Blackberry wine

[Wherryman13]

Had a blackberry wine on the go: started 24/8
3.5 lb blackberries
6 pints boiling water
3lb brewing sugar
Cooled and SG was 1.080
Teaspoon citric acid
Teaspoon pectolase
Teaspoon yeast nutrient
Wilko wine yeast
It was off and running in hours and stirred daily for 7 days
Strained and then
Transferred to DJ 01/09 fermented very slowly at that point onwards
On 06/09 took SG and 1.010 and tasted lovely. Not too dry so racked into another DJ
Question is do I now need to add anything to stabilise it and stop any slow fermentation as do not want it dry
Also is 24/8. To 06/09. Too quick ? The taste was lovely and the SG looked about right I think for wine?
Any advice welcome
Thanks

[oldbloke]

It's quite quick but not outrageous. If you're happy with the taste and gravity that's all that matters.
It almost certainly will continue to ferment slowly if you don't stabilise, so 1tsp potassium sorbate + 1 Campden tablet per gallon, then leave until clear enough to bottle.
If it doesn't clear in, say, a month at most, I'd use finings rather than filtering.
1080 to 1010 is only about 9.2% though

[mib]

Something doesn't quite add up in your recipe. 3 lb of sugar in a gallon gives an SG of around 1.100, plus the sugar in the blackberries probably makes another 0.010 or so. That makes your measured SG very dubious.

That's probably too much sugar... A good rule of thumb is no more than one kg bag of sugar per gallon.

You've made life easy for the yeast with no sulphite, pure dextrose and plenty of nutrient. I would have expected it to go of like a rocket and chew through the dextrose in no time. Then start to struggle at the end when it's just the fructose from the blackberries left, combined with the alcohol level at that point. It'll probably never make it through all of the sugar, but it's impossible to tell when it will actually stop.

If you want more consistent results, use less sugar, aiming for 1080. Just use normal table sugar. Let it ferment out to dry, stabilise, then add sugar to sweeten at the end. Oh, and try to figure out what's going wrong with your gravity measurements...

Wilcos do a stabiliser. It's a mix of sorbate and sulphite, so no need for extra campden. Just follow the instructions on the pot.

Matthew

[Wherryman13]

Cheers Matt
Couple of questions ..... Sulphite. Something I have missed adding? Or is that only found in normal sugar rather than brewing sugar?
2nd question. Done 3 gallons approx of elderberry and blackberry in a couple of FV's using brewing sugar anything I can do to rescue them as due to strain them Monday into DJ's
Cheers

[mib]

Cheers Matt
Couple of questions ..... Sulphite. Something I have missed adding? Or is that only found in normal sugar rather than brewing sugar?
2nd question. Done 3 gallons approx of elderberry and blackberry in a couple of FV's using brewing sugar anything I can do to rescue them as due to strain them Monday into DJ's
Cheers

Sulphite is short for sodium metabisulphate, or campden tablets. Used for all sorts of things in winemaking. It suppresses wild yeast and bacteria in musts. Absorbs free oxygen reducing oxidisation during racking and bottling. Removes chloramines from water. Prevents potassium sorbate from making wine smell odd. Turns lead into gold. And it's a preservative that makes your wine last longer.

At a minimum it should be added prior to bottling. Ideally at every other racking.

Don't worry about the brewing sugar. I simply meant that you don't have to use it, table sugar is fine in winemaking. If you're trying for high alcohol content then brewing sugar added at the start can be an issue. The only time I use it is when I'm trying to get very high alcohol, added after all the other sugar has been consumed.

The key thing is use less sugar. So many old recipe call for crazy amounts. Adding a lot of sugar at the start can work, just not very consistently. Your wine will be fine, you'll just struggle to precisely reproduce it next year.

Matthew

[oldbloke]

Something doesn't quite add up in your recipe. 3 lb of sugar in a gallon gives an SG of around 1.100, plus the sugar in the blackberries probably makes another 0.010 or so. That makes your measured SG very dubious.

That's probably too much sugar... A good rule of thumb is no more than one kg bag of sugar per gallon.

Oh I dunno. I like my wines about 14 or 15%, which generally requires around 1.2kg sugar plus the berries.

But yes, 3lb in a gallon is more than 1080 - at least 1110
3lb in a gallon is quite a lot. 3lb added to a gallon, maybe not so much, but still top end.

[Wherryman13]

Have about 1/3rd demijohn left and it's not bubbling , thinking of adding to some large pop bottles and adding about 2 tsp of sugar. --- if there is or is not any yeast left to have a go at this second lot of sugar to carbonate it and make it some kind of blackberry champers. Could I add a few grains of yeast to each bottle to guarantee a fizz?

[Pamula]

blackberry is often made with 8lb per gal, to get any kind of body you will need to boil about 5lbs of raisins or currants in 4pts of water and add when cooled, it should not require any additional yeast and the dried fruit will add around a kilo of sugar, I would add 1kg of sugar with the dried fruit when you boil it.

[oldbloke]

boil about 5lbs of raisins or currants in 4pts of water

I hope you meant 5oz...

I never boil them, just chop, wash in case of sulphites or oil, and add to fermenter

I find 4lb berries enough, but I do generally do a mix so at least 12oz would be rassies and there'd always be few oz of blackcurrant - makes any berry wine more winey

[goodolpete]

@WM13
if you disolve ordinary silver spoon sugar in a couple
of boiled pints of your water in a pan on a ring, get
it simmering, add your teaspoon of citric and simmer
for 30 min the liquid will turn straw coloured. This is
invert sugar, which is what the yeast eats. At 50p
a kilo at B&M ar the moment, much cheaper than
brewing sugar.
I have 5 kilos of blackberries in the freezer in 5
freezer bags. Next week I will thaw and freeze each
bag a couple of times, thaw it, put contents in a
metal sieve, press it with another metal seive, wash
solids with warm water until no more colour
extracted. All the extracted juice put in a PET with
pectolase and CT while my yeast starter gets up to
speed. When I make up to five gallons there are no
solids to skew the OG reading