Blackberry wine is the perfect way to make use of a huge crop of summer blackberries. This one-gallon blackberry wine recipe can easily be increased to make a full 5-gallon batch if you have plenty on hand.
There are so many things to make with blackberries in the summertime. Blackberry jam is a must of course, along with a fresh berry pie. I’ve started canning whole blackberries for use in winter cobblers and that works wonderfully as well. In all the blackberry feasts of summer, don’t forget to make a batch of blackberry wine.
When there’s enough around to pick them by the 5-gallon bucket full, it’s no trouble to pull some aside for a sweet blackberry wine.
This recipe is adapted from The Home Winemakers Companion. The book describes it as follows:
“This is an outstanding dessert wine, well suited to many sweets like black forest cake, fruit pies a la mode, cheesecake, and fruit tarts. It is a reasonably easy wine to make and will earn accolades from friends and relatives.”
I like the fact that this recipe does not include any chemical stabilizers, but the original recipe had other fruits besides blackberries. The author included a full pound of mashed bananas and 1/4 pound of raisins as well. I’ve removed those and added more blackberries instead. If I wanted a banana wine, I’d make one. This one’s all blackberries!
The recipe also specifically calls for Wyeast Mead Sweet Yeast, which finishes with a heavy bodied sweet wine. That particular yeast packet is a bit expensive and might be worth the investment for a big 5 or 6-gallon batch. For a one gallon batch, try this one which also finishes sweet but is much more economical to buy in dried form. You can also go with a generic Premier Blanc wine yeast which works well in just about any wine.
Watch yourself during the primary ferment. This blackberry wine fermented more violently than any in my recent memory. While most wine, cider and beer recipes have you start the batch with either an open fermenter or a blow off tube, I often don’t bother. I have kids running around, and a cat who loves to jump into anything, so I usually just seal it up and check the fermenter every 8 to 10 hours to make sure it’s not bubbling up into the water lock. Not this time…
I made peach wine which big chunks of fruit in it without a problem, and even the matted flower petals from dandelion wine didn’t make their way into the waterlock. This blackberry wine is hell-bent on blowing up and it’s not stopping anytime soon. No more than an hour or two goes by without an eruption, so be warned.
I actually ended up filtering all the fruit out of the mixture after 24 hours, and moving the mixture into half gallon mason jars with simple silicone water locks from Mason tops. These water locks are much easier to clean and they’re perfect for use in a primary ferment. The silicone has a tiny pressure valve nipple that forms a water lock without water. They’re usually used for making vegetable ferments, but there’s no reason not to use them for winemaking and they work great.
After a week in the primary fermenter, go ahead and rack the blackberry wine back into a narrow neck fermenter with a traditional waterlock once the fermentation slows down a bit. Allow it to ferment in secondary for about 3 months, then rack again and leave it for 8 months to a year before bottling. Once bottled, age for at least 6 months before drinking.
So to recap:
- Ferment in primary for 1 week, watching for overflows
- Secondary for 3 months
- rack again and leave for 8 to 12 months
- Bottle and age for at least 6 months.
All in all, this blackberry wine won’t be ready to drink for at least 18 months. Now I’m wishing I had made a 5-gallon batch. I’ve written this recipe for a 1-gallon batch, but it can easily be multiplied by 5 for a full five-gallon batch. If you’ve only got a handful of blackberries and still want to give it a try, use a half gallon or quart fermenter as I describe in this post on making small batch wine.
Blackberry Wine
A sweet dessert wine with a beautiful blackberry flavor.
Ingredients
- 4 lbs blackberries
- 2 1/4 lbs sugar, about 4 1/2 cups
- 1/4 tsp tannin powder
- 1 tsp acid blend
- 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
- 1/2 tsp yeast nutrient
- 1/4 packet wine yeast, preferably sweet wine yeast
- water to fill
Instructions
- Sanitize all equipment.
- Smash blackberries and sugar together in a primary fermentation container.
- Bring 1 quart of water to a boil and pour over the blackberries and sugar. Stir to dissolve the sugar.
- Allow the mixture to cool to around 70 degrees and add the remaining ingredients, adding enough water to fill your 1-gallon fermenter.
- Seal the fermenter with a blow off tube (this ferments a bit violently for a water lock) or leave open for the first part of the primary ferment. Stir the mixture daily for 5-7 days until the most vigorous fermentation is complete.
- After about a week, wrack the blackberry wine into a glass carboy. Allow the mixture to ferment for about 3 months before racking again.
- At this point, allow the mixture to ferment for 8-12 months before bottling.
- Allow the blackberry wine to bottle age at least 6 months before tasting.
More Easy Country Wine Recipes
Looking for more homemade fruit wine recipes? I’ve got plenty to share…
Alice
I’d love to make wine, but I juiced from all my berries. How much berry juice would i need for the 1 gallon recipe?
Ashley Adamant
Wow, that’s lovely! If you have the juice already you can try making a really strong batch with just under a gallon of juice, leaving enough space for the sugar and other additives. When I used sugar to extract juice, the combined juice/sugar mixture was only about 1/2 gallon so to make something akin to my recipe I’d just use about 1/2 gallon of extracted juice.
Dave
I would test the gravity of the juice and at that point you can decide to add more liquid and amount of sugar based on the starting gravity.
Val
At which step do you strain the fruit from the juice?
Recipe looks perfect! Can’t wait to try it….
Ashley Adamant
You have a few options…
For a cleaner ferment with less chance of overflows, mash the blackberries in sugar and allow their juices to extract for about 24 hours. Pour the water over it, stir it well and then strain then (before even putting it into the fermenter).
You can also leave the blackberries in during the primary fermentation and strain after the first week or so, which will extract more flavor but also increase the risk of the water lock clogging with fruit. If you do this, really watch it for overflows and clogs, and clear the water lock as necessary.
Paul Lucas
I also would prefer to juice my berries first, and then ferment the first stage in a food grade bucket covered with cloth and a rubber band. Does this seem like a viable plan?
Ashley Adamant
Yes indeed. That works just fine too (and likely will be cleaner all around).
Carole
Is it ok to use a standard enamel canning pot for this?
Ashley Adamant
Yes, you can use whatever pot you want. All you’re doing is bringing the water to a boil before pouring it over the fruit, it doesn’t much matter what container you use in this case.
Christel
A little bit over my head, many terms I don’t know, time to grab a dictionary, LoL! The jist of it all seems simple enough. I looked up wine and found you, as acstep in liqueur… so, if made, can this wine be used in lieu of the red wine in blackberry liqueur recipes?
Ashley Adamant
Yes, you can use this in place of red wine in recipes. Sorry about the lingo, winemaking can get complicated…
Carole
Wine was fermented in canner pot and bottled a week later with air locks. I noticed recipe didn’t call for Sodium Metabisulphite. This is my second time making wine and I didn’t want it to turn into sparkling (like my cider last fall) so I added 3grams of it diluted in water and topped off to prevent yeast from going into second fermentation. I hope I didn’t mess this up. Any suggestions/comments? Do you back sweeten yours? It’s been fermenting for total of 9 days until I added SM and I’d like wine to be sweet. I used sweet wine yeast K1-V1116. Thank you.
Ashley Adamant
I never use stabilizers in my wine, so I’m honestly not sure if 3 grams is right for a gallon. Only fermenting it for 9 days is a bit short though…here’s the timeline I suggested:
Ferment in primary for 1 week, watching for overflows
Secondary for 3 months
rack again and leave for 8 to 12 months
Bottle and age for at least 6 months.
So killing off the yeast after just 9 days will result in a very low alcohol ferment, and the vast majority of the sugar will still be in there. I’m honestly not sure if there’s enough alcohol in there for it to keep, but then again, I’m not sure if that’s strictly required given that you added a stabilizer. I don’t know if it’s possible for it to spoil with that in there…
All around, I’m not sure since you’re doing something I’ve never tried and I’m not sure how it’ll turn out. My best guess is you have a very lightly alcoholic wine, with A LOT of residual sugar. Not my preference, but I wouldn’t necessarily call it messed up either if you were going for a still wine with a lot of sugar remaining.
Give it a bit of time in the bottle to mellow, and then let me know how it tastes, now I’m curious.
Carole
Hi Ashley and thank you for your reply. I realized the mistake I made after rereading your instructions that same night. It was late and for some reason I thought wine wasn’t supposed to fizz. I remembered using stabilizer in the past and added it way too early. I’ll let it age and follow racking guidelines. This may be time consuming and expensive grape juice! Sorry, we all have our moments =)
Ashley Adamant
No worries Carole, you have no idea how many batches I’ve fudged at some point in the process. All part of the learning curve. Hope it turns out tasty either way!
Robert Sterc
Is it normal for a blackberry & sugar water for wine making to have mold build up in the jars
Ashley Adamant
If left long enough it will start to mold. Did you add yeast yet? Blackberries and sugar will of course mold pretty quickly. Extract the juice with sugar, strain and then get the yeast in there. That whole process should only be 24-48 hours, and there shouldn’t be any mold issues in that time.
If you leave the fruit pulp in the primary ferment, after about 2 weeks anything exposed to the air will start to mold. That’s one reason to either filter it out before beginning or be sure to rack the wine over into secondary on time to avoid mold issues.
Loren
I use a similar recipe (24 1 gal batches so far). 2 things that really ease the process: use a 2 gal food grade plastic bucket for primary & put the mashed blackberries into a 1 gal nylon paint strainer. I tie the nylon strainer with string & into the bucket with all else. 5-6 days later remove the bag & rack to glass secondary. I also go with about 148 oz fluid only so I get a gallon in secondary 1 about a bottle secondary. The bottle is used for top-up after rackings & as test drinks so you end up with a full gallon. Not to say my way is better, just explaining some things to eliminate straining & get 5 bottles from the batch.
Tim
When I make grape wine I use only a 1/2 tsp (2.8 grams) per 5 gallons at 3 different times during the process. 1) on day 1 in the primary fermenter to kill wild yeasts. 2) months later after all the racking is done and I want to age it in bulk for a long period of time (a year or more). 3) a few days before bottling when you rack the last time. If you used 3 grams in 1 gallon after only 9 days… well… I kinda think you were being too cautious.
If you are worried about wild yeasts… make the recipe as above but don’t add the yeast right away.
Instead put all the ingredients (except the yeast) in the primary fermenter ( I just use a 5 gallon food grade bucket with a loose lid) and stir in 1/8th of a teaspoon (in a bit of water) or if you have a scale about 1 gm of MBS to it, put the lid on loose. WAIT 24 HOURS. The next day add the yeast and carry on. You likely won’t need any more MBS after that if you keep things really clean. Anything that touches the wine needs to be very very clean.
The sanitizing action of MBS comes from the solution off-gassing sulfur. The sulfur kills any organism but is short lived. First I clean everything. Then I use a 2.5% solution of MBS (2 teaspoons in 1 liter of water) in a spray bottle to spray all the buckets, tools, bottles, hydrometer, sink etc… (including my hands) and let it all sit for a just a few minutes. Then rinse everything with clean water and you are good to go. As long as the spray bottle keeps tight it will last you a long time. MBS in water open to air will off-gas and become useless. I have never had a grape or any other fruit wine go bad. Cheers.
robert lunsford
When racking, especially from secondary to tirsherary, I will lose space in my carboy. I know air and light are killers. What do I back fill with? A red? If so what grape?
Christel
Thanks for the reply. I just moved them all to the bigger freezer, and it feels like I have close to 10 lbs of berries. Time to syrup, cobbler, AND wine! 🤗