Country wines - alternatives to sugar and honey

[xhalmers_860]

Hey all,

I have done a few batches in the last 2 years of eldeberry, blackberry, eldeflower, plum wines and meads, and really like the idea of only using native ingredients and trying to recreate old recipes (there are plenty of acidic fruits around to not need lemon for example)

I realise that you need sugars to make anything like normal grape wine, but do you really need to use refined sugar or huge amounts of honey? I don't mind making a weak alchohol content, or 'something not quite, but almost, totally unlike wine' if it means not having to buy in sugar. As long as its drinkable.

4 questions then:
1 Could the sugars come from grains as with all-grain beer brewing?
2 What is the minimum amount of sugar you could add to say, blackberries, to get them to the (minimum?) of 7%?
3 Would adding less water to the juice obtained from fruit mean less sugar needed, even if it severely reduces the wine yield?
4 Is this wine or beer?


I have all but ruled out boiling down 10 gallons of birch sap as a habit, though I may give it a go in the spring for a special batch.

 

[oldbloke]

It'll be a pain getting just the sugars and not much of the flavours out of grains like barley. You could cheat by letting somebody else do that for you and use maltodextrin. Honey was what used to be used in the RealOldDays. Wine was a mediterranean thing, it was all meads up here. Sugarbeet was used as animal food until /after/ the arrival of cane sugar from abroad. Apples are 12% sugar, but it'll all end up tasting of apple.
Blackberries are something pathetic like 7% sugar - you might get to 1% using them alone, if you were lucky. You'd want over a pound of sugar (or 1.25lb honey) per gallon to get anywhere close to 7%
If you try to up sugar concentration by adding less water, you get too much flavour.
I don't think it's wine if it's under 8%. It's not beer - no malted grain.

 

[RobWalker]

Interesting! Native ingredients....have you thought about maybe converting things like rice from starch to sugar?

 

[GREBO75]

Interesting! Native ingredients....have you thought about maybe converting things like rice from starch to sugar?

Hmmm, native rice? Not sure we have many paddy fields round here :grin:

I think your only real chance would be to use (or make you own) malted barley or wheat. Not sure you'd get close to 11-12% of average wine without them really taking over the flavour but maybe you could get close to 6-7%.

Or slightly cheating you could use corn syrup (like most cheating brewers do nowdays in their so called ales and ciders and lagers :whistle: )

 

[oldbloke]

White grape concentrate might be your best bet for high sugar and low effect on flavour, and it'd have been available (ish) waybackthen, as trade with the med has been going on since before Christ.

 

[xhalmers_860]

OK thanks for your replies . . . .

I don't mind if using grains adds too much flavour as people mentioned - might be interesting!

Also what is wrong with having too much flavour from not adding more water?


I have a very small amount of plum juice bubbling away quite slowly now (40 sec a bubble or something). I added nothing except yeast and 2 tbsp of sugar. I am thinking of making up a batch of starchy water from barley and adding it bit by bit. Will update.

 

[oldbloke]

Also what is wrong with having too much flavour from not adding more water?

Go and buy a bottle of orange squash concentrate or a sodastream flavouring pack and see what it's like neat....
And, with some juices (eg apple concentrate) the acid levels will take your teeth out before you can say Dentist

 

[xhalmers_860]

Haha ok, I get that.

Actually I just had a sip while racking it, and it is sour, but quite pleasant. Like cloudy lemonade sort of level.

Nevertheless I added lots of barley water, since this seems to be a classic plum combination. We will see how it ferments out.