Home made blackberry wine

kitcat80

I thought I'd give this a go as we've got a glut of balckberries this year. I've allowed the blackberries to steep for a week: I put boiling water over them and have since added pectolase, red wine yeast and yeast nutrient. According to the instructions I've found on the internet, it should by now be really frothy and ready to go into a demi john. Although there are some bubbles on the top, it is not really very frothy at all. I'm worried that it's just been too cold where I've left the container and that I may have ruined it. I'm temtped to pour it into a demijohn with a load of sugar and see what happens, but don't want to waste time if I've ruined it. Has anyone tried this before? Any ideas gratefully received.:beer:

greyteam1959

Best thing to do is have a look at this Home Brew Forum.......
http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/
Full of loads of info & lots of really helpful people..........
HTH

Badrick

I notice you haven't added sugar yet, which is what the yeast feeds on to produce alcohol, I'd pour a 1kg bag in a 4.5 litre batch and it should burst into life., suggest you keep it in original container until it settles down as you may find it foaming out of the demijohn.

kitcat80

Thanks for this. The instructions I found said to add the sugar when putting it into the demi john but I'll try it now. Am I likely to need more yeast or will the existing stuff in there already get to work on the sugar? Sorry but I'm pretty new to this

Badrick

kitcat80 wrote: »

Thanks for this. The instructions I found said to add the sugar when putting it into the demi john but I'll try it now. Am I likely to need more yeast or will the existing stuff in there already get to work on the sugar? Sorry but I'm pretty new to this

Your most welcome.
If you've got some bubbles, it should be OK, you'll probably see it fizz as soon as you add sugar if yeast is active.
Expect to find a mould growing on surface after about 10 days, perfectly normal, just skim it off before stirring in sugar and again when you sieve mix into demijohn.
I'm assuming you know to put airlock on demijohn.

kitcat80

Yep I've bought a bubble one. Thanks for checking though as it's the kind of thing that I might have overlooked!