First time making berry wine, have a few questions.

Many recipes are for 1 gallon batches. Just multipy all the ingredients by the number of gallons you want to make. All except for the yeast. Use one packet for any ammount up to 6 gallons. Be carefull on Jacks recipes though. They are designed to yield a given ammount rather than start with a given ammount. Have a gallon jug or two ready to take the overload. This will give you wine to top with latter.

Ray.

Some common sense is all you need to scale up a recipe. Rather than 6 nylon bags (or 10, or 20!), you should use a single LARGER nylon bag. They are made in various sizes for just this reason. Campden tablets are meant to be used 1 per gallon, so yes - multiply. Same with the sugar, pectic enzyme, and most other additives.

Since you mention having made wine from kits - where things are premeasured - I hope that you have a hydrometer to measure the original specific gravity of your berry must. Adding "2 lbs" of sugar might have had different consequences for Jack Keller's berries than it will for yours. I'd start with 1 lb, measure SG, and keep going in increments as you see the effect that each added weight makes on the SG. A safe generic starting SG to shoot for is 1.090.

Most berry wines (and many others) are easier to start when you freeze the fruit for at least a couple of days. As the fruit thaws, the juice is released more readily. If you thaw your berries (in a large plastic pail with sealed cover), add pectic enzyme and 1 lb of sugar when they warm up to "not frozen, just cold." After another 12-24 hours, you can start crushing the berries with a potato masher or similar tool. You can also use a handheld strainer (shaped like the Big Dipper) to press down the berries and allow some juice to rise up. Dip a cup in and use this to fill your hydrometer jar to measure SG.

I have fermented blueberries on the skins, but blackberries I cold macerated for 3 days prior to pressing and fermenting the juice only. I was told that the seeds could impart some harshness to the wine if allowed to ferment.

Good luck, Roger Quinta do Placer

The reason I asked is because I imagined that one huge bag holding 24 pounds of crushed fruit has a lot less surface area than 6 smaller bags -- not sure if that's an issue when it's immersed in the fermenting liquid, but I wanted to make sure!

At what point in the process can I expect a true SG reading. Obviously before fermentation starts, but are there sugars in the crushed fruit that come out later during the process that can skew results?

With the saskatoon berries I need to boil them, but I will try this with the cherries. Can I put the frozen berries in the nylon bag and put that in the plastic primary to start thawing? Do I just sprinkle the enzyme and sugar over everything or do I need to mix them with water first?

Good to know!

Thanks for the response. I'm trying to cover all my questions now since I can't just mosey down to the store and pick up another batch should I screw one of these up like I could with kit wines.

Cheers, Harry

I don't think it matters. You will crush and mush the contents up anyway, and the yeast will find the sugar (if you ferment on the pulp).

If so, I don't think it would be significant. I did not ferment on the pulp. I allowed the berries to thaw in a container for 72 hours. I did sprinkle about 100 ppm of metabisulphite on the berries once they became cool. And yes, you can just add your pectic enzyme directly (I use liquid drops). It too will find its food. I mushed up the berries a couple times a day once they became soft. After the pectic enzyme does its work, you will have plenty of liquid on your hands. I did a prelim SG measurement on that. The sugar also seems to help break down the fruit, so I literally dumped it on top of the berries. Within a couple of hours, it had dissolved.

I did not take a "real" original gravity reading until I pressed the berries into liquid. That juice was my starting must, and I ameliorated that with more sugar, so the SG reading was taken then. I inoculated the juice with yeast and nutrient and fermented in a carboy.

While I cannot speak for the finished wine, I am amazed at the aroma and color. A 10% water dilution was enough to balance out the acid in the dry wine. I am currently oaking it and we'll see how it goes.

Good luck! Roger

Well, why do you think you have to press all solids in one go? You can divide them into as many "batches" as you like and press them separately. I ferment on skins without the bag, just like grapes, and then scoop out the solids into the pressing bag. Works great.

Pp