Black&Blue Berry Wine

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Brewkowski

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I started planning on making Blackberry wine, but there just weren't enough to be found in the market so I improvised and went with a Blueberry with a few pounds of Blackberries.

About 3 gallons or so (made a little more to make up for loss, instead of topping off at each racking)

32oz Pure Blueberry Juice
36oz Blackberries (fresh)
10 lbs Frozen Blueberries
Lavlin 71B-1122 (I forgot to write it down but I think this was it)
8lbs of white sugar
1.25 gal of water
1 tsp Yeast Nutrient

-Dumped all berries, juice, and about 1.25 gal of water to make it to 4 gal mark on fermentation bucket and let sit for about 24 hours (mixture was way too cold to add yeast)
-Next day SG was 1.030@50 degrees
- Added 8lbs of sugar and waited a few hours to pitch yeast and nutrient (closer to 5 gal mark now), SG before pitching was 1.122
-Some active fermentation within 24 hours, punched down fruit and stirred every two days or so, temp around 62 most of the time.
-After 1 week, strained must off of fruit and into a new carboy, still lots of airlock activity at this time
-Active fermentation lasted around 3 weeks
-Tasted wine and I was surprised that it tasted as good as it did (first time wine) SG is now 1.011 (14.58% abv) so it should be pretty complete and it has some nice residual sugar to it, but needed a little acid for my taste to balance sweetness
-Transferred to new carboy and added 1 tsp Acid Blend, 2 tsp Pectic Enzyme, 1/2 tsp Potassium Metabisulfite. The carboy was a little too big so i put a squirt of CO2 on top of it, hopefully that will keep it safe for the next month or so before racking again.
-The intent was to make something with similar sweetness and acid level to a Spatlese or other such grape wine, and I think it will be close after the acid blend. Definitely needs more time to clear or clarifying, but I'll address that on the next racking or so.

--Just found some specs on Riesling Spatlese, I'll have to get a few test kits to check against these.
Varietal: Riesling
Alcohol: 7.5 - 8.0% by vol.
Total acidity: 8.0 - 9.0 gr./Ltr.
Residual sugar: 46 - 50 gr./Ltr.

Well, overshot the ABV by a few points, finished around 14.58%. Curious about the acid level, using titrate acid test kit it came out to like .15% and I guess that is way low, I read that fruit wine should be around .55%, but I think if I get close it will counter some of the sweetness. Maybe I'll add a little blueberry juice to calm it down, it was a little hot, but it is only 2 months old.
 
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