Wild Berry Wine

[mullet]

Trevor, I leave the skins and pulp in mine for the color.

[le0n]

there's still a little color in them, so i'm just leaving them in just in case.

i'm stirring them around twice a day to keep things wet.

haven't thought about that. in actuality this recipe should have been done with a one gallon test. but that does sound like a good idea for another batch. haven't heard of Brett but i see they have a few cultures at the shop near me. they cost 8x more than the yeast i got but i'm sure there's a reason for that.

i like that t-shirt trick. i may use this next time if the resulting wine unpalatable.

so far, i have a whopping $12 sunk into this batch. if it doesn't work, it doesn't work. however, if it does work and the result is something that i can enjoy, then it'll be easier to repeat next time. also, i'm going to monitor the berries out there to see how late they are around. maybe i can start another batch a few weeks from now when the cooler weather will be creeping in.

[TrevorM]

Fair enough, the first sip is with the eyes as they say.

Yeah Brett is a bit specialized so it costs extra. It's mostly used for lambics, so don't be put off by characteristics like "wet dog" or "horse blanket" it's part of the charm

You sure can't complain about $12! As you do more even that'll get less too. I haven't done it since we moved but I used culture my own yeast which can save you a bit and isn't hard at all.

[le0n]

Fair enough, the first sip is with the eyes as they say.

and i'm quite worried that the color will turn on me. based on something i read the other day. i can't seem to pinpoint the article, but when the guy added Potassium Sorbate to his finished beautyberry wine it turned from a nice koolaid color to a dingy yellow. i may leave it out and rely on the campden alone.

edit (found the article snippet): "Racked all my wines the other day including this one. I'm glad I did this one last and wished I had taken before/after pics. When I moved the 3 gallon carboy onto the table initially I swear it was a mouth dropping kool-aid red color !! Racked it, added k-meta, gave a stir and it instantly turned to a yellowish blush. I've read on the forum this happening to others with strawberry but have never seen it personally until now. Depressing to say the least...

No, actually the photo is pretty close to the real color. The inside of the berries is white/cream colored. I was disappointed the color from the skins didn't come through more. The bright red it initally had in the fermenter (primary and secondary) did disappear when I first added kmeta/sorbate though. "
^^ the photos don't work on that article anymore
^^ and i'm not exactly sure what he did, but if i can avoid the color change, i will. at this point, the campden hasn't affected the color at all so i may leave the sorbate out of the wine.

"horse blanket" that would definitely have to be done in a small batch first

[TrevorM]

OK so I did a little digging and the first thing I came up with is that anthocyanins which are responsible for most red,purple and blue colors in fruit are very pH sensitive. High Ph will give you the red side and low will be blue. So if the kmeta changed the pH it would mess up your color. But I couldn't find anything that suggested that kmeta would have any effect on the pH (I did find the opposite  though). So I kept looking and found this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4325022/ which I think is a more likely cause, even though it the experiments it certainly wasn't instant. I'm no biochemist so there certainly could be other things at play here, but I'd say if you can avoid it that'd be a good idea.  Going by your starting gravity I'd think you'd get to at least 8% abv. so I doubt you really need it anyway do you?

Yeah you can get some really strange results that's for sure. I forget the name of it, but there's another one that gives you a huge banana aroma (which is normally considered a bad thing in beer).

[le0n]

^^ wow. Thanks, Trevor. Let me dig into what you found.

Last night I added some needed sugar to put my potential alcohol to ~14%. Boiled 3 cups of sugar in half a quart of RO water until it dissolved completly. Waited until it cooled to 80° and then poured it into the fermenter during the nightly stir.

This morning: 1.078 SG (corrected)

[TrevorM]

No problem I love home brewing so looking through it was interesting stuff.

Yeah won't have any issues with bacteria/wild yeast etc. at 14%, the only thing that might cause an issue is oxidation. I wouldn't stir it anymore. Are you planning on bottling it or kegging once it's finished and will it be fizzy or still?

[le0n]

By nightly stir, I mean that I'm merely breaking up the pulp cap to keep things wet on top.

I'll be bottling these up.

If my calculations are correct, it should ferment to dry with the amount of sugar I have in there and the type of yeast that's being used.

There shouldn't be any sugar when it's finished, and I don't plan on back-sweetening either.

Also, from my SG measurement today, I saved a vial's worth that I filtered with a coffee filter. This can be one of my test subjects for color change if needed, hah hah.

[TrevorM]

Ok if you're bottling with beer bottles/caps they make an O2 absorbing caps you could use.

The test vial is a great idea.

[le0n]

Plain Jane straight corks.

[le0n]

Here's the vial:


To my surprise, there was absolutely no activity after it went though the filter. not one bubble. Guess all the yeast got caught because it was bubbling like crazy in the hydrometer flask. It did take an hour for the small amount to pass through the filter.

I drank what didn't fit in this vial and it tasted ok; way to sweet of course. Measured ~10% alcohol with the Vinometer (sampled out of the spout). That seemed kind of high this early on, but I guess that some water was stuck in the pulp that remained in the filter. Eh, I'll do the math later from the SG measurements.

[le0n]

"The addition of sodium benzoate and/or potassium sorbate to a food product will raise the pH by approximately 0.1 to 0.5 pH units depending on the amount, pH, and type of product."

^^ Found that.

K-Sorb (potassium sorbate) is what that guy used in addition to K-Meta.

as you've stated, the anthocyanins are sensitive to Ph changes. i should have remembered because i did the cabbage science project last year with my daughter.

for now, i'm going to stay away from potassium sorbate.

[le0n]

reading from this morning:


1.062 SG (1.064 SG Corrected).

Ok, I thought the Vinometer reading was high. Based on my original SG of 1.105: (1.105-1.064)*131.25=5.38% ABV (this will be the fourth day)

I'm supposed to rack it into the secondary vessel when it hits 1.030 SG.

[le0n]

this morning 1.052 SG (1.054 SG Corrected):


edit: at this rate, it will be in the primary until day 8.

[le0n]

this morning 1.046 SG Corrected: