Blackberry cider

[Nicks90]

Bit late foraging this year due to going on holiday for 2 weeks right in the middle of blackberry extravaganza...
But never mind, went down to the bottom of the garden and managed to collect 1kg of berries
Boiled for a little bit in a liter of water and left overnight with 2 Camden tablets.
Mashed them through a very fine sieve in to a DJ and topped off with 2.5l apple juice. Added some nutrients and pectalose and some cml cider yeast and bingo... 4.5l of brewing purple goodness!
OG 1045
From past experience this will end up about 5.5% and should come good in a couple of months.

 

[hesstondriver]

Hmmm , I know what I’m picking this weekend......

 

[stan.distortion]

Sounds very tasty :) Just got 2 gallon batches of blackberry started, one using red wine yeast and another with the sediment from a batch using natural yeasts from elderflower that seems to have a rather strange property, almost hallucinogenic... could prove interesting.

Hadn't even thought of adding apple juice though, obvious now you mention it. Still plenty of blackberries here at the mo and a friend is doing cider... they take a lot of time to pick but it sounds well worth doing another batch :)

 

[Graz]

Hmmm, might also be going blackberry picking this weekend...

 

[Andy lemon]

looks very nice

 

[Nicks90]

It's tried and tested and imho needs some apple juice to give it that cider bite. Otherwise it's just alcohol fruit shoots and always feels a bit 'wrong'.
Sort of like a weird half way house to a wine, but with none of the complexity.

 

[hesstondriver]

It's tried and tested and imho needs some apple juice to give it that cider bite. Otherwise it's just alcohol fruit shoots and always feels a bit 'wrong'.
Sort of like a weird half way house to a wine, but with none of the complexity.

any indication of inclusion of AJ ,

im thinking of doing one now 50/50 or 70/30 AJ:BBJ

 

[Nicks90]

i usually free style it a bit. depends how many berries i have at the time - but i usually shoot for 2l bbj and 2-2.5l aj
if i get a really big haul i'll split it over 2 demijohns and maybe go 70/30 aj:bbj. any less than that and it gets a bit weak in the berry flavour

just to note - when prepping my berries i always add 1 liter of water per KG of berries before boiling them up. it usually gives me 2l of juice once i;ve squeezed the lot through a sieve. some people put literally just enough water in the pan to cover the bottom and stop the berries scorching on the hot metal and therefore end up with much 'stronger' juice, others put in way more than 1 liter of water per kg berries. But i find 1:1 works.

 

[benludo]

Last year did a similar with blackberry juice but added it to coopers stout and boy what a smooth moors drink.