It's fall and there are plenty of fruit out there waiting to be picked, dried, jammed, eaten fresh, and fermented into alcohol!

This is my first year making Blackberry Wine!

I'll preface this post by saying that the un-aged wine already tastes amazing.

I am a little late in delivering this post because the prime blackberry season has already past here. But no worries because you can apply a similar method to create wine out of just about any fruit.

I put aside these delicious blackberries for wine. I was picking a very ripe patch and didn't care that they were mushing in my fingers or my picking bucket because they were going to become wine!

Weigh Out the Berries

In this batch of wine I weighed out 6lb of berries. This will make at least 1 gallon of wine.

Mash the Berries

This is the fun part, you get to smash up those berries anyway you like :) This step is optional but recommended to get more berry flavor infused into the wine.

Add Heated Water

Add Water to your berries. In this case I added just over a gallon of water to my 6.2 lb of berries. You could pour hot water over your berries or you could do what I did and heat it up with the berries in it. You don't need to bring it to a boil, just get the water hot. This will help infuse the juice into the water.

Primary Fermentation - Part 1

Now comes what is called primary fermentation or the first stage of the fermentation process. What does it involve? Let the mashed fruit sit in the water with a lid on it for 1-3 days depending on the temperature. Hotter ambient temperature = faster fermentation.

Yes, that's all you do! Just sit it there and let it begin to ferment all on its own. The fermentation will utilize wild yeasts from the fruit and also from the air.

The juice and fruit mixture will start to bubble softly and if you taste it after a day or two you will notice it is fermenty.

Primary Fermentation - Part 2

After fermenting with wild yeasts for a day or two its time to strain the fruit out and add sugar and yeast.

1. Use a large strainer and strain out the pulp and seeds from the juice

2. Add sugar to the juice and stir it in (I used about 2 lb of sugar for this batch)

3. Sprinkle wine yeast on top of the juice (about 1/8 tsp would be enough)

4. Cover and let sit for 7-10 days

Here is the wine with the yeast recently added and starting to multiply.

Once the sugar and yeast are added, things really get going! Notice I left some space at the top of the pot just in case it foams up there is less chance that it will bubble up and over the edges. Yes this has happened to me before :)

These blackberries are so sweet they don't need as much sugar to ferment into wine as other fruits (which might need up to 5-6 lbs sugar per gallon of water). Actually technically no sugar is needed, but I want a strong wine and a strong alcohol content helps ensure long shelf life.

After the first few days keep a close eye on the brew. When the bubbles start fading and the fermentation starts subsiding it is a good time to begin the second fermentation.

Secondary Fermentation

My blackberry wine fermented hard and strong for about 10 or 11 days before it simmered down. I tasted it and whew! Strong with alcohol and not too overly sweet which tells me the yeast ate up most of its food... just what I wanted.

Time to start the secondary fermentation which means cutting off the oxygen supply while the wine continues to ferment at a more gentle and slow rate. We don't want oxygen because that can lead to oxidation and wine turning to vinegar - vinegar spores are in the air everywhere just waiting ;)

I am using 1 gallon glass jug and I pour in the wine into the jug with a funnel. At this stage you could do another filtering of sediment using cheese cloth or a fine strainer. But if not no worries, because when you rack the wine later you will leave that stuff out of your wine.

I ended up with a little over 2 1/2 gallons of wine. Less than that will get bottled because I'll be racking the wine a few times and excluding debris which will reduce the overall volume. Depending how much I rack off, these jugs may eventually be combined.

The jugs are fitted with airlocks (rubber stopper and airlock filled partway with water) which release gas emitted by the fermentation but doesn't allow oxygen back in.

The wine jugs find a nice cozy place out of the way, not too hot and not too cold to continue fermenting slowly. Typically the secondary fermentation is about 6 months with 1 or more rackings during that time to clear off sediment and reintroduce oxygen which keeps the fermentation a good thing in case it has subsided early.

After the secondary fermentation finally comes bottling.

I'll be glad to share posts on racking and bottling in the future!

Recipe

1. 6lb blackberries
2. 1 gallon water
3. 2 lb sugar
4. Wine yeast

Cheers!

I saved some of the thicker pulpier juice at the bottom of my pot as I was pouring it into the jugs.. a nice reward for my efforts. Wow was it delicious! After 10 days of fermentation it was already enough to get me drunk :)

I look forward to tasting it again when I rack the wine and again when I bottle it to see how the fermentation has changed the flavors.

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