How to Make Amazing Blackberry Wine and Blackberry Brandy

you know me i love foraging and harvesting what nature has for us so we're gonna make some blackberry brandy and blackberry wine right now so roll the intro hey everybody and welcome back to eat the world i'm chef alex lazak and today we're doing something that i think is a lot of fun and really rewarding now i filmed most of the shots in this about eight months ago towards the end of last summer and making blackberry brandy and blackberry wine is super easy and i've thrown in a few shortcuts to make it reliable and absolutely delicious i can't emphasize enough to you how amazing it is to make your own stuff that you foraged yourself doesn't get much more pure and delicious honestly if it wasn't so good i wouldn't be making these videos and trying to encourage you to go out and do it yourself now before we begin as always please like and subscribe and do all those wonderful things if you get a chance please check out my patreon page i've got some exclusive content there for my patrons i've got some great pizza resources i've got some exclusive recipes and some pretty awesome stuff so please have a look like subscribe patreon thanks so much let's get started so first things first you need to go and pick a crapload of blackberries you can use frozen ones too if you like but i find if you find a patch of blackberries you will get freaking loads in the area now you need about 1.4 key kg or three pounds of black brace for a gallon of wine and for the brandy as many as you'd like i've got a gallon full so yes i did a lot of picking my suggestion is to wear gloves and sleeves because there are plenty of thorns also carry around some small shears or scissors for cutting back any vines that are in the way without fruit trust me these are like a weed so you won't be doing any damage first we're going to make the blackberry brandy because it's so super easy so let's just wash all the blackberries and get rid of any nasties you can skim anything that floats the top with a sieve [Applause] so now we are basically just going to pour in our blackberries into a gallon jar or whatever you happen to be using i recommend a glass jar so it doesn't stain and i'll come back to that later then we are going to layer this with sugar so i used approximately a cup of sugar to two or three cups of blackberries you can adjust this to taste so it's not a huge deal now again keep layering the blackberries in the sugar give it a wee shake and carry on once you've loaded up all your blackberries then we're gonna add some 100 proof vodka or neutral spirit just pour it all in until it comfortably covers all the blackberries so once that's done we're going to cover it with a lid and let it sit for one to two months easy peasy but we're gonna come back to this a little bit later on okay so now we're gonna make our wine i'm actually making two gallons of blackberry wine here so in total we're gonna use six pounds or 2.8 kgs of sugar and the same weight of blackberries so first step is to dissolve that sugar into roughly half a gallon of water while that's dissolving let's sterilize anything that will come into contact with our must which is the juice before it's fermented this is super important so nothing gets infected so follow the instructions on the bottle i'm using a no rinse sanitizer because it's easy it's i'll put it all in the sink so i can keep putting tools in as i need so in go our airlocks which will protect the wine as it ferments i've used these before with the spruce beer and the ginger beer also let's get our gallon fermenter sanitized too you can fill them up a bit and then give them a bit of a shake and next i've got the siphoning hose that we will need this one has a simple fancy manual pump on it but just a hose will do as well so hey if you need any equipment you can get this stuff easily at any brew shop or on amazon okay so our sugar is just about dissolved once it is and we are going to pour this over our blackberries which will kill any germs that might be on the berries let that sit for about 10 to 20 minutes then we are going to basically puree our berries you can do these with a hand blender or i used a mini food processor which was a bit slow and painful but if you have a bigger one at home or a blender go for it so basically we're just going to blitz these up and pour the pureed berries into another container and keep going till it's done i found this a really great method for extracting all the juice a bit of a shortcut and no mucking around later on okay so next step we're going to strain the skin and seeds and anything else out of the juice i have a fine mesh strainer here but you can use a cloth straining bag too anyways it's a bit of a laborious process but just keep going and it's totally worthwhile because when we're done we get this amazing juice that looks sexy like this next step we're going to sprinkle over some pectic enzyme which basically just stops the wine from hazing when we bottle it heating the juice up as we did can cause this pectic haze to happen give it a good stir and make sure it's thoroughly mixed in you want to use a whisk and probably not a small spoon like lazy alex from the past did so now we're going to use our siphoning pump and load it into our fermenters these are going to fill up about halfway in each gallon bottle and then we are going to top up each bottle with cold water to cool it down because the must needs to be about 20 to 25 degrees which is perfect for the yeast okay at this point now it wasn't an issue for me when i was making a one gallon bottle of blackberry wine but it was a major issue for me when i was making a six odd gallon 25 liter i picked a mother load of blackberries and decided to make a big carbide full of blackberry wine anyways what i would recommend is in your smaller carboy and your gallon fermenter that you're going to use don't fill it all the way up to the top like i said it wasn't an issue for me but if you're making a bigger volume of it what happens when your initial fermentation starts it can be pretty vigorous and it will foam up especially in a bigger bigger volume and then you've just got a big mess everywhere so what i'd recommend is after a week after the initial fermentation has started just top up your gallon jug with some more water and then you can carry on fermenting and it will be sweet now if you are going to for ferment a big carboy full of blackberry wine i recommend that you do the initial fermentation in a bucket like you would probably most other wines so you do about a week in a big bucket with primary fermentation and then you would transfer it into carboy for the rest of the fermentation so again if you're just doing a gallon don't fill it up all the way for the first week just let that primary fermentation happen then you can top it up and you will be sweet on a side note cover up your countertops because blackberry wine does stain and every time i make a video that involves that counter top over there i just look at it and go it looks like crap because there's a big blackberry wine stain around it so cover your countertops don't get stained you're welcome okay so at this stage let's take a specific gravity reading so we can later work out what our alcohol percentage is i have a spectrometer but you can use a standard hydrometer next we're going to rehydrate our yeast and then add it to our fermenters this is always quicker trust me i'm using a wine yeast here but speak to your local winemaking place and they'll point you in the right direction so when you're done put the airlock bubblers on top and then let these ferment somewhere warm okay so at this stage we're gonna leave these beauties ferment probably for about two or three weeks depending on the temperature and your wine there's a bunch of different variables happening essentially once all the bubbles in your airlock stop bubbling it means that your yeast has eaten up all the sugar converted into alcohol and spat out co2 if it hasn't it's just about there now what you can do is check with your hydrometer or a spectrometer to measure the specific gravity of your wine at this stage it needs to be one or below if you don't have either of those things just leave it for an extra week and then what you can do is actually give your wine a little bit of a taste if it's still sweet you know it's not ready try to get into a place that's a little bit warmer and carry on that fermentation now we've determined that our wine is ready to bottle so what i recommend that you do at this stage is to rack your wine so essentially take your wine from your big cardboard or your gallon bottles and wrap them into a container and leave all that sediment behind and then what you're going to do is put it back into your carboy or gallon fermenter and then leave it for another week this will help in the clarifying process of the wine just make sure of course whenever you're moving your beautiful wine around just make sure anything that touches it is has been sanitized so when it goes back into the cardboard make sure it's sanitized cleaned out again sanitized just be careful with it we don't want to ruin it at this stage so that is exactly what i did i racked off all of my bottles my two gallons and my big cowboy into a bucket so i mixed them all together so i didn't have any specific variations between any of the wine and i cleaned and sanitized the carboys and the gallons again and then i put them back into the carboy you can top it up with a little bit of water at this point let it rest for another week or two if you want and then you're ready to bottle or if you want you can rack it again just to help out that um clarifying process you don't need to but if you want to be very very very anal about it by all means give it another racking okay so let's get bottling so we're going to rack our wine again mixing the bottles so we have some consistency in case there's any bottle variation you can see here all the sediment in this gallium carboy and here i am wrecking that big carboy i made as well again mixing it with the other two bottles to ensure some consistency and here is our finished wine i don't know if you can see but look at that beautiful clear wine in the hose i love this stuff now again making sure everything is sanitized we're going to degas our wine with our plastic stirrer give it a good old vigorous mix to get rid of any dissolved gas in the wine and then it's bottling time now these are old wine bottles that have been cleaned and sanitized you can just reuse the caps that were there originally or ideally go buy some new ones if you are reusing just make sure they are super clean and sanitized if you want to go buy some new bottles go ahead but this is perfectly fine here i've got my bottling attachment which basically stops the flow of wine when you lift it off the bottom of the bottle it makes life a lot easier trust me and then well that's it we're gonna cap them cork them or whatever you have and leave them in a cool place for about six months to a year if you can and then well then it's time to drink now quickly back to our blackberry brandy so basically we're just going to strain it off and press out any delicious juice that's left in the berries and any alcohol that is there so we just want to squash it or squeeze it as much as we can until it's all dry so finally we've got our blackberry brandy or blackberry schnapps which is pretty cool like it's got such a really nice color you probably can't see this on camera but anyways i can have a quick taste of it now i don't know the alcohol percentage of this um but i'd say it's probably about 35 30 35 um it's got lots of berry juice in there it's just awesome anyways let's have a taste a little bit of drop in there now it is a little bit murky which is fine i don't mind that because it is pure blackberries that is so good it's just like it's a spiked blackberry juice and it's it's sweet but not too sweet just picture this with a nice squeeze of lime and some ice and some soda water or lemonade or some something like that something uh bubbly this is just really cool there's so many applications for this for desserts whatever anyways this is super cool and i probably will make a cocktail with it down the road somewhere because summer is coming and this would be perfect for it okay guys so here we are eight months later and we've got our blackberry wine which has been resting and doing all this wonderful aging stuff and i've pretty optimistic about this so we're going to give this a little taste now i trained as a sommelier back in the day even though i was a chef i also loved wines so making your own wine and working as a summer which i didn't do i just sort of like enjoyed drinking wine and i studied it for years and years um i'm just i was you're always kind of trepidatious at the results of your own wine what's it what it's going to be like anyways let's give it a try but not i'll save you all the wanky wine stuff we're just going to get this straight to the point and see what it's like [Music] look first of all it's got a beautiful color it looks like blackberries and it's just beautiful [Music] and it smells like blackberries it smells like wine actually it's it's interesting in the way it like it's not it doesn't even remind me of blackberries so much it's like grape wine anyways let's have a taste that's really nice i'm super happy with that that is a beautiful [Music] juicy red wine i'm surprised at how much like a grape wine it is i mean obviously it's made with blackberries but yeah this is super cool i'm gonna totally enjoy this like for something that you've made yourself for free apart from like the few little consumable things that you have to do to make the wine this is pretty awesome i'm super happy with that that's so cool look at that color like big red juicy blackberry wine and i think judging by the legs when i took the spectrometer rating i was about 13 13 and a half percent but it might be on the high 13 and a half maybe for even 14 in reality anyways blackberry wine amazing okay guys so that's us for today i hope you've enjoyed our blackberry wine and our blackberry brandy now if you can please like subscribe do all those wonderful things also check out my patreon page i've got some great resources there and i've got some exclusive content there so have a look at that and uh that's us we're done for the day or we're done for the year eight months so a couple more months to go and i'll be picking blackberries again stocking up for next year so awesome so good alright we'll see you soon [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Eat The World

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Keywords: how to make blackberry wine, how to amke blackberry wine, how to make blackberry wine youtube, how to make blackberry wine from frozen berries, how to make blackberry wine at home, how to make blackberry wine uk, homemade wine, home brew, wine making, blackberry wine, bramble wine, fruit wine, homemade blackberry wine, making wine, how to make wine, red wine, making blackberry wine, how to make wine at home, blackberry wine recipe 1 gallon, blackberry wine recipe 5 gallons

Id: 2HTRM8QrX2U

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022