Batch 1310, mixed red fruits

[Moley]

Last year my wife's aunt had to go into residential care because she has become incapable of looking after herself, and we had to help with clearing out her mobile home, retrieving sentimental possessions and re-homing or disposing of furniture and fittings. There was a small chest freezer. In-laws had no use for it so I nabbed it. It now lives down my cellar and is specifically MY freezer. This pleased the wife because it cleared quite a bit of space in the general domestic food freezer.

It was brim full of frozen fruits, home made sausages, pork shoulder (bought when on offer) which is destined to become more sausages, and hops. All fruits were picked over and washed in sulphited water before freezing. Stone fruits were de-stoned.

Temperatures are ideal at the moment for fermentation, so yesterday evening I had a good rummage, got quite a few tubs out and left them to defrost overnight.

This morning I have put 4.5kg elderberries, a disappointing 2.5kg of blackberries (I thought I had more), 550g of raspberries and 375g of red gooseberries in a bucket and covered them with boiling water.

After an hour or so, when bucket contents had cooled quite a bit, I've added 4.6kg of Victoria-type plums (from my mother's tree) and 1070g of smaller, dark skinned, more damson-like red plums from our own tree. These were obviously still left over from 2011 because stone fruits failed completely last year.

I've added pectolase and SodMet and topped up to around 4 gallons. I will pitch yeast tomorrow morning and give that about 5 days before straining to a closed fermenter and making it up to 6 gallons. A few litres of red grape juice will probably also go into the mix. I will then take a smaller mash from the second-hand fruit, adding some raisins and perhaps some more elderberries because I still have plenty more of those.


That's right, it's not even 6am yet and I've got a brew on. I like this couple of hours before I go to work and without family disturbances.

 

[HLA91]

Sounds like a nice combination, and before 6am that's good going. I have seen tons of elderflower this year and even SWMBO and work colleagues spotting it for me as we drive along so hopefully I should get a decent amount of elderberries this year.

 

[Tim_Crowhurst]

:thumb: :party: :lol: :hat:

 

[Moley]

I have seen tons of elderflower this year and even SWMBO and work colleagues spotting it for me as we drive along so hopefully I should get a decent amount of elderberries this year.

I don't think I've ever seen so many elderflowers, I'm spotting and making a mental note of trees I've never noticed before on roads I drive every day, so I'm hoping for a bumper crop of berries.

Anyway, time to do some sugar calculations now.

I've also found two bottles of Polish cherry syrup which have just gone out of date and need using, so they can go in the second batch.

 

[HLA91]

Ade, cheeky question, any chance you could post your sugar calcs please for me to look at I havent done sugar calcs from fresh fruit before so it would be interesting to see how the maths is done. I take it that you work out the sugar content of the fruit then estimate an extraction % ?

 

[Moley]

There are some (hopefully) useful sugar calculation tips in this topic.

So I've got 4500g of elderberries with an 11.5% sugar content, that potentially gives me 517.5g sugar.
2500g of Blackberries at 7% = 175g
550g of Raspberries at 7% = 38.5g
375g of Gooseberries at 8% = 30g
5670g of Plums - now the table says 10% sugar content but I think that's weight with stones in, and stones are around 10% of the fruit weight, so that would be 11% with stones out, so 624g

Grand total, 1385g sugar.

How much of that gets extracted and how much gets wasted is purely guesswork.

All fruit was frozen, so cell structure has been broken and more juice will be released, quite a lot had already oozed out as it all defrosted.

I'm not going to add sugar to the bucket yet, so a hydrometer reading after straining may give me a clue as to how much is left, but I'm going to guess around 80% and say 1100g out and 285g carried forward into the second batch because I won't be trying to press the pulp dry at that point.

Total weight of fruit was 13,595g = 480 oz = 30lbs, and if I aim for 30 litres by pure coincidence that works out to exactly 4.5lbs fruit to the gallon, which is nice.

Keeping to round numbers, 300g sugar in the litre would give me an OG of 1.108 and between 15-16% abv.

That means I want 9kg in total, less 1100g, less whatever's in however much RGJ I decide to add.

 

[phiz]

Hi Moley.
Mixed fruit wine is one of my favourites but I've stopped including Plums because the wine never clears. Have tried various varieties and Victoria Plums seem to create the worst haze in a single fruit wine. Have you had this problem?

 

[Moley]

Hi Phiz, sorry, I've only just found your question.

Plums and damsons can often be troublesome with regards to clearing, mainly due to their waxy skins.

There are two basic methods with country wines to knock out wild yeasts etc., you either pour boiling water over your fruit or you use cold water and Campden tablets. Stone fruits aren't suited to the hot approach.

This is precisely why I poured boiling water over the berries but then waited for the bucket to cool significantly before I added plums and sulphites. I was also quite heavy handed with the pectolase.