Homemade wine

Oscar

Please excuse my ignorance but are blackberries brambles? If so I would be interested in the wine recipe too. I have just come back from picking a Kilo and was considering making jam but wine is more up my street!

GooeyBlob

My method is quick and easy, though there are other ways which get a slightly better juice extraction.

The equipment I use consists of a demi-john and airlock, a sieve, a funnel and a potato masher. The ingredients are 3 or 4 lb of blackberries, a 1 kilo bag of sugar, 1 tsp of yeast and 1 tsp of pectolase (optional, this just clears the wine). Wilko sell all the equipment you need.

The yeast and pectolase go into a sterilised demi-john, then I dissolve the bag of sugar in a little water then cover and allow to cool. While this is cooling I stick the funnel in the top of the demi-john with the sieve on top, rinse the blackberries and crush them with the potato masher, then pour the juice into the demi-john through the sieve. The pulp goes into the sieve, and I pour the sugar solution into the demi-john through the pulp in the sieve to extract more juice. The demi-john is then topped up with tapwater, again passed through the pulp in the sieve, and then the airlock is fitted and the demi-john is left in a warm dark place for about 6-8 weeks. Makes about six bottles.

Of course, you can replace some or all of the blackberries with other ingredients. I find that the more ingredients I use the better the wine.

tiff

Oscar wrote: »

Please excuse my ignorance but are blackberries brambles? If so I would be interested in the wine recipe too. I have just come back from picking a Kilo and was considering making jam but wine is more up my street!

Yes, blackberries are the same thing as brambles.

tiff

GooeyBlob wrote: »

My method is quick and easy, though there are other ways which get a slightly better juice extraction.

The equipment I use consists of a demi-john and airlock, a sieve, a funnel and a potato masher. The ingredients are 3 or 4 lb of blackberries, a 1 kilo bag of sugar, 1 tsp of yeast and 1 tsp of pectolase (optional, this just clears the wine). Wilko sell all the equipment you need.

The yeast and pectolase go into a sterilised demi-john, then I dissolve the bag of sugar in a little water then cover and allow to cool. While this is cooling I stick the funnel in the top of the demi-john with the sieve on top, rinse the blackberries and crush them with the potato masher, then pour the juice into the demi-john through the sieve. The pulp goes into the sieve, and I pour the sugar solution into the demi-john through the pulp in the sieve to extract more juice. The demi-john is then topped up with tapwater, again passed through the pulp in the sieve, and then the airlock is fitted and the demi-john is left in a warm dark place for about 6-8 weeks. Makes about six bottles.

Of course, you can replace some or all of the blackberries with other ingredients. I find that the more ingredients I use the better the wine.

You make it sound so simple, now I know the basics I might have a go. Have put a request on freecycle for some demijons. Someone said it works out about 12p a bottle (not using a kit, but free wild fruit). That would be some saving as we use about 3 bottles of wine a week, usually at £3 a bottle.

meanmarie

I am SO jealous, the blackberries here are brown and wizened in most places, will have to do a trawl of at least several fields to come up with enough to make a gallon of wine, but I think that might be my chore for to-morrow, might have to mix them with haws, which are in abundance...just to ruin your evening, my late father used to say that lots of haws denoted a bad winter ahead!

Marie

angie_loves_veg

GooeyBlob wrote: »

Of course, you can replace some or all of the blackberries with other ingredients. I find that the more ingredients I use the better the wine.

Sorry to be a pedant....:rolleyes: but....

Do you mean that the greater the quantity of berries you use, the better the wine, or the greater the variety of ingredients you use?

Austin_Allegro

I'd like to try this. Would boiling the berries help extract more juice? Can you do anything with the pulp?

GooeyBlob

angie_loves_veg wrote: »

Sorry to be a pedant....:rolleyes: but....

Do you mean that the greater the quantity of berries you use, the better the wine, or the greater the variety of ingredients you use?

The greater the variety of ingredients, the better the wine. I used to be really lazy and make wine in a 5-gallon beer tub. I'd use 5 kilos of sugar, then buy 5 different cartons of fruit juice (pure juice from concentrate, not those juice drinks) and make 5 gallon batches of white wine with that. Some of the blends worked out very nicely, though I never wrote any of the recipes down. As I recall, orange, pineapple and grapefruit worked well.

Yes, you can boil the berries if you really want and this will extract more juice, but you'll get a very different taste.

As for the pulp I've just made a batch of blackberry wine and re-used the pulp for a second gallon of orange juice wine. I've not tried this before but it pays to experiment and I want to see what sort of a rose this will make. When I've finished with the pulp I usually take it back to the woodland where I picked the original berries, then bury it close to the original bushes when I go to pick some more. That way some of the seeds germinate and there are more fruit bushes every year.

LOOYATES

Gooey blob, i made some today, how long does this need in the bottle till its nice???? thank you, patsy:beer:

LOOYATES

Just 1 more question flower sorry to be a pain but when you made your wine in a 5 gallon beer tub, was it the type with the tap on the bottom? i have one of those but what about sediment? does it not block the tap.
once again thanks for your time,