Heirloom Raspberry Wine

[tokerlund]

When my mom told me this summer that she had roughly 30-40 lbs of frozen raspberries from 10-15 years ago when my grandparents were still alive and expert raspberry growers, I got excited.

I know they are old, some from 1998. But, I figured I would just be out time, and sugar. I really wanted to make something good as a memory to my grandparents. I often think of them and all the knowledge lost as I attempt to grow berries half as good as they did.

So I just racked it over for the 3rd time after 4 months. For the 2nd time there was no sediment and the FG read 1.000. The kicker here is that the wine is sweet. Like really sweet. It reminds me of drinking some of that commercial cider that is like 1.020 or 1.030.

I decided to say what the heck and bottle it up. I have heard that waiting for at least 2 years for a raspberry can yield good results.

Any ideas on what might be the cause of making this so sweet?

 

[jensmith]

Wait maybe a year, I found that to be plenty aged for my taste. If you have plenty of bottles try one every three months or so.
I do find 1.000 to be sweet. Usualy rasberry has enough of a bite that it will not taste sweet at 1.000. My only two guesses as to the cause would be very low acid levels or yeast still in suspention. Not much you can do after bottleing however.
If still sweet whenever you open the next bottle dilute it with a dry white wine as you drink it. Or vodca if you want a kick
Old frozen food is often more edibel then you think! Always worth a bite before tossing or a brew!!!

 

[WVMJ]

Would you think that giving us a little information like what was your starting gravity, did you use yeast, how much sugar you added etc might help answer your question a little bit? So how did the berries taste, were they freezer burnt, bleached out? Is your grandparents berry patch still going so you could get some of their bushes? Besides being sweet is there any berry taste? Did they still have any acid to balance out the sweetness? WVMJ

WVMJ

 

[tokerlund]

OG: 1.100

Didn't taste the berries before brewing, they were in bricks.

The wine has some berry flavor, it tastes like sweet raspberries. I followed a Jack Keller recipe, so ~20lbs of berries (a little higher than Jack's recommendation), 7+ lbs of sugar (give or take) and then some tannin, enzyme, nutrient and campden tablets scaled up to 3 gallons. I used Montrachet yeast and it bubbled away at about 65* or so in the basement on the ceramic tile. Racked it once a month for three months until bottling it just last weekend.


3-4 lbs fresh red raspberries
2-1/4 lbs finely granulated sugar
1/2 tsp acid blend
1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
1/8 tsp grape tannin
7-1/2 pints water
1 tsp yeast nutrient
1 crushed Campden tablet
Champagne wine yeast