Blueberry

Hi,

Just picked tons of blueberries and would like to make a 5 gallon batch of wine.

I would love to hear of your favorite recipes or any tips you would like to pass along.

Doing a one gallon batch myself. Had a taste yesterday, so far - yummy. It's in the primary still but yesterday was the first day I couldn't detect any sweetness. It has a long way to go yet.

I was very surprised. They weren't exactly the berries I wanted. Purchased from a local small organic blueberry farm (Legacy blueberries). Some had some good taste but over all, they were more sour than flavorful. I was not happy (til later)

After a freeze and thaw, adding campden and letting them sit, I added sugar and water and then tested for acid. Couldn't read a PH test strip as they are dark red. Ran a TA test and it was only .30 TA.

It's been a bad spring here and after tasting the blueberries, I didn't think they would do well. They surprised me and made a great juice and fermented to a good wine taste. I did end up adding more acid blend, and 1/8 tsp tannin. Using Montrachet yeast.

I also added 1 tsp yeast nutrient and a little more than 1/8 tsp yeast energizer as I heard that blueberries are harder to get started. I had no problems.

When I added sugar, I added 1/2 less than the recipe - which is what I had previously done with a raspberry and blackberry. With the blueberries and 2.5 lbs sugar, the SG was 1.102 ...I was wanting 1.090.

So, as a suggestion, before you completely follow a recipe, test for PH, TA, and sugars ...it seems that blueberries vary greatly.

click on my recipes link thinger under my name

<-------- over there

I made an awesome batch of sneaky blueberry wine. Sneaky because its like yum... yum... drunk.

Thanks very much.

I use an iPod touch to read the forum and unfortunately I'm not able to see the link.

Any chance you cut and paste it in?

Thanks again

~~Ingredients~~
10# Regular Cane Sugar
10# Blueberries
4# Raisins
1pkt Redstar Montrachet Yeast (have used yeast cake left from the cherry pie wine as well)
1 tbls Energizer
1 tbls Nutrient
1.5tbl acid blend
0.5tsp pectic enzyme
Water to 5-6 Gallons
5-6gal ale-pale/brew bucket

~~Prep~~
1) Dissolved sugar, energizer, nutrient, acid blend, pectic enzyme in 3(ish) gallons of water.
2) blended blueberries in blender with a little bit of water to keep them moving around and placed in a nylon brewing bag. Place in primary along with any juice that seeps through during the process
3) blended raisins in blender with enough warm water to cover them and put in another nylon bag. Don't worry with the water they won't stick together. Place in primary along with any juice that seeps through during the process.
4) Started yeast in mason jar of combined solution at ~85F.
5) Pitched yeast into brewbucket and added water to bring to 6 gal

~~Primary~~
1) Sat in an Ale Pail on my kitchen counter for two weeks. Regular room temp 70F-75F

2) Stirred once every day or every other day for a week.

~Secondary~~
1) remove nylon bags, squeeze as much juice as you reasonably can, and discard pulp.

2) rack to 5 gal secondary. I used a blue plastic water jug that you can just get from lowes or walmart.

3) Continued fermenting at 70F-75F until bubbling has almost completely ceased and clear

Thanks for sharing your recipe, much appreciated.

Just wondering if you used campden tablets in the beginning?

I use campton to kill off the wild yeast before I add my yeast. I have been using EC-1118 and fermenting to 990 from 1100 and then slightly back sweetening. I adjust my acid to get 60% for blueberry wine. I also freeze my berries a few weeks to break down the cell walls more even though I use pectic enzyme.

Hi boo boo

How do you determine 60% acid.

What percent of alcohol does that leave you with.

I will back sweeten as well. I would like to have a medium-dry finish

My blueberries are freezing. Cant wait to get the batch going.

How long from beginning until you drank your first bottle?

Thanks for your help

a) I don't remember which recepie I got the acid amount from.

b) I forgot to add it but I added 2 crushed campden tablets and let is sit a bit before pitching my yeast

I use a titration kit to measure acid level, but I usually do that at the end to finish my wine off.
I usually get around 12 to 14% abv

Check this out http://www.grapestompers.com/articles/measure_acidity.htm

And I use this http://brewcraft.com/recipies/blueberry.htm recipe for the most part.