Blackberries (or brambles as we call them round these parts) are excellent for country fruit wine. Your quantities sound about right. You will need the sugar (more = better), and some tannin. But apart from that just treat it as you would any fruit wine.
Another tip: I usually pick and freeze them over the six weeks of the season, and then make the wine later.
I appreciate the advice, but as Ceasar said "Alea iacta est"... today is the end of the second week of fermentation, not sure if I can draw a fine line between primary and secondary though.
I decided to go with 3.5lbs sugar per gallon, so I used a total of
- 23.125 lbs blackberries
- - - Mashed, frozen, thawed, then juiced down to ~10qts juice with minimal pulp
- 17.5 lbs sugar
- 2.5 tsp acid blend
- 1.5 tsp tannin
- water to make 5.5 gal
(also added yeast nutrient and pectic enzime - but those really don't contribute to flavor, correct?)
I Pitched the first yeast (White labs WLP 720) 2 weeks ago today, the OSG was 1.17 (yes I know, DAMN high) unfortunately with that level of sugar, it acted like a preservative, and the yeast had trouble starting. The next afternoon, I pitched an additional two packages of Red Star Premier Cuvee, and fermentation finally kicked in in earnest. As the fermentation kicked in, there was a significant amount of foam and floating pulp, which I punched down and stirred 3 - 4 times a day.
I had to travel for work starting on day 8 through today. As of day 5, it was still fermenting heavily, so I know it wasn't NEARLY out of primary, but I was concerned about the OSG... looking back, I think I used too much fruit for the volumes (adding additional un-accounted for sugar) so I decided to add a bit more water (3 pints) to drop the SG a bit, and give the yeast a better opportunity to convert more of the sugars.
- OSG = 1.17 (extrapolated to theoretical value of 1.165 considering the addition of water on day 5)
- SG day 5 before water = 1.115
- SG day 5 after water = 1.11
- SG Delta due to additoional water, 0.005
Skipping forward to today, the SG is now 1.065 and fermentation is still cooking along (albeit, much slower than before) and while there is no more foam with pulp floating on the surface (I skimmed the floating pulp on day 7 - I was concerned about it drying while I was traveling and did not want it to become a home for stray bacterial cultures) I still have fines from the pulp floating in suspension. Hopefully more of these will fall out to the collection bottle at the bottom of the conical fermenter. It has been going for 2 weeks, probably going to clean the collection bottle, and shift from the opaque plastic to a glass collection vessel so I can actually see what the leaves are looking like to minimize wasting product. On the upside, because I juiced the berries, I didn't introduce any seeds or seed bitterness to the must.
My plan is to let it keep cooking along until the yeast can take no more, and if it is still to sweet, I might try something with higher alcohol tolerance to drop the sugars, maybe a Lalvin EC 1118?
Using the lessons I am learning now, Next year I plan to:
1. Use a starter when I pitch the yeast
2. Only use half the sugar to start primary, let it ferment down, then add more sugar later as needed
3. Use a hops bag or something similar to control the pulp fines
Any thoughts on what I have done so far, or suggestions to improve this years outcome would be very much appreciated, as well as thoughts on my plans for next year. Thank you in advance!