Blackberry Wine Recipe

Blackberry Wine Recipe

 

I love blackberries, so it is only a natural progression to make blackberry wine.    This blackberry wine recipe is delicious and easy to make.   There is nothing like fresh blackberries, too.  They are so easy to grow, provided you give them what they want.   Check out my YouTube videos to see how I grow them.   If you have a little space, you can build yourself a trellis or an arbor and have so many delicious blackberries that you will be able to:

  • Blackberry Jam
  • Have fresh blackberries with a little whipped cream for breakfast
  • And make a wonderful wine with this blackberry wine recipe

Many types of blackberries have thorns.  I chose to plant a thorn-less variety.  A friend of mine have great success with Triple Crown Blackberries.    I was looking at Chester blackberries, but after seeing his enormous success, I went with the Triple Crown, too.    I bought two Triple Crown Blackberry plants and put them on each side of the arbor that you see in my videos.   The arbor is 24 feet long and about 7 feet high, so each plant easily grows over 18 feet and they meet at the middle.   It took about 2 or 3 years to get them to really start producing a very large amount of blackberries.  I believe each plant can produce over 30 lbs of blackberries after three years… WOW!

Blackberry Wine Recipe

Triple Crown Blackberries for my Blackberry Wine Recipe

In hind sight, I probably should have planted one Triple Crown and one Chester.    The Chester blackberries start to ripen just after the harvest of the Triple Crown blackberries.   When I choose fruit to grow, I try to have something ripe a different times.  For instance, first I get my strawberries, then after those are finished I start to get blueberries.  While the blueberries are producing, I start to get black raspberries.   Shortly into the raspberries, the blackberries start to produce.   So, I kind of like to time things that way.    You always have something fresh and delicious from the garden.

This blackberry wine recipe is pretty simple to make.   I have made several blackberry wine recipes and have done it different almost every time.   This blackberry wine recipe is more or less a guideline.   It came out really nice the last time I made it, so I am sharing that blackberry wine recipe.

When making this blackberry wine recipe, try to pick your blackberries at the peak of ripeness.   You will need to freeze them, as you will not be able to have that many blackberries all perfectly ripe at the same time easily.   I believe freezing the fruit after washing it makes a better wine anyway, so I recommend freezing the blackberries even if you are able to get all of them at once.

Here is the official Sicilian Prince Blackberry Wine Recipe:

Blackberry Wine Recipe
Ingredient For 3 Gallons For 6 Gallons
Blackberries 12 lbs 24 lbs
Water (Clean Filtered, Distilled or Bottled)  2.5 Gallons  5 Gallons
Sugar 6.5 lbs 13 lbs
Dried Elderberries 1 Cup 2 Cups
Yeast Nutrient 1 Tbsp 2 Tbsp
Campden Tablet 3 tablets 6 tablets
Acid Blend 1 Tbsp 2 Tbsp
Pectic Enzyme 1/2 Tbsp 1 Tbsp
Champagne Yeast or Lalvin EC-1118 1 Packet 1 Packet

Now, let’s get started with this blackberry wine recipe.    Thaw out the blackberries in a nylon mesh bag in your primary fermentor.

Boil about a quart of water and add the dried elderberries to the boiling water.   Simmer over a low heat with the cover on for a half hour.

In another pot, heat up some of the water and dissolve the sugar in the water.   You don’t need to use all of the water in this recipe, just enough to make the sugar dissolve.

Add the elderberries and the water from the elderberries into the mesh back, along with the blackberries, and mash them with a sanitized potato masher.  Mash them really good, then tie the bag closed.

Pour the sugar water on top of the now closed mesh bag in the primary fermentor.   Do a little more mashing and stirring.   After you have mixed these ingredients, you can add the remainder of the water.   It should cool off the juice.

Next in this blackberry wine recipe, add the acid blend, yeast nutrient and crushed Campden tablets and stir the mixture well.  Cover and wait 12 hours.

12 hours later, add the pectic enzyme and stir it in well.   Cover and wait another 12 hours.

At this time, 24 hrs have past since the campden tablets have been added.   You can pitch the yeast.    Sprinkle the yeast on top of the mixture and put the cover back on.

Wait two days, then stir the blackberry wine with a sanitized spoon twice a day.   You should see signs of fermentation.

After about a week, check the specific gravity.   It should be at or under 1.02 or in that neighborhood.  When I am comfortable with that reading, I take the net bag out, and with very clean hands, I gently squeeze the juice from the bag into the primary fermentor. This is one of the fun parts of making this blackberry wine recipe.  I like the squeezing.  I then compost the berries in the bag.

Now, I rack to a clean and sanitized carboy and attach a bung with airlock.   I move the carboy into a dark location and let the secondary fermentation take place.   If I have a feeling that the fermentation is not going as fast as it should, I may choose to add a little yeast nutrient when racking to the secondary.    Also, I may optionally put in a few toasted oak cubes.

At this point, I let the carboy sit about a month or longer.  After that time, I take a specific gravity reading and it should be really dry, something like .990 or in that neighborhood.    I then rack off any sediment with my auto siphon with the anti-sediment tip attached into another clean and sanitized carboy.

After racking, I add a crushed campden tablet for each gallon of wine.    I then degass the wine with my mix-stir drill mounted device.    It may take a half hour to stir out the bubbles.  Keep stirring until it is completely flat.

Next, I add my fining agents.    I use sparkoloid according to the directions on the container.   You can use sparkoloid, chitosan or whatever fining agent your like.   I use sparkoloid with excellent results.   The Chitosan is a shellfish derivative, so I avoid it in all of my recipes.   Consider the ingredients and allergies with anything you make.

After stirring in the sparkoloid for a few minutes, I put the airlock and bung back on the carboy and let it sit in a dark location for at least 14 days.

After at least 14 days have past, the next step in this blackberry wine recipe is to rack off the sediment into a clean and sanitized carboy.   Once again, I use my auto-siphon with the anti-sediment tip attached.    After racking, this time I will top up the carboy all the way to the neck of the carboy.   I put the airlock and bung back on the carboy and let the carboy sit in a dark place for three months.    I check the airlock to make sure there is enough liquid in the airlock.   I use vodka in my airlocks, but some folks use water.

After the three months have past, I like to filter this wine.   This is optional, but I do it most of the time for this blackberry wine recipe.  After filtering, I decide if I want to back sweeten the blackberry wine.   Usually, I want it a little off dry, but I suggest you taste it.

If you decide you like it the way it is without back sweetening, it is time to bottle.  Bottle the blackberry wine and age in the bottle at least 4 to 6 months.    Give it a try after that time and see what you think.

If you do decide to back sweeten this blackberry wine recipe, I suggest you add add some sorbate and follow my process for back sweetening wine.

I hope you like my blackberry wine recipe and give it a try.    For variations on it, you can add a couple of ripe bananas to the primary.   While it doesn’t add a banana flavor, it does add a little body.    If you don’t have the elderberries, you can leave those out, but I kind of like what they do to this blackberry wine recipe.   Elderberries are high in tannin, so don’t over do it.

-Cheers!

 

 

 

 

 

 


21 thoughts on “Blackberry Wine Recipe

  1. Hi there, cool website, thought I’d add a few thoughts. I’ve been making blackberry wine for 20 years, anywhere from 30 to 60 gallons depending on how much picking time I have. Some things I would add is to check the hydrometer and thermometer before adding the yeast, to choose the alcohol content you hope for. I found that if you try for over 16%, the yeast may die early so you have very sweet 12% wine, but if done carefully and temperature monitored throughout, 16% is achievable. 12% is easy of course if you start there and ferment down to zero. I would tell people to keep about 75 Fahrenheit temperature so the yeast doesn’t give out before total fermentation. If they use a hydrometer from the start, exact weight of sugar isn’t so critical. Of course it all depends on the preferred taste at the end, if they like sweet or dry wine. Just some thoughts, not being critical, please don’t take it wrong. I made 50 gallons this weekend, into the primaries and they are percolating and frothing just right. I make lots so it lasts longer, but I have thirsty friends, as you must too, haha! I use a Victorio no 200 crusher to juice my blackberries, I use a 1/2 inch drill on the handle to speed it up, it will crush and juice a gallon in a couple minutes. No good for grapes though, it would break the seeds.

    • Thanks for stopping by, Terry.

      On my latest video series on Blackberry wine, I had a little more sugar than anticipated, due to the fruit being extra sweet. I started growing with Rockdust and it made a huge difference in the quality of the fruit :)… That is why, on my video, I made the decision to go with EC-1118.

      I usually have my house around 70 degrees and don’t really have problems getting my wine to go completely dry. 75 degrees is best, however in my experience not entirely needed. In fact, I have fermented out wine completely dry at 65 degrees. It does take a little longer, but sometimes the flavors are better when fermenting at cooler temperatures.

      Sounds like you got yourself a pretty awesome garden over there. How many blackberry vines do you have and what type do you grow?

      • hi Terry i have 70 pounds of blackberries can i add the second run of berries to the mash in the first run and can i use 4 litre kegs to bottle some of it cheers Gerry

        • Not sure I understand your question.

          You have 70lbs of berries…
          1) How much wine do you want to make … (Typically, I add water to Blackberries… Check my recipe and video…)
          2) Are you talking about using jugs to bottle at the end? If so, sure… I use gallon jugs all the time. I would recommend getting some into standard bottles..

  2. Hi There Sicilian Prince. Thanks for posting this. I have been making cherry wine for three years now and have had great success. I recently moved to a place with ample wild blackberries in the back. I am going to try to utilize these in your recipe, and I am excited to see how it goes. It seems like a sound recipe, and is similar to what I do with my cherries.

    Thanks again, this is a great resource!

      • Hi,

        this is my first attempt making wine. We raise blackberries so I thought this would be a good recipe to start with. But I must have missed something. I used a 6 1/2 gallon brew pail but after the 24 pounds of berries and 13 pounds of sugar I only had room for 3 gallons of water total including what I used to melt the sugar. Did you use a larger container?

  3. I was looking at your recipe for Blackberry Wine, but in the directions, you keep talking about elderberries. Is recipe for blackberries or elderberries??

    • In this particular recipe, I was using a relatively small amount of elderberries to add something in character to the blackberries. There are quite a few blackberries in the recipe. If you don’t want to use Elderberries, I would add some tannin to the recipe, like how I did on my YouTube video.

  4. any recipes of how to make store bought 100% welche’s grape juice or any other kind of juices.
    your response will be appreciated . GOOD STUFF .
    THANKS GD BOSTON MASS

    • Not really, but sometimes I use Store Bought Welches Frozen Concentrate to kick up other musts.. I was thinking about giving it a try with the bottled Welches Red Grape Juice. (not the concord…) Or another Organic Grape Juice.

  5. I used a 6 1/2 gallon brew pail and only had room for 3 gallons of water total. Are you using a larger container?

    • I think my Primary is 7 and a half gallons or something like that… Your Primary needs to be larger than what you are making, as it will overflow in the beginning stages of fermentation. Don’t worry about the extra space and air…

  6. hi we are going to try your recipe. it sounds good. but we don’t like very sweet wine. just wondering how sweet your wine is and should we decrease the amount of sugar? thanks.

  7. November 5, 2018
    Blackberry Wine

    Thanks for your sharing your valuable time.
    My hydrometer reading was 1.150 before adding yeast EC-1118
    Been in fermentation for one week reading is 1.032
    My question is, should I let it be for another week and then check the wine with my hydrometer, or rack it into the secondary fermentation carboy at this point?
    The temperature is steady at 78 degree

    I look forward to your answer
    Kindly,
    Bruce

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