blackberry cider

Hey everyone, i live in the Pacific Northwest and there is going to be an abundance of ripe blackberries in the next couple weeks, so my question is could anyone give me a basic recipe for a blackberry cider? I have made hard apple cider and apple wine before but never anything with fruit i actually picked. Could anyone give me a general recipe for a good drinkable somewhat sweet cider (5-8% alcohol), ideally without adding any extra sugars just blackberries (if possible). I'm assuming i would want to use some kind of ale yeast but any guidance on what kind would be great too.
thanks.

I've never done this before, but I would just use a wyeast california ale yeast or wyeast pacman yeast.

Sounds like fun. I sure wish I could easily get enough berries for that type of project.

The sugars in blackberries are 100% fermentable, so regardless of the yeast, you end up with a dry beverage. I use two pounds of blackberries, frozen and thawed per gallon of apple juice, Nottingham or Safale-05 and back-sweeten with Splenda.

I'm expecting a huge crop this year, both because of the weather and the small crop last year. I may try fermenting some berries without any apple juice.

david_42 said:

The sugars in blackberries are 100% fermentable, so regardless of the yeast, you end up with a dry beverage. I use two pounds of blackberries, frozen and thawed per gallon of apple juice, Nottingham or Safale-05 and back-sweeten with Splenda.
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I don't understand the logic here. If you put you a yeast like a ale yeast in there that have a low tolerance for alcohol, like only 7 - 8% and then have a huge starting gravity you will have more sugars than your yeast can ferment so it wont go dry it will hit that alcohol range and then stop. Maybe I'm wrong but that is what I always thought.

I dont think the limit for ale yeasts is that low, or any yeasts for that matter. Nottingham is one of the recommended yeasts for strong scotch ales and barleywines which are 9-11% And Im pretty sure yeasts in general are a little more resiliant than that even.