Berries of the wild

[street]

Thanks for that information about adding sugar. I will do some research and know a guy that will help me through the processes.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by street Interesting because that is going to be my next venture is chokecherry wine making. I have so many chokecherry trees I could start a business. Lol I like that wine very much.

For a starter, you might want to just try making a liqueur/cordial. You'd need to look it up, bu I don't think it involves much more than soaking the fruit in brandy or vodka, maybe adding some sugar to taste?

A friend of DW's would give us a bottle of home made plum brandy each year, I never did get the recipe though.

-ERD50

[street]

ERD50 >>> Thanks and I will look into that.

[FIREd]

As a kid I used to go pick wild raspberries, blackberries, and blueberries. My dad made brandy with them, my mom made jams and jellies. Wild strawberries were just for snacking.

[Winemaker]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RAE Yes, we need to add sugar to all of our fruit wines for the yeast to have enough to eat. But all the sugar ferments out eventually, so the end result is a dry wine. I have not noticed that the chokecherries are any more difficult to ferment than the other fruits I mentioned. We just add a packet of wine yeast to get things started, and it has always fermented well. We've had our fruit wines on the wine rack for several years without a lot of precipitates forming in the bottles, but maybe that's because we rack it several times before bottling, until things are perfectly clear.

It also depends your storage temperature and on the water you may be using in your must/mix. Water contains a lot of stuff that is local, but not harmful. I use tap water that has been "aged" to allow any chlorine or chlorine-related items to evaporate. I used to use RO water but it lacks some minerals that yeast might want during fermentation.

To see how much precipitate might drop out of your water, make a quart of unsweetened tea, and let it stand overnight. You'll be surprised at the amount of gunk that drops out.

I concur racking several times does help with clarification, but it only takes out gravity influenced particles.

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Winemaker .... I use tap water that has been "aged" to allow any chlorine or chlorine-related items to evaporate. I used to use RO water but it lacks some minerals that yeast might want during fermentation. ....

It is my understanding that most/many municipal water supplies use chloramine, a more stable form of chlorine nowadays.

Home Water Treatment - How to Brew

Quote:

Some city water supplies use a chemical called chloramine instead of chlorine to kill bacteria. Chloramine cannot be removed by boiling and will give a medicinal taste to beer. Chloramine can be removed by running the water through an activated-charcoal filter, or by adding a campden tablet (potassium metabisulfite).

I'd also expect the commercial yeast nutrients (cheap and readily available) would provide any needed minerals? I've been using RO water for brewing for decades, and have not had any yeast problems.


Ahhh, wiki says that it does 'age out', but half-life is ~ 27 hours when boiling - I assume much, much longer if just standing.

Quote:

Chloramine, like chlorine, can be removed by boiling and aging. However, time required to remove chloramine is much longer than that of chlorine. The time required to remove half of the chloramine (half-life) from 10 US gallons (38 l; 8.3 imp gal) of water by boiling is 26.6 hours, whereas the half-life of free chlorine in boiling 10 gallons of water is only 1.8 hours.[27]

And then...

https://www.morebeer.com/articles/re...nes_from_water

Quote:

Standing, aeration, and boiling will remove chloramines from water, but not very effectively. Water in my area (Fairfax County, Virginia) contains the equivalent of 3 mg/L of chlorine in chloramines, a fairly high level. Ten gallons of this water allowed to stand in a 25-gallon stock pot required weeks to lose chloramine down to the <0.1 mg/L level.

Unless you can measure the remaining levels, I would think a campden tablet is the way to go, cheap, easy, and almost instant.

-ERD50