Blackberry wine

Hi, Bill -

I don't make blackberry wine, but if the dominant acid is malic it sounds like a natural for acid reduction via ML.

Just curious: what was the pH and Brix of the undiluted stuff? Would it be appropriate for a barrel fermentation? I'd like to see French oak on blackberry. I'll bet it'd be really nice!

Tom S

blackberry

Would it be

Bill, I take it you'd like a dry wine? If so, I guess I'd do what Tom suggests. I've made blackberry wine, but I usually sweeten so that seems to balance the tartness. Also, try to keep the potential alcohol to 11%. My first blackberry wine came out at 13% alcohol and had a bit of a kick to it, even aged a bit. My second batch was at 11%, which I think will be an improvement. Good-luck. Darlene Wisconsin

It is very likely that it will undergo a ML on its own and therefore it might be a good idea to check to make sure ML is complete BEFORE bottling. I can speak from experience on this :)

Tom, Dar and Paul - Tom...I couldn't get a brix on the syrup...just too thick. I did several dilutions and the pH was 3.09 to 3.11 regardless of concentration. I will have about 4 to 5 gallons of wine so not enough for a barrel but I may use some French cubes. Dar...I bought the syrup from a local winery. They make mostly hybrid wines but they do make a terrific raspberry and blackberry. Both are finished with some white wine and are sweetened to taste...I would guess 3 to 5% rs. Since the acid is so high I will do the same. I'm worried about a spontaneous ML fermentation in my cellar. This always happens. I have been able to stop these unwanted ML fermentations with Lysozyme. I guess I could let a ML start and keep an eye on %TA, then stop it at some point. I've never made a high acid, blackberry before so I was mainly curious if anyone would suggest diluting the juice until the acid was lower, then add sugar to bring the brix back up. Really didn't want to do that because the juice diluted to brix 18 tastes really good. Dar...I think this will make 10% alcohol if it ferments to dryness. But, I'm using DSM Fermiblanc yeast which is similar to Epernay 2 so it may pull up a bit short. Time will tell.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

You need to hit Jack Keller's website, man. He makes wine outta everything, try this out...

Artie

Maybe you can split the batch, and reduce the acid on a half or third of the batch, and then mix it back in, that way you'll keep some of the tartness. It might be possible to MLF half of it, and keep the other half sulphited/lysozyme'd, and then you could blend it. Just a stray thought...

Hi Bill

Another opinion. All of your first instincts were the right ones. If you do not want to use a fixed recipe, you need to design your own ferment and "create" your own must. I would dilute to get control of the acid and add sugar to get the desired amount of end alcohol.

Since you want a sweet wine, remember that we measure everything as "concentrations" and adding post ferment sugar will dilute the wine and cause changes in the concentration of everything else. Thus, you will want to start the must with slightly higher values than you want to end up with. I would suggest starting the must at ~3.3-3.4pH and ~21-22 BRIX.

MLF is your enemy on this one. Do_not_ allow it to happen !! HTH

Frederick

PS - If you like the wine from that winery, why not get a bottle of their wine, bring it home, run every test and measurement that you can, and shoot for the same numbers they ended up with. IOW - use_their_ success as_your_ guide.

Bill, For some reason I didn't catch your response below, but caught it when Frederick responded to you. Frederick has some good points as well. From some of the reading I've done about blackberry wine, it does need to age at least a year, and may get better as it ages longer. I thought that in order to get a wine to keep the best over a long period, one needs to get the alcohol level to about 11%. I don't know if this is a concern for you or not. There's a winery up north which makes country wines, and they usually have 11% alcohol by volume. Darlene Wisconsin

Frederick wrote with respect to vinting a blackberry wine similar to a locally produced commercial wine

Frederick, Darlene...This is of course the best way to approach this project. I'm good friends with the winemaker (he's a member of our KC Cellarmaster club) who supplied the blackberry syrup. He gave some general guidelines on how he makes the wine and I was in his winery recently to see his fermentation. I always have to change things when I make wine or beer so I did some reading on Ben Rotter' site where he advocates 100% juice wines instead of diluting fruit juice per Jack Keller's site. I hate hot wines so I thought I would shoot for a 10% alcohol content. Then if I add sugar to sweeten after fermentation the wine would probably end up around 9% alcohol...sort of like a German wine.

The wine started fermenting at 10.2 brix, pH 3.05 and TA 1.90%. I'm using Fermiblanc Arom yeast which is similar to Epernay 2. This yeast has resulted in some very good white wines in my cellar with pronounced fruit aromas.

Well, I chickend out. A TA of 1.9% just connot end up being drinkable. So, I made up some 10.2 brix sugar syrup and diluted the fermenting wine to a theoretical 1.4% TA. This is still way too high for the grape wines I usually make. But, I know my winemaking friend is vinting his wine with an acid content near this value...actually a bit higher. I'll let this one ferment out as is, evaluate and then decide how to make blackberry in the future. It's nice to be able to buy a little high quality, commercial blackberry syrup for home winemaking experiments.

One point well taken...I'll use Lysozyme to block a ML fermentation and retain the acid mix that's native to blackberries. Thanks for you comments.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Frederick wrote with respect to vinting a blackberry wine similar to a locally produced commercial wine

Frederick, Darlene...This is of course the best way to approach this project. I'm good friends with the winemaker (he's a member of our KC Cellarmaster club) who supplied the blackberry syrup. He gave some general guidelines on how he makes the wine and I was in his winery recently to see his fermentation. I always have to change things when I make wine or beer so I did some reading on Ben Rotter' site where he advocates 100% juice wines instead of diluting fruit juice per Jack Keller's site. I hate hot wines so I thought I would shoot for a 10% alcohol content. Then if I add sugar to sweeten after fermentation the wine would probably end up around 9% alcohol...sort of like a German wine.

The wine started fermenting at 10.2 brix, pH 3.05 and TA 1.90%. I'm using Fermiblanc Arom yeast which is similar to Epernay 2. This yeast has resulted in some very good white wines in my cellar with pronounced fruit aromas.

Well, I chickend out. A TA of 1.9% just connot end up being drinkable. So, I made up some 10.2 brix sugar syrup and diluted the fermenting wine to a theoretical 1.4% TA. This is still way too high for the grape wines I usually make. But, I know my winemaking friend is vinting his wine with an acid content near this value...actually a bit higher. I'll let this one ferment out as is, evaluate and then decide how to make blackberry in the future. It's nice to be able to buy a little high quality, commercial blackberry syrup for home winemaking experiments.

One point well taken...I'll use Lysozyme to block a ML fermentation and retain the acid mix that's native to blackberries. Thanks for you comments.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

Bill:

One thing that I haven't really seen mentioned in the lysozyme instructions is that it will also fine your reds, quite radically. It's an enzyme from egg whites, so it makes sense as egg whites are used to fine tannins. I've never done this, but it seems it would make sense to counterfine when using it. Does anybody know which fining agent would be ok for this - i.e. not disabling the lysozyme activity like bentonite does? I hope kieselsol would work but am not sure.

Pp

My goodness me I never knew that making Blackberry wine was so complicated. Mind you I have only been doing it for the lat 30 years, off and on.

I don't think that I have drastically altered the recipe I got from a paperback book by H E Bravery goodness knows when!

I use 5 lbs of fruit/gal (imp) --- 4 blackberry and 1 elderberry. I adjust the OG to about 1.085 and ferment with a Bordeaux style yeast and ferment out to dry. I bulk mature it for 2 years and these days I make it about every 2 years.

If you must insist in having it sweet, then I believe that the best way of doing it, without affecting the wine in the long term is to drop a sweetener or two just before serving. Most "sweeter wine" drinkers would not know any difference. Sugar/Sweeteners hid a multitude of sins!

I would not begin to criticise those who drink sweet wines but most people, as they accustom to drinking better wines, also find their tastes developed to drier wines where one can actually taste the nuances of the wine ( both good and bad!).

It will be obvious that I am not a sweet wine drinker -- I do enjoy assessing the wines I make and drink ( and those I buy and drink) and storing the "rating" up there in my noodle.

I have many happy memories associated with all sorts of wines from a very young age. Many old ones distorted by time and age --- as are all early and happy memories.

I will stop. I am rabbiting as usual on one of my favourite subjects

You see Trevor, anything can be as complicated as you want to make it. You have complicated the recipe by adding a second fruit. And the best way to complicate something is to put it to committee -- as on this news group!.

But berry wines are fantastic wines and deserve a lot of discussion and experimentation. I agree, I prefer them dry but I have had some delightful sweet berry wines. I must complicate my recipe and try to make a sweet one some time.

Ray.

Trevor and others following this thread; If I could have found a reference to what a starting %TA for blackberry wine should be this would have been quite simple. There are lots of references for pounds of fruit per gallon. And, there is quite a debate about what this figure should be. Note that I'm not working with actual berries. I bought a gallon of very concentrated blackberry syrup that I estimate was 82 brix. This was diluted to 18.2 brix with water but the %TA was 1.90. I guess you could say that 0.65%TA would be a good starting acid but I estimate I would have had to dilute 1 part juice with 9 parts water to achieve this. This seemed pretty drastic. So, I stopped inbetween.

Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas USA

concentrated

drastic. So,

I agree 100%. My biggest problem with "recipes" is that they don't have any numbers - expected sg, pH, TA. Fruit differs drastically depending where it's grown and when it's picked up, so "x lbs of something" is a very rough measure. It would make much more sense to have basic numbers as a sanity check.

Pp

And then when they gain real knowledge of wines and lose their insecurities, they realize that the great sweet wines of the world are just as, if not more, complex and awe inspiring than the great dry wines. TBA's, Sauternes, Tokaji, SGNs (just to name a few) are all sweet wines that are usually appreciated by even the most refined wine drinkers, some would say only by the most refined.

Andy

You are trying to turn winemaking into a science. If we only knew what to set all the parameters to we could turn out great wines every time. Well it just does not work that way. It depends on the soil and the rain fall the number of days that are cloudy when it does not rain and maybe the number of migrating birds that fly over the berry patch. All of this can effect the amount of acidity and the ammount of bitterness and the amount of blackberry taste that is in the fruit. All of this must be balanced but we do not know what all of this is and we do not know how to measure it.

There are some things that we can measure with some level of inaccuracy and convince ourselves that we know what we are doing. We can use a hydrometer and measure the starting SG and we can even measure the ending SG and we can calculate the amount of alcohol that was produced. But how much of that sugar was used to make alcohol and how much was used to make glycerol or some other end product according to how the yeast happened to be functioning on a particular day. For a given drop in SG you may end up with 13% alcohol and .25% glycerol or 11.5% alcohol and 1.75% glycerol or some other end product may slip in and change the end products. You might send it to a lab but your hydrometer will not tell you what you got.

There are things in the wine that will use up acids or produce acids. There are things that will buffer the acids or things that will ruin the buffering properties of the wine. You may end up with a low pH/high TA wine or you may end up with a high pH/low TA wine.

Why do you think a winery turns out wines that taste different each year using the same grapes from the same vines on the same hill using the same equipment and the same procedures. It just is not a science.

This is not a simple, set the number and get the color change science like high school chemistry lab. Relax and let things happen. If they do not happen the way you thought they would -- then either correct them in the end or "viva la difference".

Ray.