Blackberry Wine

In autumn I normally make sloe gin but there’s no denying it is an expensive endeavour. This year I have been a bit skint so I thought I might try my hand at fermentation. And this time create some free alcohol! And who can resist a forage in the country in the autumn sunshine?

The recipe requires a few specialist ingredients and equipment for wine making. I went to the Home Brew Shop which sells everything you need at very reasonable prices. I bought the majority of the stuff listed below for under £20 (a lot cheaper than buying six bottles of gin for sloes).

Equipment

10 litre fermenting bucket

Two 5 litre demijohns – I just used the cheap plastic ones.

Length of rubber tube (any hardware store sells this)

Muslin (I never used to know where to get muslin from until I discovered you can buy them in the baby aisle of the supermarket)

Funnel

Ingredients

2 kg blackberries

1 tsp pectic enzyme

1.4kg wine sugar

1 tsp yeast nutrient

Wine yeast

1)      Put the blackberries in the fermenting bucket and pour over 4 litres of boiling water. Give it a mash and then put the lid on.

2)      Once cooled, add the pectic enzyme to help it clear and cover again.

3)      One day later add the sugar, the yeast nutrient and the wine yeast, according to the packet instructions.

4)      Cover again and leave for five days, stirring every day.

5)      On the fifth day strain the liquid through a muslin lined funnel into the demijohns.

6)      After about six weeks ‘rack off’ into fresh demijohns. The aim of racking off is to purify the wine by leaving behind the sediment that will have sunk to the bottom. All you do is put your rubber tube into the wine, avoiding touching the very bottom, and give the other end of the tube a brief but firm suck. The second the wine starts to flow, jam it into your fresh demijohn (this can be a pretty tense process). Once the flow is established it will keep going until all the liquid has been sucked up. (Boring NB: with only two demijohns you may have to rack off into the fermenting bucket and then back into the freshly cleaned demijohns.)

7)      Leave for another six weeks or so and then transfer to sterilised bottles. (I saved up a few screwtop wine bottles during this time to have them ready).

Issues:

During the five days that I was stirring my wine I started to notice a pretty horrible sulphurous smell emanating from the blackberry mixture. I was worried the wine had spoiled but I was reassured by a bit of online research into this problem and strained the wine into the demijohns nonetheless. Six weeks later, when racking off, the smell had completely vanished and there’s no hint of it at all when you drink it.

Sterilisation: Incredibly boring but it has to be done. Don’t attempt to sterilise plastic demijohns with boiling water – I succeeded in melting one of mine into a bizarre shape. The easiest way to sterilise glass is to put it into a hot oven for 20 minutes.