Mulberry Wine

Introduction

Welcome to the wonderful world of easy winemaking from ScaerCroe, the first being cherry wine. I like to ferment things, experiment with different fruits, but I do not like all the fuss that wine kits or complex wine recipes give me, so I boil things down to the bare essentials of winemaking. I would not give this wine to a wine prick, because it will likely be torn apart. But if you want to enjoy some good tasting, easy to make and drink, fun wines with fruits that most people do not associate with wine, I encourage you to try this.

Preparation

First off, you are going to need a fermentation bucket and an airlock. If you do not have these, go to your local homebrew store or shop online and get one. This bucket needs to be sanitized and clean.

Ingredients

This is where things get a little tricky. If you have never had a mulberry before, you may not understand this part, but I will try to explain it easily. Mulberries are... a little weak, a little watery. They are like the ghosts of the berry world. They taste good, and are sweet, but they lack a flavor 'body' so to speak. Therefore, just like cocaine, you have to cut it a little bit. Now, how much to cut it with, and what to cut it with are the age old questions. Things to try are dark, rich fruits that have this so called 'body'. So, a dark Ballaton cherry is perfect. However, I was not able to get these, so I resorted to a much inferior medium: Welch's Frozen Grape juice concentrate.

I hate to go into too much explanation, as I noted before this should be a simple and easy recipe, and not get into split hairs, but this part is important. I used a ratio of 2:1 Pounds of mulberries to cans of grape juice. This is the MINIMUM for mulberry flavor, but maximum for wine body. If you want more mulberry flavor, and sacrifice some body, use 6:1 ratio (i.e. 6 pounds of berries and 1 can of Welch's). This is for MAXIMUM mulberry flavor, and minimum body.

I would not exceed these bounds. I personally love body to my wines, but I don't want alcoholic grape juice with no flavor. However, if you use all mulberries, and no base fruit, you are going to have alcohol-water with a hint of mulberry.

On to the real numbers, here is what I use:

• 4 lbs mulberries
• 2 Cans Welch's Grape Juice
• 3 Pounds White Granulated table sugar
• 1 tbs. Lemon/Lime Juice for the acid substitute (Optional)
• White Labs Red Cabernet Yeast
• 1 gallon water

Yeast

I used a starter from my Cherry Wine batch, and may not have been the best yeast for mulberry wine. However, almost any wine yeast can be used in this recipe and something good will come out of it. I would suggest you use some type of red wine yeast.

Note for grape juice substitute

If you are using cherries, and maybe any other fruit that you have around for a substitute for body, I would suggest a 1:1 ratio of pounds of mulberries to pounds of substitue fruit. For a one gallon batch, do not exceed 8 total pounds of fruit. 8 pounds will make a very sweet wine.

Procedure

This is the easy part. Take all the ingredients and pour them into your fermentation container. Dump the yeast in last, swish the mixture around a little, put water in the airlock and seal the container. Put this in a dark, room-temperature area.

After the airlock stops bubbling, which should start within a couple days, wait a couple days. Congratulations, you now have wine! Here is where your path becomes a little more complicated:

• You can siphon it out and drink it if you are impatient.
• You can siphon it out and put it in another bucket to age, thus removing the sediment from the batch.
• Or you can just let it sit for a month or two in its original container to age before drinking.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them and I will get to them as soon as I can.