Mulberry Wine.

[scmgre]

Judith Glover's recipe1 gallon)
Ripe mulberries 1.8 kg
sugar 1.6 kg
Camden tablet 1
pectin enzyme 1 tsp
water 4 liters
wine yeast
yeast nutrient
1. Strip the mulberries from the stalks crush them well and cover with 2.8 liters of boiling water (5 pints)
2. When cool add the crushed Camden tablet and pectin enzyme and leave to steep for 24 hours
3. bring another 1.1 liters of water to the boil and dissolve the sugar in it
4. when the syrup has cooled to blood heat, add it to the mulberry pulp together with the yeast and nutrient
5. cover well and leave in a warm place to ferment for 3 days, stirring twice daily (shes from the UK so UK values of warm)
6. strain the liquid off the pulp and measure if necessary adding cooled boiled water to make up to 1 gallon (4.5 liters).
7. Transfer to a fermenting jar, fit bung and air-lock and leave to ferment on, racking when the wine starts to clear.
8. when the fermentation has finished working and the wine has cleared bottle and store in a cool dark place to mature for at least 9 months preferably a year.

that's from her book drink your own garden(1979)

 

[Beersuit]

Thanks for that Gareth. I will post something in the next few days with amounts, gravitys and structure for a 20lt batch. I have 3 recipes that I'm compiling into 1 so it should be good.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Mulberry juice is normally around 15% sugar when completely ripe (eg black and squishy and not very palatable). This is the stage at which you want to get them before making wine: if they are still nice and tart as berries the wine will be really acidic and the citric acid level will be high enough to be inhibitory to many yeasts. Even when fully ripe it's not unusual to see levels of citric over 20 g/l in mulberry juice.

The main point of the sugar addition / dilution in the recipes posted above is to deal with the acid level. If you get them ripe enough this is less of a problem.

The sugars are roughly half and half fructose and glucose so best fermented with a wine yeast. If I were doing this I'd use DV10 and hold off the sugar additions until you've reached 0oBrix and then add glucose only, thus avoiding problems with catabolite repression.

 

[pcqypcqy]

And then what do you do 3 years later when it just tastes of acetone? Asking for a friend.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

By acetone I assume you mean ethyl acetate (nail polish remover)*. It's produced by esterification of acetic acid. Together they are known as volatile acidity (VA) which is symptomatic of infection.

The keys to VA avoidance are sound fruit and a clean ferment; SO2 is your friend here.

BTW I can remove the acetic and ethyl acetate but the process involved is complex and expensive. You are better off tipping it down the sink and starting again.


* Acetone itself is propanone, very uncommon to have it formed by fermentation unless you have some truly weird bugs doing your fermenting. One fermentation that produces acetone involves a Clostridium, from the genus which contains the bacteria that cause tetanus, gangrene and botulism. They are obligate anaerobes.

 

[pcqypcqy]

I had a batch that I made 2013. Pulled a bottle out about a year ago to taste, we all thought it was OK. Thin on body but otherwise it was mulberry wine.

Pulled some out to share with Beersuit at our TooSOBA meeting on the weekend, and the first 3 bottles were all ethyl acetate and undrinkable. The 4th had lots as well, but there was some hint of the former wine in there once you got past it.

When does this infection/ferment take hold? Because the bottle I fished out last year tasted out really good. So either it happened in the last 12 months, or I was very lucky in pulling an uninfected bottle through random chance. The other bottles stayed in the exact same storage conditions, undisturbed since that first bottle was pulled.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Often it takes hold when the wine runs out of SO2. Were these bottled under cork?

 

[pcqypcqy]

Often it takes hold when the wine runs out of SO2. Were these bottled under cork?

No, they were very dodgily bottled in recycled stelvins, with a heat shrink cap over.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

OK. There's probably some oxygen getting past the seal somehow. Eventually it used up all the SO2 then the bugs had a party. Was there any residual sugar in the wine?

 

[pcqypcqy]

Not sure, I made this before I had any brewing gear or knowledge, so didn't even measure with a hydrometer.

I used a wine yeast and after racking off the fruit it fermented at warmish spring temperatures for a few weeks before bottling. My guess is no, but I honestly can't say.

I didn't had any SO2 in any form (not even camden tablets), so unless it was naturally present it had nothing to preserve it other than co2 and alcohol.

 

[Beersuit]

What type of bottling do you suggest is better lyrebird?

I was hoping to get away from using s02 by flushing the bottles with c02 and again purging headspace before popping a lid on.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

Bottling with no / low SO2 is not in my area(s) of expertise.

 

[Beersuit]

Sorry I thought it might be up your ally.

Anyone ?

 

[Airgead]

Never used so2. The missus is allergic. It's absence never seemed to cause a problem.

 

[Lyrebird_Cycles]

I also suffer from SO2 sensitivity (the usual asthma like reaction, not a real IgE mediated allergy which is much, much rarer).

Occasionally this causes problems at work when exposure to the gas stops me breathing for a couple of minutes or so but over the years I've learnt to deal with it. My trigger level is about 1 ppm MSO2 and that's fairly rarely achieved.

Like many others, I went through a low SO2 use phase in the late 90's but I've since learnt the error of my ways.

 

[pcqypcqy]

My limited understanding is that campden tablets provide a bit of SO2 for the garagiste wine maker - most recipes seem to include them. Any truth to that do you think Lyrebird?

http://www.eckraus.com/blog/campden-tablets-what-they-can-and-cant-do

 

[Airgead]

I went into a no so2 phase in the 90s and have never started using it again.

Most of what I make is mead but I do some fruit wine as well. I only ever rack once when fermentation is done.

I do add oak dominoes to most of my meads.

Sanitise bottles well. Give the corks a sanitiser rinse as well. Bottle carefully to minimise agitation. Cork quickly. No problem.

Actually, the only one I do have problems consistently with is plum mead. Anything with plums in it oxidises like crazy. No idea why. Strawberry - fine, raspberry - fine, elderberry - fine, cherry - fine, every other berry - fine, plum - crap.