Getting Berry Confused..

[johncrobinson]

Yes and boiling very hot sugar (much hotter than boiling water) is not a job to give to the kids.
Be carefull when doing it.

 

[Wynott]

In my copy of 130 new wine making recipies by Berry nearly all his 1,gall recipies use 2.0-2.5 lb sugar to the gallon,Which is about right.!!
So it seems during many reprints and updates some rougue copies are floating around.

...I checked the CJJB 'Aperitif' today, and it's gone right down to 0.986 and still fermenting, so may have just caught it in time. I slowly added 5oz syrup, and it's still going. There must have been quite a bit of sugar in the Sevilles and Oranges.

 

[hedgerowpete]

the sugar levels have changed to better suit the tastes of the people and they styles are now more fixed, most homemade wines in the 50s and 60s were inciped horrible and incredably sweet very little flavour and nothing like a grape brouight wine

from the 60s and 70s onwards people started to try to emulate grape wines, with clarity and quality, but the sweet wine was still king, i can remember wines thick with sugar and cloudy. kits started and were just as bad

from the late 70s onwards and early 80s kits were improving and getting less sugar, so were recipes, instead of goosseberry wine, we started doing dry white with gooseberry and grape concentrate.

80s owards and 90s, people found even better ways to transport grapes whole back to the uk, so wine with fermenting grapes groups started up. we u sed to drive down to london to a supplier and could buy wholeboxes of various grapes and drive home, £10 a box of 10 kg. country wines started to die off due to theeir bad reputation of poor quality maaking and recipes.

from the 80s onwards people have been taking cjj berrys word and changing it, his original book is filled with errors, far more than expected so they are to alot of us recipe design faults, in the 90s the bokk was reprinted and huge change was advertised but the book was blindly reprinted and errors left in, i remember at the time a forum rewrote the book for themselves and used to issue it for free, error and recipes corrected

In the 00s and 10s, people have come back to home made country wines, taken berrys book at face value after all millions were sold and no adhere to it like a religous icon.

if you want to go strong alc, and i mean well over 15% start the must at 1080 wait till it drops to 1010 and refeed sugar back to 1050 and keep refeeding the sugar, sweet wine is 1010, anything higher thaan 1020 is sugar syrup

 

[Wynott]

@hedgerowpete Thanks, that's such an interesting read! :hat: I can remember how sweet some of the commercial wines sold in the UK were in the 60s and 70s, that's got me wondering if things like Black Tower etc. were chosen to match what was seen as the comparatively inexperienced UK market for wine. I just had a quick trawl and found at least six different versions of Berry:

9781854861399 1969 Amateur Winemaker
9780900841408 1979 Amateur Winemaker Publications
9780900841668 1983 Aztec
9780900841835 1987 Special Interest Model Books
9781854861399 1996 Special Interest Model Books
9781565236028 2011 Fox Chapel Publishing (USA)

I'll look at all the recipes in my books with a more critical eye now, and start/feed them more appropriately. I was pretty pleased with the Dandelion I opened last night, only bottled it in April. Lots of work picking though, so I may do two batches, one in April and one on the later flowering.

 

[johncrobinson]

I did suspect something like this may be the case.
When it comes to the flavour ingediants most seem ok as do a lot of the methods
But really 4lb+ sugar to the gallon is a bit ott.

 

[hedgerowpete]

@hedgerowpete Thanks, that's such an interesting read! :hat: I can remember how sweet some of the commercial wines sold in the UK were in the 60s and 70s, that's got me wondering if things like Black Tower etc. were chosen to match what was seen as the comparatively inexperienced UK market for wine. I just had a quick trawl and found at least six different versions of Berry:

9781854861399 1969 Amateur Winemaker
9780900841408 1979 Amateur Winemaker Publications
9780900841668 1983 Aztec
9780900841835 1987 Special Interest Model Books
9781854861399 1996 Special Interest Model Books
9781565236028 2011 Fox Chapel Publishing (USA)

I'll look at all the recipes in my books with a more critical eye now, and start/feed them more appropriately. I was pretty pleased with the Dandelion I opened last night, only bottled it in April. Lots of work picking though, so I may do two batches, one in April and one on the later flowering.

I always tell people to follow cjjjjjjjjjjjj berry by the letter for the first ten brews , theres never been a better book on country wines for a novice.

after ten brews you should understand what and how to use a Hydrometer, once you get that part, i tell you to stop looking at sugar in kilos in a recipe, you should be able to drop every thing in a bucket, test the sample work out where you are ( say sg 1060) and realise that the wine your going to make is going to be a mediun dry SG1002 and you want 14%, with that you canbang those figures into a online chart and get a weight back to top up the sugar..

the next step is doing a second go, so made apple the first time, found it a bit sharp but thin and weak, so with that we know the apples we used were to acidic, sso add more eating apples, or less citric acid, berry went on the high side on citric and low on tartaric, modern tatste is to flip those two

bouguet is the next one, most beginners wines are bland bland bland.

try this, after the final ferment, and racking add four fancy tea teabags, lady grey is a touch strong, but a forrest fruits asda tea bag into a red wine, will knock your socks off as the alc with remove the esters from the tea bagsand leave them behind

berry has many many faults but for a beginner there has never been a better stepping stone written

 

[hedgerowpete]

by the way, never break more than a kilo per gallon and thats fruit as well as sugar, its not a perfect rule but a good beginners level

 

[johncrobinson]

I agree hedgerow that Berrys instructions on the technique of winemaking are fine but for some reason some of the sugar levels are indeed absurd.
It is very problamatic on a forum to go against a published auther.Especially one who produces a widely accepted "Bible", Sometimes one indeed gets to the pulling out hair stage.
Its only when "thousands" have the same problem does the penny drop.

 

[hedgerowpete]

I agree hedgerow that Berrys instructions on the technique of winemaking are fine but for some reason some of the sugar levels are indeed absurd.
It is very problamatic on a forum to go against a published auther.Especially one who produces a widely accepted "Bible", Sometimes one indeed gets to the pulling out hair stage.
Its only when "thousands" have the same problem does the penny drop.

its quite surprising how vicous people get when you remark on that book or person, been kicked off several forums for saying that this person or others were once great but now the modern world has changed orproved their ideas wrong

 

[johncrobinson]

Its the cross to bear hedgerow.

I try to give the people the expertise of my familys generations of winemaking experiance.But i do NOT know everything.
In fact it just makes my day when someone here gives me new information.

I do wish my deceased Father could have lived to be on this forum.I know he would have loved it.

 

[johncrobinson]

My father learned to make wine in the 1920s-1930s from his aunt Hanna who was teetotal so my dad was called upon for tasting sessions and set him upon a life of winemaking.

When i was born 1957 my father laid down a bottle of wine to be opened on my 21st.
Traditions changed and it was opened on my 18th.
Fantastic is the word i would use to describe it.
Now at nearly 63 yrs I am still looking for a method of getting that kind of age into my wine.
As after all i will be lucky to have another 18-20 yrs.

 

[johncrobinson]

BTW I have never figured out why anyone who was teatotal should make wine.
Too late to ask now.!!

 

[hedgerowpete]

BTW I have never figured out why anyone who was teatotal should make wine.
Too late to ask now.!!

my aunt was anything but tea total, and some of her concoctions were awlfull, we used to joke she would ferment grass clipping, when she pasted we started to pour all the gunk down the drain, we were stopped by the tenants assc at the home due to the smell of hooch from the drains

 

[tribalfather]

...I checked the CJJB 'Aperitif' today, and it's gone right down to 0.986 and still fermenting, so may have just caught it in time. I slowly added 5oz syrup, and it's still going. There must have been quite a bit of sugar in the Sevilles and Oranges.

difference in amount of sugar is down to better refining, smeone has updated his quantities

 

[Applesnmore]

What does caster sugar become? The instructions were to boil for about 45 minutes when it should start to foam.

Caster sugar is just a grain size if sugar rather than a different type. Used in baking as it's easier to incorporate.

 

[johncrobinson]

Yes caster sugar is just a grain size.If you are going to boil your sugars incorporate a bit of acid, Malic/Tartaric/Citric. acids. It matters not which.
The wee yeasties will love this.

 

[kelper]

When you boil sugar in water with acid present it turns from sucrose to a mix of fructose and glucose. Had to search online for this. It's called invert sugar.

 

[johncrobinson]

Yup Kelper thats it.

Really good for wine esp higher alcohol ones.

I have noticed in your posts you have a liking for elderberrys,Invert sugar is "bang on " there.

 

[johncrobinson]

A good elderberry "port" is to die for, Shame it just takes so long.

 

[hedgerowpete]

A good elderberry "port" is to die for, Shame it just takes so long.

AMEN to that, tried several over the years and it does need several before it gets good