OK, so in the past i have been using Honey to provide the sugar in my blackberry wine / Mead. After a successful usage of brown sugar in a batch of yellow plum wine, I decided to go the same route with my Blackberry. I brought the Spec Gravity up to about 1.088, which is about as high as I could get it. I ran out of brown sugar so I used raw sugar and some Maple Syrup for the last few Brix. Once I organize my thoughts around the recipe, I will post it as an addition to this posting.
Cheers,
Heinz
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OK so it is now 60 hours after innoculation and I have just stopped the fermentation. If you have been reading previous posts you will know I am resisting the use of sulphites, this does create some problems with making anything other than a dry wine.
ReplyDeleteI have experimented with a number of solutions in the past including cold filtering, adding Brandy to bring up the alcohol level (In hopes of killing the yeast). In this batch I decided to pasturize the wine. This is the second time I have done this, the first was a little late in the process and I added some more honey to bring the sweetness up to my preference. Thus far that batch has not refermented and hasn't lost any of the original flavour.
The pasturization process is quite simple, I put the wine in a stainless pot and heated until it reached 150F Stirring constently. Once the temperature was reached, I removed the pot from the heat and put the lid on (To prevent any alcohol from evaporating). After 10 minutes of sitting, I moved the wne back into the secondary fermentation vessel's and sealed the holes with tinfoil (Reason being, the vacuum created by the cooling of the wine sucks the liquid from the airlock - I use Brandy). I also added about 1 1/2 Oz of Brandy per gallon of wine to further fortify the wine. It was already sitting at 15% but I just wanted to make sure I killed all the yeasty beasties.
Here is the basic recipe:
5 Cups Brown Sugar
10 Cups Frozen Blackberry juice (Pressed)
2 1/2 litres Boiling spring water
2 cups Steamed blackberry Juice I used a Steam juice extractor (See juice extraction blog)
3/4 cup maple syrup
2 packs of yeast & 1 tsp Nutrient
Spec Gravity 1.088
after 36 hours in the primary, I added 1 cup brown sugar and 1 cup sugar in the raw
at 48 hours the wine had reached 1.050 I racked into the secondary at this point.
at 60 hours and 15% Alc I pasturized. Within 10 minutes of returning the wine to the secondary, I noticed about 1 cm of sediment at the bottom of the jug and no fermentation bubbles. It seems the pasturization was a success.
About 2 weeks ago I bottled a couple of bottles from this batch. My initial thoughts were... "Egad this is sweet" More recently I bottled the rest, during that I realised there was still a little minor fermentation happening. This is probably a result of me topping off the jug with a little of the first batch of mead as well as some of the next batch. It actually tasted abit better. Still fairly sweet, the alcohol wasn't as previlent, it tasted more like a wine cooler, but with a 14% alcohol level. The little bit of fermentation also made for a nice champagne type bubble feel.
ReplyDeleteInteresting little thing happened on this batch. I went into the "cellar" last night to do a little racking. I noticed a nice fruit aroma before entering. Oh my, once I opened the door I found some colourful walls (Luckily they are tile) It turns out the plastic cork on one of the bottles had popped right off, leaving room for a bunch of wine to flow onto the floor and spray on the walls.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I need to examine this whole pasturization thing a little closer. I'm thinking maybe bringing the temperature up just a little higher and sealing it in a sealed jug until it cools.