Blueberry Wine Underway

The “high bush” blueberries in New Hampshire are now fully ripe and perfect for picking.  This morning, we went to the Green Acres in New Hampton, NH to pick out the blueberries we want to use for our next batch of wine.  I’ve been conversing with some friends online and I was able to get a recipe from an award winning wine maker that goes by the name Captain Jason.  The recipe called for about 15 pounds of fresh, very ripe, blueberries.  So, we picked enough for the wine, and for pancakes. 

When we returned to the house, we quickly cleaned the berries by filling a large bucket with cold water and allowing the water to continuosly fill while the leaves and stems wash over the sides.  This method seemed to be farily quick and easy to clean a large quantity of berries.  Most of the blueberries actually sank to the bottom of the water.  I sanitized all of the equipment and got the process underway.

The first order of business was to press the berries using the new (old) press that I recently bought at an antique barn store nearby.  The press is old, but did the trick.  I am sure that a new press would be faster and easier…but, it was a good deal.  I had a friend help me pour the berries into the press basked that I lined with a straining cloth, creating a bag inside the basket.  We were able to fit about 8 pounds of berries into the basket at the start.   We lowered the press plate into the basket and started to squeeze out the juice.

After several twists of the press arm, the juice was flowing, the berries were popping, and the bucket that I placed underneath was starting to fill.  I had to back off the press quite a few times to rearrange the berries in the straining bag in the basket.  The press plate had the tendancy to become uneven as intense force was pushing down on the berries.  After a while, we were able to add the other 8 pounds of berries to the press and now were pressing a little over 16 pounds of berries.

Pressing the berries was slow-going and rather messy.  It is amazing how much pressure and how much juice comes out of the berries in the basket.  We condensed 12 quarts of berries down to about 1 quart and generated 11 quarts of juice.  The juice itself ranged from a brownish-green to a bright purple depending on the point of pressure in the press.  All in all, the pressing went rather well, and we are satisfied with the amount of juice that was extracted.

To preserve the juice, after pressing, I immediately added 6 campden tablets to some hot water and added it to the blueberry juice.  The hot water also proved helpful later when adding the sugar to the must.  I brought the primary fermentor into the house and prepared it to accept the other ingredients called for in the recipe. 

We added 15 pounds of granulated sugar, the pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, acid blend and more water and stirred it all together.  One thing that was not called for in the recipe, but that I saw on several other recipes, was raisins.  I added 2 pounds of raisins to add some sweetness and flavor.  We also tied off the straining bag with the remaining blueberry pulp and added it to the fermentor.  There was some blueberry pulp on the outside of the straining bag that happened during pressing.  I am not worried about that little bit of pulp in the fermentor, as it will be racked off anyways.

The must was very thick as expected from the freshly pressed blueberries.  I took a specific gravity reading and found the must at 1.20 – VERY high.  I will likely dillute the must with more water when I remove the straining bag in about a week, so as to reduce the sugar content some.  With that high of an SG, I risk making the alcohol content too high for good wine.  I covered the primary fermentor with a light towel for the night.  I will test again tomorrow and add the yeast.

The taste of the must at the start was sticky sweet, like some kind of blueberry syrup.  I am excited to see it ferment and to taste it again later.