Recipe; Elderberry & Blackberry Wine

Some days ago I said I would post the recipe for the Elderberry & Blackberry Rosé (the one that turned out be a very acceptable red rather than a Rosé). As it was a second run on the fruit and lees I have to post the recipe for the wine that so kindly gave us its ingredients for the rosé!

Elderberry & Blackberry Wine 

Recipe (3 Gallons)

2.7 Kg Elderberries
2.75 Kg Blackberries
2.6 Kg Sugar
Campden
Pectolase
2 Teaspoons Citric Acid
1/4 Teaspoon Tartaric Acid
Yeast Nutrient
Water to 3 Gallons
Sauternes Yeast

edit: OG 1090, FG 999 gives 12.4% ABV

Method

Remove all the stalks etc from your berries and wash them. Drain and tip into your fermenting bin. Mash them, add enough water to get them covered/floating, throw in 3 crushed campden tablets, stir well, cover and leave overnight.

Next day add 4 litres of boiling water and mash again, then add pectolase, stir, cover and leave overnight.

Next day add all your other ingredients and measure the gravity. Mine was 1090. 2 days of soaking mashed berries should have released most of their sugars into solution. Freezing berries is a good way to go as this will pop a lot of their skins so you wont have to mash as much. Now give it a good sloshy stir and add your yeast. Stir once or more daily for a few days and then remove the fruit after about a week and move the wine to your secondary fermenter(s). Remember to keep the fruit and lees tho', 'cos you want to do a second run! Rack degas, stabilise etc as and when needed. This wine did not need fining or filtering.

Thoughts

This is a great wine if you like to forage. Both the berries are abundant and easy picking in the UK, and you should be seeing berries forming or ripening all around you now. Get out there and pick 'em. You can wash and freeze them for winemaking, it does no harm at all, and hence save them all up til the season ends and make one huge batch. The higher proportion of elderberries you use the more robust red wine character you'll get. Swing more to the Blackberries and you'll end up with a more rosé like character.

Recipe; Blueberry & Cranberry Rosé

So I have 4 empty DJ's and two empty 5 gallon fermenting bins, and I'll be bottling some wine soon, all of which means I have enough capacity to get some wine on the go again!

Recipe (3 Gallons)

3 Litres Reg Grape Juice
3 Litres Blueberry & Cranberry Juice
2 Kg Sugar
Nutrient
2 Teaspoons Pectolase
3 Teaspoons Tartaric Acid
Gervin D Yeast

And now a gratuitous picture.

I made some movie clips of the whole process, which I'll edit together sometime. In doing so I forgot to take snap shots. By the time I remembered the washing up was done ... so that's why you have an image of 6 cartons of upside down juices ... all rinsed and ready for recycling (I'll just polish my halo :-) )

Method

Basically chuck everything into your sanitised fermenting vessel, make up to 3 gallons, measure the gravity and add a sugar or water to get it where you want it. This recipe came in at 1077, I'm happy with that so I made no adjustment. Give the whole lot a really good sloshy stir to get some air dissolved. Chuck in the yeast, cover it up, stir sloshily at least once daily for a few days then follow your normal procedure of moving to secondary vessels, racking, degassing, stabilising etc etc.

Thoughts

This is a light wine, it'll be ready to drink in as little as 6 weeks. Tho perhaps 8 is a more reasonable expectation. But as with all wine it will improve with age and you'll notice that week on week with wines like these (2 litres of juice per gallon and OG 1070-1080).

I've made an instructional vid (aimed at beginners) for starting this wine. Clicky to watch 

Edit 19th Sept 2010: Final gravity turned out to be 997, meaning 10.9% ABV.

Enjoying a Beverage

.... and while doing the racking etc of the elderflower wine what better accompaniment than a glass or two of wine. I popped the cork on a bottle of Elderberry & Blackberry. Made from the second run on the fruits and lees - reminds me that I must post the recipe and method. It was intended to be a rosé, but turned out to have more body than expected and can hold it's own as a red. Here's a couple of piccies, the first shows the clarity quite nicely, the second tries to show the colour.

3 Gallons of Busy-ness

Finally got around to racking what I call the Original Elderflower Wine. So that's the one with early addition of flowers (primary), acid blend, Sauternes yeast and a little tannin. Gratuitous pic follows

Then I degassed, first by drill/whizzstick (pic below) but also but shaking/swirling by hand.

Finally stabilised and put the DJ's away to be forgotten about for a few months.

Not Slack, Just Away

We've been to a wonderful festival called Buddhafields, in some fields near Taunton. Had a force 7-8 gale on Thursday night! But the festival spirit was unaffected and a great time was had by all. This, of course, means that I haven't been blogging for a week. It also means I've barely been drinking. As you might expect with a name like Buddhafields, drinking was not encouraged. So we took a two bottles of wine with us to drink with dinner. We only opened one, and we didn't even finish that one 'cos the atmosphere was so wonderful anyway that we just corked the bottled after a glass each and then forgot all about it until we were packing up.

Anyway, brewing normality will now resume, and I'll be adding plenty of recipes over the next 4 weeks.

In the meantime you might want to check out some of the wonderful things that we enjoyed at this festival (they also get around plenty of others). Paradox (you'll need a facebook account, then search on "Paradox Brighton"), Lost Horizons, Triban, MMM Massage, Permaculture.

Enjoying the Process

Wow, what a great surprise lay in store for me tonight. Around 2 weeks ago I added pineapple to my Rumtopf, and a couple of nights ago some apricot. Today I picked our blackcurrent bushes clean, me and Mrs CW ate some as fresh as they come, and then I put the rest in the Rumtopf. On opening the lid tho I was met with a heavenly fruity smell. It just makes me want to tuck in to the contents immediately ... but no, I'll wait, this is gonna be a midwinter festive treat!