I am mostly a beer brewer and well set up for that equipment wise. I have fermentation temperature control if necessary, it will be 78 degrees ambient temperature in my house. Is it okay to ferment a blueberry wine at this temperature, or should I use my fermentation fridge that I normally use for the beer? I'd rather just keep it in the house and have room for fermenting beer if I can get away with it. I know that when brewing beer the fermentation temps can skyrocket and there's no way I'd get away with brewing acceptable beer at room temperature but maybe wine is different? Is it okay to use plastic buckets and carboys for this? Also, is there a good guide somewhere for fruit wine making techniques? I'd love to have some reading under my belt before I attempt this.
New to winemaking - blueberry wine recipe/advice?
- Thread starter Jim311
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bernardsmith
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Hiya Jim 311 - 78F sounds a good bit higher than you want to ferment the fruit. I tend to ferment my country wines towards the lower end of the range that the yeast is comfortable with. I also prefer to use a bucket as my primary - loosely covered to keep out flies and dirt and so easily accessible for me to stir a couple of times a day a) to incorporate air b) to remove CO2 and c) to make sure that the fruit is always kept well irrigated and so bacteria and mold free.
As to a "good guide" for country wine making I like CCJ Berry's books and Jack Keller's website is also good although I tend to think he likes to dilute his fruit musts with water rather than use the juice expressed from the fruit.
Never any need to use heat - wine ain't beer and you are making wine - not jam, but you might want to add pectic enzyme to the fruit to help break down any pectins; you might want to use K-meta 24 hours before you pitch the yeast to remove any competition with wild yeast; you may want to add yeast nutrient shortly after the yeast has begun to actively ferment the must and you may want to ignore any suggestion that you add acidity to any wine before the fermentation has ceased. There will be more than enough acidity in the juice for the yeast but too much acidity can result in a stuck fermentation. The need for acidity before you bottle is largely about flavor but you can only know if a wine needs added acidity by tasting the wine.
If you are using fresh fruit as the base of your wine I would freeze the fruit and then allow it to thaw. Freezing will damage the walls of the cells and help release more juice.
Last point: most juice has about the same gravity as wort - about 1.050. You want to almost double that (to about 1.090) for a wine (about 12% ABV). You can do that the cheap way - by adding table sugar. OR you can increase the sugar content by freezing the juice hard, and then allowing the juice to thaw while collecting the "first run" of that thawing juice. If you aim to collect the first 1/3 of the total volume then you will have doubled the sugar concentration (so 3 gallons of blueberry juice at 1.050 will provide you with 1 gallon of juice with a starting gravity of 1.090 - it will likely be very acidic and you may need to neutralize it with some K-carbonate).
As to a "good guide" for country wine making I like CCJ Berry's books and Jack Keller's website is also good although I tend to think he likes to dilute his fruit musts with water rather than use the juice expressed from the fruit.
Never any need to use heat - wine ain't beer and you are making wine - not jam, but you might want to add pectic enzyme to the fruit to help break down any pectins; you might want to use K-meta 24 hours before you pitch the yeast to remove any competition with wild yeast; you may want to add yeast nutrient shortly after the yeast has begun to actively ferment the must and you may want to ignore any suggestion that you add acidity to any wine before the fermentation has ceased. There will be more than enough acidity in the juice for the yeast but too much acidity can result in a stuck fermentation. The need for acidity before you bottle is largely about flavor but you can only know if a wine needs added acidity by tasting the wine.
If you are using fresh fruit as the base of your wine I would freeze the fruit and then allow it to thaw. Freezing will damage the walls of the cells and help release more juice.
Last point: most juice has about the same gravity as wort - about 1.050. You want to almost double that (to about 1.090) for a wine (about 12% ABV). You can do that the cheap way - by adding table sugar. OR you can increase the sugar content by freezing the juice hard, and then allowing the juice to thaw while collecting the "first run" of that thawing juice. If you aim to collect the first 1/3 of the total volume then you will have doubled the sugar concentration (so 3 gallons of blueberry juice at 1.050 will provide you with 1 gallon of juice with a starting gravity of 1.090 - it will likely be very acidic and you may need to neutralize it with some K-carbonate).
Thank you for the info, I'll just use my fermentation fridge. Hopefully it ferments quickly so it doesn't tie up my kegerator/ferm fridge too long! One question I have is about the amount of water I'm supposed to use, if any. It doesn't seem like there's going to be enough juice to really absorb 6-8 pounds of sugar. I assume I'm supposed to top up with the right amount of water and then add enough sugar to reach the right gravity? I also have 3 gallons of apple juice I could use if that would help add sugar. Most apple juice seems right around 1.06 or so, so I don't know if that will help. I'm not sure exactly how much sugar I'm going to need, especially since I haven't yet weighed the amount of berries I have. I was thinking I might put the berries inside a large BIAB bag I use to mash my beer. That way I could remove the fruit skins and such fairly easily. Is that a decent plan? I'd just tie the bag up and leave it in the bucket until fermentation was done I guess, then remove and squeeze the bag.
albino_wino
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78 is fine. I've fermented blueberry wine at 74 and it turned out amazing. Here's a 1gal recipe you can scale up to fit your batch size (ABV=14%):
3-4 lbs blueberries per gallon wine
3ish lbs sugar
Small amount Tanin (or black tea/raisins)
Yeast nutrient
Pectic enzyme
Yeast (1 packet will make anywhere up to a 5gal batch, even more with a starter)
Blueberry wine can go from fermenting very quickly to very slowly, so check your gravity occasionally to make sure you're making alcohol.
Also, it can be a pain to clear. I ended up adding a 2nd batch of pectic enzyme after a month, and used cooked eggshells combined with cold-crashing to get to bottling clarity.
From start to finish, it took about 4-5 months before i started drinking it. Unfortnately i am already out since it was so good. Blueberry wine is great blended with strawberry wine.
One of the books I really like is called "Making wild wines and meads". It will give you alot of useful info on winemaking and plenty of recipe ideas as well
Happy brewing!
Thanks for the info. We ended up hitting the brew shop and seeking some advice. They recommended D47 yeast which I pitched two packets of. Now that I see your post I see that it was probably overkill, but it really is taking a long time to start fermenting. Tonight will be two days and there is no gas coming out of the airlock whatsoever. I'm not especially worried since I pitched two packs but I figured it would take off faster than that. We have it in an ice chest with several gallons of water around the fermenter bucket and we drop in a frozen water bottle once or twice a day to keep the temps in the 68ish degree range. We used 14ish pounds of blueberries and around 10 pounds of table sugar and that's basically it. We used campden tablets and let the must sit for 48 hours before I pitched the new yeast. Hopefully it takes off soon. I think the gravity worked out to be 1.12ish which was higher than some of the 1.09 recommendations I saw but whatever.
albino_wino
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That all sounds good. Wine will take longer than a beer to ferment. With wine, you can also give it a vigorous stirring or use an airstone to oxygenate it the first week to help kick things off.
1.12ish is a good SG number; that's what i do to get a 15% abv, flavorful wine.
I would check the gravity about a week after brewing if you have not seen any bubbles. Sometimes these have such a vigorous primary fermentation you can miss the bubbling. I had a hefewisen that didnt bubble for 4 days after adding the yeast. After measuring the gravity, it was already at the finishing gravity.
If your wine has not fermented after a week, just send a message here and we can give you plenty of tips on how to get it going. Blueberry can be a pain and slow to ferment because the high acidity is not in the yeast's comfort zone.
1.12ish is a good SG number; that's what i do to get a 15% abv, flavorful wine.
I would check the gravity about a week after brewing if you have not seen any bubbles. Sometimes these have such a vigorous primary fermentation you can miss the bubbling. I had a hefewisen that didnt bubble for 4 days after adding the yeast. After measuring the gravity, it was already at the finishing gravity.
If your wine has not fermented after a week, just send a message here and we can give you plenty of tips on how to get it going. Blueberry can be a pain and slow to ferment because the high acidity is not in the yeast's comfort zone.
I think maybe my airlock wasn't seated firmly or something and was letting out gas somewhere so I wasn't seeing any activity. I swirled the bucket a bit and fiddled with the airlock and all of the sudden gas was streaming out. I think all is well with this fermentation. I imagine it will take a while to ferment since it's go so much sugar to munch on. I'm definitely curious to see how this one ends up tasting! If this makes a tasty wine we'll definitely be doing similar stuff more often as the girlfriend enjoys wine much more so than I do.
From Jack Keller's website blueberry (or bilberry) wine doesn't contain that much acid. CJJ Berry says to add 2 teaspoons of acid blend per gallon!
I added 1.5 teaspoons and think it's slow anyway. also adding over a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, and 0.5 teaspoon of energiser and half teaspoon grape tannin (which is said to aid fermentation) all results in guess what...... a slow ferment anyway.
so I wonder if it's merely the nature of brewing when there's a sizeable "cap" - punching it down three times daily at the mo tho.
I added 1.5 teaspoons and think it's slow anyway. also adding over a teaspoon of yeast nutrient, and 0.5 teaspoon of energiser and half teaspoon grape tannin (which is said to aid fermentation) all results in guess what...... a slow ferment anyway.
so I wonder if it's merely the nature of brewing when there's a sizeable "cap" - punching it down three times daily at the mo tho.
For the record it finally attenuated down completely and has been well received by all who have drank it, although my girlfriend feels it tastes a little hot. I think it's just that it's a pretty strong wine and it's hard to hide the alcohol when the wine has got to be around 18% or more.
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