Winemaker Mag Summertime Blueberry WIne

Julie these look like excellent recipes. I saved them all and will trying them soon. I'll post when I have started them. Thanks Julie!!

Dan

Julie,

I haven't made wine from fruit other than grapes for many, many years. The last one I made was a very successful blueberry wine that was made with a batch of only blueberries and another that had been blended with white grapes. Both turned out very well, the colour of the former was a deep wine colour that cleared beautifully, the latter was a deep rose.

Good luck,

Glen Duff

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Julie wrote:

Julie, Thank you for posting the recipes. I picked 20 lbs this AM.

Jack Keller's recipes generally indicate 2 lbs. of blueberries to produce 1 gallon of wine and the Winemaker Magazine is heavier on the berries. Does anyone have an opinion on the extra pound of berries per gallon? Will it produce a more fruity wine?

- M

Yes, I have an opinion. I have made BB wine twice now; the first time was using a light concentration of about 3 lbs in one gallon. The second time I used 55 lbs of BB's to make 5 gallons of wine. So that's about 11 lbs to the gallon. The BB's alone produced roughly 3.5 gallons of juice!

The first wine was tasty, but very light-bodied. My notes after making it stated that I should try a much higher concentration next time. I would have gone for 100% but the awkward volume of juice didn't fit any of my containers, so I added 1.5 gal of water to make an even 5.

The second wine is about one year old now, and it is very flavorful and has a nice body. In no way would I consider it too much fruit. In fact, next time I will use 100% juice for sure.

In short, my opinion with blues is "the more fruit, the better."

You're most welcome. As I mentioned, the fellow at Winemaker Magazine was so kind. I have made four wines from blueberries in the past, and all were phenomenal. (the reason I called wmm is due to a posting mentioning these recipes). the best however were those from fresh fruit. 18Kg of fresh blueberries with 1-2 litres of water for mixing

- nothing more. I added approx 1.5kg of sugar to bring sg to 1.090 and the bottles sold for 20 dollars each...

Blueberry cherry was much softer, but I used far less fruit as well. I had 5kg blueberries and 1kg cherries for approx 4 gallons. Was softer but still tasty.

I have this bug up my butt about using grape concentrate or raisins. I always feel it's 'cheating' and not a true country wine if I'm using grapes or grape derivitives (juices, concentrate or raisins). When I can make a beautiful wine from non-grape fruits alone, I'm happy! That's why the winemaker mag recipes looked so good, and they stated that grape concentrate was optional. I'm looking forward to trying to port style first!

Where on earth did you pick that many blueberries????