Bilberry Wine

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Sye

Bilberry Wine

Post by Sye » Fri Jul 01, 2011 5:59 pm

Hi everyone, was out and about today in Ramscombe and Great Wood, SWMBO spotted some bilberrys.

Managed to pick about 1lb of them before my old back started giving me jip.

Well we have taken the plunge and adapted a web recipe a bit, I hope it turns out okay. I'll update this post at each stage :)

Ingredients:
4 litres boiling water
1kg white sugar
2 lemons
1tsp citric acid
400g sultanas
500g fresh bilberries
1½ tsp pectolase
1tsp Yeast Nutrient
Pack of Young's General Purpose Red Wine yeast
1 tsp of Bentonite
1 crushed Campden Tablet

Stage One: 02/07/11
Dissolve 1kg of white sugar in 4 litres of boiling water and add 1tsp of citric acid. Pour over the chopped up sultanas, bilberry's and zest and juice of the two lemons. Allow to steep for 24 hours. (Might have been a good idea to mash the bilberry's a bit because they all seem to be floating on the top)
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Stage Two: 03/07/11
Dissolved 1½ tsp pectolase and 1 tsp Yeast Nutrient in ½ a cup of warm boiled water and added to FV, stirred and pitched Yeast, sealed FV and air locked.
SG = 1102
Stir once everyday for at least a week

Stage Three: 11/07/11
Racked off through a fine sieve into a demijohn (only managed to get about 3.75 liters) and leave to ferment out completely
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Stage Four: 23/07/11
Mixed 1 tsp of Bentonite with 200ml of boiled cooled water and added to demijohn and gave a good swirl.

Stage Five: 24/07/11
Added 1 crushed Campden tablet to demijohn and swirled again.

Stage Six: 30/07/11
Now the wine should be clear. Took a hydrometer reading and was at FG= 1000. Bottled wine into fliptop 750ml glass bottles (got 3 and a half bottles in total)
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Sye

Re: Bilberry Wine

Post by Sye » Mon Aug 01, 2011 10:54 am

We got 3 full 750ml bottles from this batch which we will age a while and a further 1/2 a bottle which ended up getting drunk last night.

This came out brilliant, not to dry with a nice sweet edge to it even for such a young wine it's very very drinkable. Lovely smell and taste of the bilberries.
Definitely worth the hassle picking them. This is IMHO just as good as shop bought plonk any day.

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