summer free fruit wine mixtures

[jake47]

Not posted for a while but Just wondered i intend to be really frugal this summer ,other half says tight haha.
Ime going to collect loads of elderberries,blackberries,damsons, and any other hedgerow fruit that i can lay my hands on for free.whats going to make a good tasting wine as well as making them individually and would they say compliment each other if i added some quinces,etc.Because i didnt want to make something that was horrible tasting .What do you think.

[Hippie]

I think experimenting is good.

[Duffbeer]

I think experimenting is good.

I agree and more rewarding than sticking to a recipe if all turns out well, allthough blackberry and elderberry are a good combo.

[StockeyDAW]

Not posted for a while but Just wondered i intend to be really frugal this summer ,other half says tight haha.
Ime going to collect loads of elderberries,blackberries,damsons, and any other hedgerow fruit that i can lay my hands on for free.whats going to make a good tasting wine as well as making them individually and would they say compliment each other if i added some quinces,etc.Because i didnt want to make something that was horrible tasting .What do you think.

My opinion and experience is blending many berries at a time. I have had to do this mainly because there is usually not enough of any one berry to make a 23 liter batch. I do not usually make a 4 liter batch. I would say blend the berries that you enjoy together; combine the red juice berries together - yes for blackberries, raspberries, elderberries and mulberries, yes for goose berries- many of the clear juiced sour cherries and the green gage plums (the red plums are not recommended for wine). Try to combine both malic and citric fruit together at approximately a 10% concentration of citric fruit.
with malic.

If you are fortunate enough to have other berries like loganberries, huckleberries, boysenberries, Saskatoon's, currents (both red and black), chokecherries - make use of these either in blends or on their own if you have enough kgs of each do them by themselves they make excellent wine.

Good luck on you free endeavour it is well worth while. Cheers DAW

[jake47]

Thanks all i think a little experimentation is probably the best way to go .Ime not sure what boysenberries are we dont get them, but we do have billberries (Vaccinum myrtillus )that grow wild not too far from us which i believe it is a relation of the blueberry.Blackberry and elderberry sounds good so think i may have a stab at that.

[Duffbeer]

Good luck Jake, let us know the out come.

[Hippie]

Looks like my blackberry crop will be astounding this year!

[StockeyDAW]

How can I say this - this blackberry plant is terribly invasive but - the berries it produces are an absolute delight. Beautiful wine and excellent jams.

For those of you that are fortunate? enough to have these berries free at your hand, that is a bonus. I have to go down into the valley to get them from the farmers market approximately 35$ for a flat of approximately 10 pounds. There are many wild blackberry zones along the west coast of Canada and on Vancouver Island. Unfortunately I am in an area that is to cold to grow them so my best access to blackberries is commercially at the farmers market.

I hope all the blackberry crops are fruitful this year - may be in my case the price will be less costly this time around. Cheers DAW

[jake47]

Been doing a bit of research on berries ,saw on another thread the home made berry picker http://www.bushcraftuk.com/articles/...ry-picker.html that looks good .Wonder if it would work with fruit thats not single berries like blackberries etc or whether its just good for things like bilberries and maybe red/black/white - currents .There are commercialy made ones on ebay http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/sear...e=berry+picker but there quite expensive £16-99 + p&p from Sweden.
Anyway good luck berry picking from staffordshire.

[StockeyDAW]

Been doing a bit of research on berries ,saw on another thread the home made berry picker http://www.bushcraftuk.com/articles/...ry-picker.html that looks good .Wonder if it would work with fruit that's not single berries like blackberries etc or whether its just good for things like bilberries and maybe red/black/white - currents .There are commercially made ones on ebay http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/sear...e=berry+picker but there quite expensive £16-99 + p&p from Sweden.
Anyway good luck berry picking from staffordshire.

I have wondered the same thing? Would it crush the blackberry fruit to much?, or if you used it for raspberries would the stem be broken off when harvesting the fruit? I would like to try them for harvesting on these soft berries. Sure would help for the thorns? I have used a similar type of rake for chokecherries and Saskatoon's- it sure speeds up the picking but I have found that you end up with many stems still attached to the berry and you therefore have to go through all the berries and remove the stems anyway (stem have a tendency to impart a bitter flavour so bes mostly removed along with the pips).

The old ways of hand picking; sour cherries you end up with stems anyway, mulberries you end up with stems either by hand picking or shaking the tree. There are many black current farms around my area and they harvest with mechanized machinery mostly but there are some that do it by hand, with a lot of students in the field harvesting the berries. I guess that I am still old fashioned but come up with a good berry picker that serves the purposes of us wine makers I would be interested in trying. Cheers DAW