Blackberry Cider

[LowOG]

Hey all,

It's almost blackberry season in Oregon, and since so many grow wild here I thought I'd try my hand at blackberry cider. I began thinking about doing this as a wine, but the amount of blackberry juice I'd need seemed daunting. I didn't want to backsweeten, so I'm going to try doing a steep and quick boil with some Honey Malt, then use EC-1118 to ferment. If I get around 30 gravity points from the malt then there should be enough complex sugars to leave it sweet right?

Here's what I have, I'm wondering is someone wiser then me can give it a look...

5-Gal
OG: 1.070
FG: 1.020

Fermentables:

Blackberry Juice (enough to get the gravity to 1.050)
Honey Malt (enough to get the gravity to 1.020, by my math that's about 0.15 lbs)

Yeast:

EC-1118


I'd steep the malt and do a quick boil, then add it to the blackberry juice and top off, carbed in bottles.

Thoughts/suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[sashurlow]

I can't comment on your particular recipe BUT... I have made some very successfull Raspberry cider mixing it with apple juice and raisins. My recipe was something like whole raspberries soaked in frozen apple conentrate (rehydrated) and chopped raisins. Rapberry wine recipes dilute them with water so I figured mixing apples, grapes and raspberries would produce a good safe result and the Raspberries definately were the overriding flavor.
Maybe someone could comment on why raspberry/blackberry wine recipes are diluted with water and have tannins added. It might be usefull to modify your recipe depending on why wine recipes don't use strait berry juice.

 

[bilder]

The berries are ripe down in Southern Oregon. Planning on some blackberry cider as well as some wine in the next week or so. The first picking went to jam so we will have to go back out and get more this coming weekend.

I am an off again/on again brewer, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but if I remember right the added sugar is to keep the brew on the sweet side and to keep some of the berry flavor from fermenting out completely. If you just use juice from the berries, you will end up with a very dry product. Plus you will need a LOT of berries for a straight ferment.

If I am wrong I am sure some of the more experienced guys will chime in.

 

[Tw0fish]

I'm completely missing it on your recipe directions (the problem is very likely mine!)

If I had those ingredients, I'd:
Let the yeast eat all of the malt sugars (primary ferment right thurr)
Rack it onto the blackberry juice, stir and bottle
Watch VERY CLOSELY because 6% abv is fully one third of what EC-1118 is capable of
and bottle pasteurize it when it's carbed to my liking.

That's what you were gonna do right

 

[LowOG]

Thanks everyone, to clarify, the only reason for the malt is to leave residual sweetness so that I can bottle carb something that isn't completely dry. I know the yeast will completely ferment the blackberry juice and the simple sugars from the malt, but there should be some maltotriose left behind that will make the cider sweet.

How much malt do I need to use to leave a noticeable amount of maltotriose and avoid the need to backsweeten?