island mist blackberry kit

started a batch of blackberry from a kit just now, my first attempt at one of these store kits. Supposed to be super easy and fast which is what i am looking for right now.

Threw it together and got a gravity reading of about 1.050 to start with 4 cups of added sugar. See if the yeasties want a little more to eat and give me a little more kick.


going camping with some friends and just wanted something fast and sweet for the girls to drink around a fire.


im gonna kinda use this as my notebook for the kit, so i should be updating it over the next month or so as things progress.

I've made 2 of their kits for my wife. My wife and friends all think it's great. I haven't added sugar, just straight up kit. They are sweet. If I have to drink wine, I prefer sweet to dry. Of course I'm sure there is some "good" dry wine I might like. I just haven't ran across it yet. I have third kit I need to get in the bucket.

big beautiful bubbles in less than 12 hours.

Those kits are hard to beat for "quick, ungodly sweet" drinks.

It really isn't blackberry, though. They are generally a generic white wine base with an artificially berry flavored gunk added after fermentation.

Doesn't really matter, chicks dig 'em.

It's funny. I dumped a big old bag of purple juice in the bucket, I think it tasted like berries but it was so sweet I couldn't be sure. It may have just been my imagination since thats what it's supposed to be. I looked at the ingrediants just now and shure enough it lists grape juice and or grape juice concentrates ....no mention of blackberry


Question:

Step 2 is supposed to take place in 5-7 days when I rack to my carboy...do I do that no matter what, or should I wait for fermentation to stop ( if it hasn't)

Go by time or by hydrometer reading, whatever is longer.

Those kits seem to finish very fast, so 5 - 7 days is not unusual at all.

As long as you keep your ferm temp around 72 degrees, 7 days will be fine. You're not stopping the fermentation at 7 days anyways.

You just added sugar without any more concentrate? I always add 1 Liter of Red Grape Concentrate, and the sugar, when I do the Black Cherry Island Mist kit and it always turns out amazing.

Walked past the bucket on my way out the door for work, and didn't see any more bubbling, which would be amazing only 6 day in. ...I'll hopefully get to check it later tonight

man work sucks....


anyway SG shows about .990 so I moved to stage 2 and racked it to a carboy.


smells like wine....snuck a sip...tastes like wine...so i'll let it sit for the requisite 10 days and move into stage 3...which i assume will yield the blackberry flavor, and ridicules sweetness as I add the rest of the packets.

amazing starting with basically juice and yeast how much sediment was leftover.

so the other day the SG read at about .988 so i moved into the final step.

Addition of the final packs including the "F" pack.

once all in i hit it with my drill for a bit, not too much foaming at all.

The SG reading afterwards was 1.010 which the directions said i should be at...weird.

smells like wine, tastes like wine....i think it made wine.

It has to set for another week before getting bottled, then i'll pass it along to the girls that usually drink the store bought sweet fruit wine and get a real taste test result.


i must say it is a real nice pretty dark purple color. looks good anyway.

Yep, you made wine!

It will go over very well.