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Mead Lovers Digest #0165
Mead Lover's Digest #165 Fri 02 July 1993
Forum for Discussion of Mead Brewing and Consuming
John Dilley, Digest Coordinator
Contents:
Mulberries (kstiles)
mulberries (Jane Beckman)
Re: Mulberries (Chuck Stringer)
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Date: Thu, 1 Jul 93 09:15:02 EDT
From: kstiles@woomera.att.com
Subject: Mulberries
John (The Coyote) Wyllie SLK6P@cc.usu.ed asks about Mulberry wine...
Well, last year I made both a mulberry wine and a mulberry melomel,
and they both came out wonderful. Here are a few observations.
Mulberries vary enormously from tree to tree: from nice and tart to
sickly sweet, from jet black to red to pure white. Compared to
other berries, you need LOTS. I used 30lb. for 5 gal of wine. Now,
this is a pretty robust wine, so you can scale back if you like.
On the other hand, it isn't hard to gather vast quantities of the
berries. Just lay old sheets on the ground and shake the tree.
Repeat every few days. They are NOT similar to blackberries and
raspberries in the sense that you will extract no tannins from
the seeds. IMHO, mulberry wine needs tannin and acid blend or
it will turn out bland. I used a dash of nutrient, but I'll bet
it wasn't necessary. With the huge volume of fruit I think there
are plenty of nutrients. I got volcanic fermentation. Both
the wine and the melomel were wonderful within a few months, and
at a year, they're almost gone. I have 27 lb. so far for this
year's vintage.
Have fun,
-Kevin Stiles
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Date: Thu, 1 Jul 93 10:31:35 PDT
From: jane@stratus.swdc.stratus.com (Jane Beckman)
Subject: mulberries
>The berries are fairly tart, yet quite sweet. A bit of a bite.
They sound slightly underripe. Are they fully purple, or white with
purple shading?
Underripe may be an advantage, though you get more sugars in fully ripe. I
find the fully ripe mulberries to be rather insipid.
My uncle used to make mulberry wine from the berries off our tree. (We had
a 30-foot (!!) tree--that's a LOT of mulberries!) The proportions he used
to use was 1 gallon of ripe mulberries to one gallon of water (press them
and strain the pulp through cheesecloth to get the juice, then add water to
it). He'd then add three cups of sugar to every gallon. You could probably
use similar amounts of honey. The juice is fairly sweet.
Sorry, but I'm not a fan of mulberry wine, and can only guess at why he liked
the stuff (maybe because he made it himself? ;-) . It tastes rather too much
like something a wino would drink, to me. ;-) But then, I find I think
that about blackberry wine, too.
-Jilara [jane@swdc.stratus.com]
- ----- End Included Message -----
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Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1993 16:49:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Chuck Stringer <cstringe@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu>
Subject: Re: Mulberries
COYOTE <SLK6P@CC.USU.EDU> writes:
> Anyone have any experience with Mulberries? Any suggestions/advise?
>
> A wine maker I met in Oregon took a very simplistic approach.
> He'd mash the fruits (whatever he was using) add his sugar, and let it
> sit overnight. His theory was that the osmotic pressure of such a syrup
> would inhibit contaminants. THen he'd bring up the volume and pitch yeast.
> They were all very tasty. And very fruity. I've run into overly tart flavors
> in some of my efforst. I'd assume it may be myt chemical additives.
> So I think I'll emulate his approach and keep my fingers crossed!
Sounds pretty iffy to me. For fresh fruit wait until the near the
end of the first fermentation. That gives the yeasts a chance to make
the environment more hostle to infection. Rather than boil the fruit,
put it in a sieve and rinse it with boiling water to kill beasties.
Then add the mashed fruit and pectic enzyme to the must.
Chuck Stringer
E-mail cstringe@ucs.indiana.edu
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End of Mead Lover's Digest
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