...
OG 1.075, expected strength about 10%.

In about 2 weeks to a month it should be ready to rack off the lees and into a single demijohn where it will stay for about 3 months with another rack or 2 in between until it is completely fermented out.
Because this wine ends up so dark, there's no great need to have it crystal clear, so i'll worry about clarity later on.

This wine can often be drank shortly after bottling (especially with more blackberry), but it will be best next summer in the sunshine with a BBQ 

[UpsidedownA (Andrew)]

Brilliant! I was just looking for a recipe for elderberry wine. Cheers.

[LordEoin]

no worries, i hope you like it as much as I do

[Col]

I've ten lbs. of elderberries and 8lbs. of blackberries picked and stowed in the freezer for future reference. Little tip for the elderberries - one of the problems with bunches of berries is that they don't all ripen together. To counter this, strip them from their stalks with a fork, straight into a bucket of water - the ripe ones will sink, and the unripe ones will float. Then you can skim off the unripe ones with a slotted spoon, give the ripe ones a quick swirl to wash them, and then drain into a colander. Doing this cuts down on bitterness in your vino, and helps it mature quicker.

[Ciderhead]

Just can't get this out of my head reading this thread

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3I5XcsReT0

[LordEoin]

 

[UpsidedownA (Andrew)]

Just started making a double batch of elderberry wine following this recipe. Cheers!

[LordEoin]

I needed an empty demijohn, so bottled my blackberry wine tonight.
Even after using vinclear finings it was quite murky, so I decided to give it a pass through the wine filter.
The gallon took 4 bloody filter pads! and all of them completely clogged up
I'm going to have to find a new fining agent for these murky wines...
Any suggestions? I remember Greg used something in his last vid, but can't for the life of me find it..

Anyway, after getting it filtered it looks quite nice (see attachment)
It tastes a bit watery though.

Although my Hambledon bard corker gave up on me and broke into a thousand little pieces...

[imark]

Could you use gelatine on the wine. Been wondering what to do with my elderberry wine. Still in its demijohn.

[LordEoin]

I think the Harris vinclear is gelatine based. It normally works great, like here but not so good with dark fruits

[imark]

Never made elderberry wine before. Is it a similarly murky soup as the blackberry wine you were filtering?

[LordEoin]

The wine is so dark it's hard to tell.
But I'd guess that it will be roughly as murky at this stage.
I'd normally leave them sit for a very long time to clear naturally as far as possible, but I was in a rush for a demijohn.
Ah well... filter pads are cheap

[imark]

Ah..gotcha. So should I leave it in demijohn for 12mths? More?

[LordEoin]

it should be well fermented out by now and ready for bottling.
It will be fine now without clearing too. I'm just on a bit of a clarity buzz at the moment and want to free up some demijohns for when things start growing again
I'll try to find a good fining, and if I do I'll let you know

[imark]

Cheers!