first time brewing and working with blackberries.

[monkmith]

i've been getting more and more blackberries each year and normally hand them out, but this year a family member sent me a small wine brewing kit so i guess i'm trying that now... but i've got some questions, and some worries that i hope people here can point out where i'm right/wrong. figured i'd just list out my thoughts and process and see if anyone can correct me. i will bold questions i find most important right now.

the kit came with a primary fermentation bucket graduated to 1 1/2 gallons though to the tip top its likely 2 gallons. a secondary fermentation glass jug (carboy?) listed as a gallon but probably with a bit more head space. several packets of no rinse cleaner, sodium carbonate peroxyhydrate. 50 campden tablets (potassium metabisulfite). pectin enzime, wine tannin, yeast nutrient, acid blend, potassium sorbate, and some brewing yeast. along with all the chemicals it came with tubing, two air locks, a hops bag, and a hydrometer. it also came with a manual which really reads more like a history of wine making and a poor approximation of how the process works, hence the questions.

i guess to start with i'm wondering about the chemicals used for sterilizing. the SCP is essentially crystalized hydrogen peroxide which will kill any microbe, so i know it cant go in the wine solution (must?). campden tablets are the 'softer' sterilizer that actually do go in the wine must. but i need a stock solution of sterilizer for things like a mixing spoon or funnels/tubing so would i make that with the SCP or a campden tablet? i'm guessing campden but i figured i'd make sure.

from there i take my 4 pounds of frozen blackberries, toss them in the primary fermenter and top it off the the one gallon mark with boiling water. boiling because they're previously washed but they came from my yard and i'd like to defrost and pasteurize them i'd think? question, should i put the berries in the hops bag to act as a seed/sediment collection bag at this point? to the hot must i'll dissolve the sugar (somewhere around 3 pounds), then let it cool down to room temp and add pectin enzyme, and campden tablet. let it sit for a day, take a sample to measure with hydrometer, then add the yeast/yeast nutrient/acid blend. pop the top on the bucket, put on the air lock filled with campden sterilized solution and let sit for 7 days, remembering to mix it every day.

after 7 days pull out the hops bag with berry bits in it then pour off the bucket into the glass carboy, pop on air lock and let sit for a couple weeks?

anyway, this is the general process i think i should follow, anyone willing to chime in and tell me where i'm screwing up?

 

[Erik the Awful]

"Ask two wine makers and you'll get three opinions."

Don't over think it. I have a blackberry bramble in my back yard that I use for wine every year. I crush my fruit to extract the juices (blending works as well) and then I simmer the juice on the stove for about an hour to help break it down. Alternatively you can add boiling water, but whatever you do, don't boil the juice. I'll add the sugar while it's hot. Once it cools enough to go into my primary buckets, I dump it in and add 1 crushed campden tablet per gallon. Twenty hours later I'll add pectic enzyme, and four hours after that I'll add the yeast. I let the wine stay in primary, stirring the cap under daily. Whenever the cap stops rising back to the top I rack it to secondary, adding bentonite to help clarify it. Every two months I check on it and rack it again if need be. When it finally looks like it's done I'll add sparkolloid and let it sit for two weeks before bottling.

 

[monkmith]

thanks for the tips and the reminder not to overthink it.

after 8 days of fermentation i noticed that the water lock wasn't bubbling so i figured it was time to transfer. cleaned everything and took a specific gravity reading, originally before yeast it was 1.12, now its 1.0, so that's ~15.7% which is way higher then i was expecting to be honest. its very dry, cant really taste blackberry beyond that alcohol.

made a mess squeezing the berry pulp dry, think i'll find a different way to do it next time. also made a mess siphoning transferring to a gallon carboy. ended up with a filled to the neck carboy and about 250ml of leftover which is sitting in a mason jar in the fridge. i guess i just let it sit in the closet for a few months to let sediment fall out? i might try sparkolloid but to be honest i'm not looking to start more wine at this point so i'm happy to just let everything sit for months and clear up on its own.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hiya monkmith and welcome to this forum. Unless you have a fruit press, (and I don't) you are always likely going to be making a mess when you press the fruit. Straining bags (you can find these for a few dollars at paint stores) allow you to collect the fruit before you hand press them, and you might use old beach towels to place under and beside your bucket.
As for sanitizing your equipment, my recommendation is K-meta (the basic compound Campden tabs are made from. Despite what it may say on the bottles or packs of K-meta, I think you can fully sanitize carboys and hoses and the like using 3 T per gallon of water. To kill wild yeast on your fruit, you can use the same compound at 1/4 t in SIX gallons of water and this is the same concentration you would use to add to your wine each time you rack to minimize oxidation.

Note , however, that it is unclear how "stable" the diluted K-metabisulfite is. It sanitizes (and kills wild yeast) because it produces sulfur dioxide gas, and so if the container is not sealed the gas will escape into the atmosphere. What you really always want to do is make enough solution for your immediate needs.

If you intend to back sweeten, that's the same concentration you use together with K-sorbate to stabilize the wine or mead (by both preventing any virile cells from budding (reproducing) while killing the less robust cells) ... so, in my opinion, using K-meta gives you a four-fer rather than anything that brewers might use which is for their needs a single use.
Good luck. This is a great hobby.