wild ferment blackberry wine

[GeneDaniels1963]

As I have stated on here before, I do most of my wines with wild ferment. That includes blackberry, raspberry, muscadine, etc. My first batch this year had a OG of 1.115, with a potential ABV of 15.5%.

But after racking it only got down to 1.023 and stopped. I was going to add some Red Star wine yeast, but decided to wait a bit. I was racking my second batch and just put 6 oz of the newer wine in the old. It restarted ferment immediately!

So I found another way to keep my ferments wild, even when one of them gets stuck.

BtW, everyone loves my wild ferment berry and muscadine wines. They cannot believe how complex and aromatic they are. One year of aging makes them amazing! I hope to keep a bottle of two back for two years, but it is hard to do!

 

[RPh_Guy]

Sounds awesome!
Care to elaborate on your process?

 

[GeneDaniels1963]

I try to keep things simple.

5-6 lbs berries (1/2 frozen, 1/2 fresh so we have good, active yeast)
mash berries
dissolve 40 oz honey and 25 oz sugar into 1 gal water
gives a OG of about 26 or 27 BRIX (1.11)
remove and freeze 1 pint of must for backsweetening

all goes into a 2 gal ferment bucket, and cover with cheese cloth. I stir it 2-3 times daily until i hit 15 BRIX (1.03). Then it goes into a 1 gal dimijohn. I ferment until done, stabilize and backsweeten with 2 cups original must into 1 gal finished wine.

Usually I have 2 qts left over. One will be pretty clear, the other heavy with sediment from sqeezing the berries. when I fill the dimijohn, so I let them ferment out in qt jars with a homemade airlock.

Last year I saved the leftovers in quarts and mixed them with my fall raspberry wine (same basic recipe). It was very good.

I just uncorked a black muscadine last night that was made the same (but 8-10 lbs fruit). It was almost like eating fresh muscadines, but with a 13% ABV kick ;-)