SAISON LATROBE: TURBID PLUM SAISON

So it’s dark and wet so that’s when I think about doing my yearly lambic beer that I leave out in the garden and let it inoculate with wild yeast and bacteria under my now dormant grape vine. It uses a turbid mash regime and the the general idea is it uses up to 40% raw wheat and then the rest is a simple base malt. At various points wort is pulled from the mash and then boiled so there is lots of starch. Only certain wild bacteria can ferment the starch over a long long time so you get a sour and unique tasting beer due to the bacteria and yeast that fall into it due to your location, environmental conditions and yearly variances.

As its a rare brew I generally have a little read up on it to refresh my memory and I once again came across a simpler turbid mash intended for lower alcohol siaisons posted by the very excellent Hors Catégorie Brewing. This was talking about George Maw Johnson who was the first editor of the belgian brewers magazine Le Petit Journal du Brasseur even though he was from Kent in not Belgium.

So the simpler turbid mash uses the same idea of big brother but it only has one rather than two turbid pulls. The intended use of this is very different though. The cloudy starch filled wort is meant to be fermented with only a traditional yeast rather than with the addition of souring bacteria. This means that there is some sweetness left to taste after the yeast has completed as there is unfermented starch left in the beer. The beer will also have more mouth feel than a modern saison which are crystal clear.

As I like fruit beer and siasons it gave a chance to combine the two but also tweak the recipe and keep a little sweetness in the beer to give the fruit flavour a lift. Modern siasons are bone dry but using the residual sweetness of the turbid mash I may push the fruit and bring it to the fore. With this in mind and using the grape ale I made as a guide I planned a recipe. Moderate alcohol and low bitterness at 17 IBU, with a little tartness from the fruit, some residual sweetness to let the seasonal plums come through but everything in balance.

I would have liked to use 3724 yeast as its generally better with a sourer siason and the plums would certainly add some acidity… but I didn’t have any so I used the traditional Belle Siason. It has a mixed reputation but I actually really like it. I did decide to temper it with a traditional Belgian ale yeast that is not too clovey – Mangrove Jacks M41. Both were co-pitched and allowed to ferment together.

Then I didn’t make the beer… and started with the fruit by making a wine. 3kg of plums were stoned and punched to mash them up. I didn’t add any pectic enzyme but you easily could. The reasoning behind it was that the beer is going to be hazy anyway and the fruit will ferment on its own and then also sit macerating in the beer fermentation to pull more flavour from the skins. I stirred in a campden tablet to kill any wild yeast and let it sit 24 hours to dissipate. Then I added the yeast and some nutrient. Three times a day I stirred the fruit so that it did not allow mold to grow on the surface. Knowing what wine yeast and beer yeast smells like it was a strange aroma of both as it fermented. Once the yeast was really starting to slow down I stopped the stirs and let it sit completely sealed to ferment further.

I made the beer using the petit turbid schedule below. It was labour intensive but good fun and I hit my marks on the step mashes really really well. I suspect that next time I will be frustrated as they will not be as spot on. I also had better efficiency than I expected and had a potential ABV of 4.4% rather than 4% and had a total of 24.5 litres of wort pulled rather than my traditional 22 litres that reduces down to 20 litres in the boil. The mash was cooled over 25 minutes rather than letting it cool ambiently overnight as a lambic beer does. Once in the fermenter the fruit was added, encased in a sparge bag to keep the skins together. There was no need to add yeast as it was with the fruit and no need to oxygenate as it was a huge colony that was still active. Half an hour later the yeast was fermenting very happily, after 12 hours it was absolutely roaring along so much that there were no visible bubbles from the blow off tube but a continuous stream like a hydrothermal vent.

Some people will no doubt think that I should have added the fruit after fermentation slowed down on the beer but I wanted to bottle quickly but maximise the fruit character with alcoholic maceration extracting flavour from the plum skins. Personally I think its a bit of a myth that flavour “boils off” with a strong fermentation. Others may not though. After 10 days I bottled the beer at 2.5 atmospheres. Two beers got a bit of yeast in them as the sparge bag settled in the fermenter but generally the highly floculating Belle and M41 yeast stayed nicely put at the bottom and the bag must have settled slowly rather than with a bump uplifting sediment.

This will definitely become my base for fruit beers from now on. There is more than a hint of plum and it is definitely deeper and more rounded that I have had in my bone dry saisons due to the slight subtle sweetness on the after taste. This sweetness from the starches left in the beer rounds off the fruit flavour rather than it just being one note of sourness and it can be drunk easily. The two yeasts means that the saison character is tempered as expected and allows the fruit to really come through with out much clove interfering. The final beer looks a little hazy but nothing crazy for an ale, colour is a a vibrant yellow orange from the fruit, not as dark or red as I was expecting though! The head is voluminous but disappears quickly but there’s a good refreshing fizz through out. I could add some oats for more head retention but I am very happy with this as it is. Next time I would love to do a blackcurrant, blackberry, elder and black, Jostaberry, gooseberry, greengage, apricot or maybe even strawberry version and I can choose to swap yeasts based on what I expect the acidity to be like, perhaps using 3724.

SAISON LATROBE: TURBID PLUM SAISON

Batch: 20L (managed to pull 22litres)
Start gravity: 1.044
End gravity: yeah… Probably 1.10ish
ABV: 6.5 final estimated. Was aiming for 4% from the malt but got 4.5%
IBU: 17
Colour: 3ish SRM and then the fruit.

Water profile: Tesco Ashbech pushed to a balanced ale

Chemical		Target
Calcium	Ca	80
Magnesium	Mg	5
Sodium	Na	25
Carbonate	CO3	15
Sulphate	SO4	100
Chloride	Cl	75

OTHER FERMENTABLES!

Fruit	Total	Per Gallon
Plums	3kg	750g

So you may want to add the plums after regular fermentation starts to slow but I chose to start the whole fermentation on the fruit. It left time to extract deeper flavour from the fruit skins. You could even ferment with a wine yeast and combine before bottling.
I used Lalemand Belle Saison and Mangrove Jacks M41. Just go with whatever saison yeast you like.
Stone the plums, punch them into squishiness. Add pectic enzyme if you wish and certainly a campden tablet to sanitise. Leave for 24 hours. Add your yeast then leave them to sit in a fermentation bucket for 12 days. Punch down the fruit cap at least once a day, preferably 3 or 4 times. Took 10 days to ferment almost through and I stopped pushing the cap down due to high alcohol and also a cance of oxidation. Once fermented pour the goo and skins into a sanitised sparge bag and add to the waiting fermenter.

GRAIN BILL

Grain	Total	Percentage	Per Litre
German Pilsner	3kg	75.00%	150g
Torrified Wheat	1kg	25.00%	50g

MASH

Protein Rest – Start with all the grain and at a mash thickness of 1litre to 1kg of malt. Mashed at 45c for 10 minutes with a continuous good stir. (I slightly over shot and had 4.5 litres of water to 4kg of grain.)
Gelatinization Rest – Add enough 75c water to get to 51c temperature in the mash. Hold for 10 minutes. I added 4 litres but anything between 1.8 to 2.5 l/kg is apparently acceptable.
Turbid pull – I pulled 3 litres of wort into a separate pan and heated to 74c for 20min then raised to a simmering boil for the rest of the mash schedule.
Sacchrification Rest – Stir and add boiling water to get to 70c then rest for 60 minutes Add 250g rice hulls with 5 minutes to go to aid lautering
Start to lauter the main mash.
Reduce the turbid section to 70c with cold water and pour into the top of the wort so it can lauter though with the existing mash. Then sparge with 75c water to get the whole wort ready to boil. I did vorluf the first runnings.
I collected about 24.5l and it entered the boil at 65c for a 90 min boil.

BOIL

Hop	Alpha	Weight	Time	(Per Litre)
Herkules	16.20%	9g	60min	2.2g

Once chilled to 20c I poured over the plums. As it was active yeast I did not aerate. Started fermentation with no blow off for 24 hours then attached.
Bottled after 12 days after the beer started to ferment and strongly carbonated at 2.5 atmospheres. Allowed to age for a month or longer and served cold from a fridge rather than cellar temperature.

SOURCES

http://www.horscategoriebrewing.com/2016/02/thoughts-on-johnson-1918-belgian.html

Batch 30: Turbid-mashed Petite Saison and Pomebic

GROWING WINE GRAPES IN THE UK

So I think the Pinot vine is now seven years old and seemingly more than happy under the greenhouse. On year three I had a few grape flowers appeared but I pruned them all off to allow the vine to establish good roots putting all its energy below soil rather than into fruit. Year four allowed me enough grapes to make an oneo-beer that was rather delicious and will always be a fall back if I don’t have grapes that hit the correct amount of sugar to make wine. I pruned off half the grapes and they were more or less what I was aiming for before a lot of pests started to get to them necessitating a quick harvest.

Last year, year six was wet and cold and I was a little over ambitious with the amount of grapes I went for. I missed the sugar level I was hoping for and also fucked up the resulting wine anyway. I pruned off about 30 to 35% of the grape clusters but this was obviously still too much for the vine to push its energy into and I was only just able to hit the lowest brix to make a sparkling wine. It was an important learning experience and I now know that the vine will determine what I can grow rather than wishfully thinking and bullish optimism.

The vine needs to be balanced with the right amount of grapes for the leaf canopy and roots to handle. The roots are technically out side the green house though half the root structure might live within the dryer foot print within the interior of the greenhouse. They have plenty of opportunity to seek out water in the open though. I dug out a huge pit and filled with sand, soil, gravel and compost to allow drainage and a good loamy texture for the roots to grow. I obviously cant see what the roots are doing and have not tried to expose them in any way and just let them get on with it. I only ever contemplate watering if there was been no rain fall for seven days and to be honest even then it might be a lot longer than that. It’s England – too little water is not an issue!

At no point when the vine was emerging from dormancy did I add any kind of manure or fertiliser. The roots will be expansive growing a few meters across and possible even down in my allotments soil. Plenty of space to find nutrients especially in more fertile ground than a grape would typically get on a rocky hillside.

Gorwing Pinot Noir grapes in a greenhouse inLondon United Kingdom. Making wine. — The current ears growth showing against last years pruning.

The canopy requires more work than the roots and is something I like to see when ever I am down the allotment to see how it grows and manage it as best as I can. It really does seem to be my Zen and the Art of moment… Grapes form on new wood that grows that season. At the end of the year once the leaves have dropped off I trim the grape vine back. A lot. Probably 98% of the seasons growth is removed. This creates space for the new years growth. There are two methods to allow for this, spur pruning and cane pruning.

Spur Pruning has a big woody trunk that is kept and allows shoots to grow off it each year. At the end of the year the new green stems that had grapes are all pruned back allowing only one or two small buds per cane to remain for the next year.

New shoots on the old trunk. No old canes were left from last year

Cane Pruning has more of a stump and rather than prune off all of the canes after leaves have dropped all but two or four of the largest healthiest canes are removed. The remaining one year old canes are then tied down horizontally and allow the next years canes to grow upwards from them. Then the next year these are removed and two or four other canes are allowed to grow.

I instinctively went for spur pruning and luckily it suits the grapes I have. Last year once all the leaves had dropped I trimmed off all the canes cutting them back allowing two small buds at the base of the canes. I may prune more vigorously next year and have a mixture of one or two buds as this years canopy may have been a little too full with some leaves falling behind others and being obscured from the sun and thus unproductive. As the buds started to grow into canes a few extra shoots became visible that I rubbed away so they did not grow larger and crowd the intended canes. Any canes that had no grape clusters forming were eventually removed to allow the productive canes as much space and sunlight as possible. Removing these extra canes may limit the water needed if this is an issue you have.

The small clusters of flowers began to form around late April and these ranged from one to four per cane. These clusters of flowers were reduced to one or maybe two per cane by snipping them off. This means that the vine will power its energy into the smaller number of grapes to give a more intense flavour. The flowers matured in mid may for the top of the vine and on the bottom layer at the end of the month. Vines are self fertile and the gentle breeze in the green house dispersed pollen to other flowers. A few months after the initial crop of flowers there were some tertiary flowers that started to appear. These are smaller bunches on the end of the tendrils and as they are far younger than the original grapes. I snipped them away so all of my grapes matures uniformly and I wanted to be able to balance the clusters as best I could early on. It could be that if I ever want a little extra acidity I could leave a few as they will be less mature and more acidic at harvest.

Initially I was removing tendrils to get as much energy into the grapes as possible. Having asked a few questions the general consensus is that tendrils left to grow has no effect on the vine or grape quality though. I did remove leaves that were close to the grape clusters to allow “a little air around their buns” as it was explained to me. This allows air to circulate and stops moisture building up on the grapes as they grow closer to each other promoting mildew or mould. Any leaves that were trapped under another vine and looked like they could not see sunlight were also removed as it grew to maximise the efficiency of the vine. Shaded leaves may provide only 10% of photosynthesis of their sunnier rivals while still consuming resources.

As the canes grew longer more and more leaves grew to supply the growing grapes with nutrition. The magic number to get healthy sweet grapes is between 10 to 14 depending on the variety. To allow the most orderly growth of the vine I removed the tertiary canes that started to grow from the base of larger leaves. This stopped the chaotic bush like growth and allowed a more ordered vine that will not have shaded leaves falling under the earlier ones.

Once a cane was long with either 12 or 24 leaves depending on how many grape bunches I had I cut the end so that it did not just keep ever expanding pushing all its power into the woody canes rather than grapes. I also had to tie the vines to the trellis to keep them steady, close to the green house glass and in a decent regimented position. At first I tried to tie and really control the canes but this was labour intensive and I did tear the top off two canes so then decided to let the vine grow more naturally. Afterwards I could then tie the stronger looking canes to where I wanted rather than man handle younger fragile green canes. Halfway through the season the plant tying tool arrived that would have allowed for an easier system to tie them back… but I was oddly scared to use it for no other reason than it was new.

As the vine canopy is under glass, rain does not fall onto the vine directly and the roots naturally spread out to find water underground. The only moisture and risk of powdery mildew comes from condensation. As the vine has grown the greenhouse has generally dried out meaning that this year there was no mildew and no need to spray any chemicals to combat it. Though I did monitor it and was prepared to if necessary. A few pests did make it to the vines with a couple of pioneering snails. The snails were picked off and if I was charitable put on the floor and if uncharitable stomped on. Last year woodlice were very interested in the grapes but as the heat rose and the green house really dried out the woodlice vacated for a more suitable environment. Weeds were an issue with creeping bind weed or grass being a threat to tangle the lower areas. I weeded them out twice during the year and also places some old tiles on the floor as both a weed suppressant to cover the soil and as a way to warm and reflect some sun back onto the grapes like white pad-stones in a vineyard I had read about. If it actually works is a matter of debate but I like to think it might.

Normally a large amount of leaves would be removed around the actual clusters to allow light directly to hit the grapes just after flowering – this was described to me as “fruit set.” This allows sunlight onto the grapes so that more sugar is created and acidity drops and so you have the highest sugar content at harvest. Doing this allows the grapes to get used to sun exposure as the sun gets hotter and brighter through the growing season. There are various methods that could be used either removing all the leaves at the front and back of the vine so that the sun is on them all day or a more measured removal of just the front or back could be done and in vary degrees of nakedness or even the timings of front and back defoliation. FI heard that for the south of England generally only 50% of the Eastern facing leaves get removed so they can get the early morning sun and still keep some of the larger powerhouse basal leaves that are always going to be at the base near the grapes.

Through out June, July and August the grapes grew and veraison (grape skins turning red) started at about 15^th July. It was at this point I started to remove a few leaves to allow more sun onto them. As my grapes are intended for a sparkling wine I needed to hit a slightly lower than usual brix of 18 to 20 points for an initial fermentation of 11 to 11.5% abv and to have more acidity and bite with TA of 10 – 12g/L and 2.9 to 3.0pH. I chose not to remove any leaves initially so that the leaves shaded the grapes and limited sunlight. I say that I chose to do this but in reality I didn’t know you could defoliate as early as fruit set if you wanted traditional wine grapes. I did remove a few leaves after record breaking sunshine and temperatures at about July 22^nd but did not totally expose them to the sun removing only 25% of the leaves as a rough estimate.

The “glass” of the greenhouse reflects UV light so they would not burn but I still chose to protect them from direct sunlight as temperatures hit 40c in the greenhouse in the morning – I never ventured inside at midday but it would have been hotter. I also chose to remove more of the leaf cover on the bottom row of grapes as they were significantly behind the top row of grapes so they could mature and catch up over the remaining few weeks. Later defoliation can apparently help combat Botrytis but Ive no way to monitor it other than by eye. Other precautions were a huge water of the vines roots each of the three mornings of the extreme heat to allow there to be plenty of moisture for the thirsty roots. This was to my knowledge the only watering I did all year on the vine. I also opened up all greenhouse windows and door to allow ventilation. In future I may even have to add scrim over the windows periodically.

The urge is harvest was hard to manage and I really needed to hold back as much as possible to get the ripest fullest grapes I could. Taking a number of grapes from a number of the clusters allowed me to crush and mix the juice and test with my refractometer. This little spy glass measures the dissolved sugar and shows it as a measurement of brix or gravity. I wanted at least 18 brix to make a sparkling wine and ended up with 20.25 so the very top of what I should use. Acidity is also something that can be measured but I never got around to it due to a new job and a family life. Next year I’ll try.. Grapes will continue to ripen even as temperatures start to drop so shorter days and less sun in the more autumnal months does not mean that grapes are not still maturing. In earlier wetter years pest damage has meant an earlier harvest so this year had some chicken wire on the windows to keep the greedy mouse or rat at bay. I think a family of foxes had been keeping pests like this minimal this year. The snails and slugs were less of an issue and I used a truly disgusting rowan berry wine to lure and poison them. So long fuckers!

Harvesting was done when I knew I had time to process the grapes and immediately and start making wine. I felt there was little point growing and harvesting my own grapes only to let them sit over night. They were snipped with secateurs, given a little shake to make sure there were no monsters or spiders on them and dropped into a plastic food grade brew bucket. My one vine produced 70 clusters weighing should be able to make 7ish litres of wine by themselves. As my Chardonnay and dwarf Pinot Mineur become more mature I hope I can double this and have a blend. I will always have to make two different wines and blend after fermentation due to the different harvest times I imagine. I did contact a local wine maker to get some Chardonnay grapes but never managed to finalise anything with them. I’m not going to say who they were in case they are inundated with requests and they are not resellers but it was very nice of them to potentially help me.

Over the coming years I hope to be able to keep notes on the harvest date, number of clusters, weight, brix and TA of the grapes to see how much wine I can make and how the number of grapes clusters, canes and leaves they have affects the intensity of the flavour. The vine will probably hit maximum production when it is 20 years old – plenty of time to get some decent notes together.

Special thanks to the Albino Wino, Whenthetoadcamehome, Cento Recolta, Grape Geek, Gotbock, there may be others – sorry if I forgot.

I cant even remember if I read any of these but they were recommended:

BRAMBLE TIP SAISON RECIPE

Terrible photo, lovely beer.. I do hope to get a better one up with sunlight behind it.

I’ve been foraging for blackberries for a number of years in and around my area and I came to notice that the big bastards on a lot of the paths get a hair cut when they start to get overgrown and post a nuisance to walkers and cyclists. Knowing the kind of date they got cut back means I could forage them to get the tips before they were hacked back and leave productive ones that will produce lots of nice yummy fruit.

Stepping out early on a morning means I was free to wander the streets and marshes of Walthamstow and not fear for being arrested carrying a weapon. I suppose the giant colander I had could be seen as some kind of Ned Kelly-esque armour for my scissor dueling too. After 20 minutes I had snipped off 1.64kg of bramble tips which was filled the 9 litre container I was carrying. I snipped brambles that looked nice and healthy, not too woody and not infected with insects. If there was the odd shield bug or spider, a little flick of the stem stent them on their way before I snipped the top four of five inches of the stem. I took the fresher brighter green of the stem before it looked too tough and turned to a darker green and rougher texture. Some had the odd bloom while others only had flower buds.

As bramble tips are quite floral and delicately flavoured I wanted to make a light coloured and bodied beer that had low bitterness from the hops. The base was a fairly standard pilsner and wheat base with some clear Belgian candy sugar to thin it out a little. Being honest the beer was a little thin as I had terrible efficiency as I was using new kit. I have since gone from 65 to 90% efficiency. I have adjusted the recipe to compensate for you not being terrible like me.

The beer was bittered with a Tettnang added as first wort hops at 70c and then had Hallertauer as a flavour addition. Both have a floral edge to compliment the bramble tips. I looked on the tips as an extension of the hops and kind of added them as a dry hop by boiling them all in 2 litres of water for 30 minutes and adding them a day into fermentation that had really kicked off by that point with high krausen falling. This also gave a little aeration for the saison yeast at that point too.

When it came to bottling the beer smelled and tasted pretty bland and a bit of a let down but as it has aged it has really come into its own. The floral bramble goes well with the piney noble hops and it has an implied sweetness because of this. Colour is very pale and the soft white head sticks around for a while.

BRAMBLE TIP SAISON

Batch:20L
Start gravity:1.042
End gravity: sorry I didn’t check but it dry. Estimate was 1.04
ABV: 5.5
IBU: 25
Colour: 2.5ish SRM
Mash efficiency 75%

Water profile: Tesco Ashbech pushed to a dry ale

Chemeical		Target
Calcium	Ca	190
Magnesium	Mg	15
Sodium	Na	30
Carbonate	CO3	15
Sulphate	SO4	330
Chloride	Cl	165

GRAIN BILL

Malt	Weight	Percentage	(Per litre)
German Pilsner	2.4kg	67.60%	120g
Torrified Wheat	950g	26.80%	48g
Clear Candi Sugar	200g	5.60%	10g

MASH

Saccharification rest of 63°c for 60 minutes
Saccharification rest of 68°c for 30 minutes
Mash out at 77°c for 5 minutes

1 litre of water was used for every 500g of grain. Vorlaufed until the wort ran clear. The grain may need to be spiked to allow sparge water to pass though. Sparged at 77°c. Keep 2 litres of water available for the blackberry tips boiled later. As high krausen starts to fall (24 hours for me) boil the blackberry tips in the remaining two litres of water for 30 minutes. Strain and leave to cool then add to the fermenter.

BOIL

Hop	Alpha	Weight	Time	(Per Litre)
Tettnanger	3.00%	50g	60min	2g
Hallertauer	3.90%	28g	10min	1.4g

YEAST

WLP590 Saison yeast rising naturally to 25°c

Bottled after 21 days and strongly carbonated. Allowed to age for a few months and served cold from a fridge rather than cellar temperature.

FIG LEAF GIN RECIPE

Fig leaf gin at one month – sorry there’s no beautiful gin and tonic but its lunch time as I write this!

Fig leaves aye? Good for covering your naughty parts and not much else. Well they can be used like vine leaves to wrap dolmas or fish before steaming. You can also throw them into a beer or use them to make a gin. Yep fig leaf gin is a thing and its fucking weird. Like a herbal lemony coconut marshmallow but good!?

As the gin is infused in water than the actual gin it creates more of a gin liqueur of about 25 to 30% abv rather a full strength 40% gin. There is a decent amount of sugar and the recipe listed is the sweetest I would personally go. Add the sugar incrementally to get the flavour you desire. The gin will be rough to start with but mellows as it ages and continues to get nicer.

This is Figgus Dickus my very own fig tree. Not very biggus as we have limited the roots in a pot.

Round my parts (not those parts) you can see a lot of fig trees dotted about peoples back gardens and a few in the open to forage. Ask if you want to borrow some but it will have no detrimental effect on any tree if they are older than a few years. You need about 11 leaves but be careful to picking them as the leak a sticky latex like sap that is an irritant to some. Don’t be tempted to eat the leaves raw either as they have none of the herbal lemony coconut marshmallowness until boiled. I imagine. There are some reports that raw they can be toxic but boiling removes this.

Usually leaf infusions need nice tender leaves or shoots but this can be done with large mature leaves. The larger you go the more it will need to age but at one month its should be fine to have a taste of. I used Bombay Diamond gin as it is dry and fairly neutral. This is a good gin and base for infusions but you can use any supermarket own brand as long it is not too far to any particular exotic style.

FIG LEAF GIN 1.1litres

750ml dry gin
11 fig leaves
300ml water
200g sugar (then perhaps 100g later)
Zest – no pith of an orange (optional, I don’t)

I made this on a rainy day and this was a brief dry spell.

Bring the water to the boil then submerge the leaves and the 200g of sugar. Add more water if you need to.

Simmer for 20 minutes with the lid on then remove the leaves and give them a drain and squish to get a little more liquor from it.

Once cooled add to the gin and mix in a kilner jar adding the orange zest if you are using it. Leaf… leave some where dark for a month then remove the zest and have a taste. If you want it mega sweet add extra sugar. Bottle and start to use with a half measure of tonic or by itself neat.

References:

https://smallbatchbooze.com.au/2018/06/26/fig-leaf-gin/

https://www.cooked.com/uk/Skye-Gyngell/Quadrille-Publishing/Spring/Drinks/Fig-liqueur-recipe

ADVANCED BLACKBERRY WINE

Blackberry wine is one of the goodies in the foraged wine list. The fruit is flavoursome and the wine it makes comes out like a grape wine. There is no need to twist and turn to try and persuade yourself it is a wine you are drinking unlike say rowan. Fuck you rowan berries. Blackberries can make a satisfying dry or sweet wine depending on your palette but mine either way had always been medium bodied and I wanted something fuller.

As black as my heart… blackberry wine at 6 months

Last year with some good sun ripened some plump fruity berries. I made a few trips over a few weeks timing each trip to get a decent haul. Do not be tempted to pick blackberries as soon as they turn black as they will be very sour with citric acid dominating and a lack of sugar. I say, “do not be tempted” but as everybody descends on even the slightest ripening berry and picks them bare you will have to wait a few weeks or even a month to get a decent chance of finding ripe blackberries in sufficient number. They should be full with plump with defined round sacks and a little squishy between the fingers with a few bursting as you pick. They should pop off into your hands rather than needing to be pulled and the taste should have sweetness after an initial tartness and velvety texture – I find it a buttery sensation but Ms Gazette thinks I might have defective senses so take that as you will.

I froze after picking and did four trips to get 6.3kg of berries eventually.

This recipe uses more blackberries than most pushing the fruit content from two kilograms to just over three per UK gallon. It is not as rich as my blackberry port but I want it to be above some of the watery messes that other recipes produce. In addition to this 500g of raisins add extra body to back up the blackberries.

Squished then the pulp was put into a muslin back to hold the seeds and skins for easy extraction.

The maceration has been extended to a whopping 14 days to try an extract as much flavour as possible. Some of this extra flavour will be tannins from skins and seeds that will not only be sitting in the must for longer but also with more alcohol as it ferments providing further extraction. The tannin content in blackberries is relatively mild compared to some other foraged fruit like elderberries so I did want this the extra tanning to be extracted. This was also backed up with some wine making tannin rather than tea bags as in other recipes. I used about 7g per gallon of oak chips and I steeped in a little boiling water for a minute to extract the harshest oak tannins so that they did not make it into the wine. The water was discarded and the chips then added to the wine for the remaining tannins to extract over a few months until the next rack. As there was a range of tannins from skins, seeds, oak and the wine tannins I did a fairly liberal splashback when racking after fermentation into bulk ageing. The idea was that some oxygen dissolved at this point would promote more complex tannins to be made. Subsequent rackings will have splash back minimised to discourage oxidation.

Possibly the greatest ever image to hit this wine blog… brown tannin that is brown.

As there was more fruit it changed the amount of tartaric acid I needed to add with only 19g extra. Malic acid is the primary acid in blackberries so I used pure tartaric rather than a blend. This should also go through a natural malolactic fermentation if it behaves like my other blackberries in the past. This changes the malic acid to the lighter lactic acid softening the wines taste.

Finally when this wine is complete I plan to stabilise and back sweeten slightly to bring out the blackberry flavour. Usually I leave a blackberry wine totally dry but I want this to really hit you in the face with taste when it eventually gets opened in two years. Maybe a few bottles hopefully even making it to three years of age.

ADVANCED BLACKBERRY WINE 4.5L

13% ABV full bodied oaked wine with a slight sweetness from back sweetening. Any red wine yeast can be used but I went with RC212.

3kg blackberries
500g raisins
700g-ish of sugar to 1.09SG
19g tartaric acid (adjusted to 6.5g/L)
2g wine tannin
3L water
Yeast and yeast nutrient
Pectic enzyme
7g oak chips for two months

Pick the blackberries. You may need to freeze them if doing a few trips.

Boil the water to sanitise and get rid of any chloromine is using tap water.

Drop berries into a sanitised nylon back and tie it after squishing the berries. Blackberries have a tendency to form plugs that explode out the fermenter and this allows the carbon dioxide to escape.

Add water, roughly chopped raisins and tannin into the primary fermenter and add the pectic enzyme and campden tablet. Leave 24 hours

Test the acidity with a kit and add the corresponding tartaric acid to to raise to 6.55g/l. Then use a hydrometer to test the gravity and add sugar to adjust to 1.09SG.

Pitch yeast and nutrient and allow to ferment on the skins for 14 days. \For the first 10 days turn the back over to keep the skins wet.

After 14 days sanitise your hands and squeeze the bag to get as much juice as possible. Then syphon into you sanitised demijohn and apply the bung and airlock.

Leave until fermentation looks like it has ended and then rack into a new sanitised demijohn with the oak. A good splash back will encourage tannin expression apparently. If worried about oxidation do a more controlled one.

Rack again after about two months in the new demijohn to leave a whole load sediment from the skins and possibly tannin to fall out.

Leave for another three months and rack gently into another demijohn to age for a year.

Stabilise and back sweeten if you wish. Bottle. Leave to age as long as you can – two years after starting at least!

Drink.

BLACKBERRY GIN RECIPE

Making blackberry gin is easy. Really easy. Easier than making sloe gin but that does not mean there are issues. The first is getting your hands on the blackberries. I forage mine but seeing as half the population of London descends onto the marshes at the first sight of a slightly darkened blackberry it takes a little time to even start picking. Don’t even think about picking blackberries until at least two weeks after you have seen your first forager stripping the bush bare. It might take three or four weeks for the blackberries to not only turn black but actually be palatable and ripe.

When ripe the berries should pop off into your hand like an excited first time. They will be wanting to be picked. If they are hesitant to leave the stem they are not ready. The berries should also be squishy and the sacks distinct when you touch them rather than a stiff indistinct ball. Also have a taste of a few rather than assume they are ripe. A slight kick from the silkier malic acid rather than puckering citric acid should dominate at first giving way to sweetness. If there is no sweet taste just leave them another week. There are fucking loads you will get some despite half off London picking small under done fruit.

Once you have a little tub of blackberries most of the work is done. On your way back home pick up a bottle of average gin. Not too flavoured like a Hendricks and not cheap from the bottom shelf. A super markets own brand or a neutral gin like Green’s, Gordon’s or Bombay Diamond is ideal. Then grab some plain old table sugar then the last thing is swing by the spice racks to grab some bay leaf – his is the secret ingredient.

Bay accentuates the blackberry taste and handily hides behind it so as not become a distinct taste on its own. Simply pop in one leaf per bottle of gin. I prefer to add 350g of blackberries but leave the sugar addition until after the berries have macerated. For me most blackberry gins are far far too sweet. Leave the blackberries to sit for a couple of months and truly integrate before having a taste and adding sugar. Some people say that a woody taste can develop after three months but I have never found this – maybe the bay leaf counters it?

BLACKBERRY GIN

700ml gin
350g blackberries
100g-ish white sugar
1 x bay leaf

Clean a 1.5 or 2 litre kilner jar. No real need to sanitise as the gin will kill any bacteria.

Rinse the blackberries and add to the gin along with the bay leaf. You can always add more blackberries to suit your taste.

Leave for two months in a dark space. Shake the bottle when ever you can remember.

Add sugar to your desired taste. Start with 50g and work upwards as you cannot remover it once added.

Decant into a bottle. The berries can happily live in the gin to continuously age but you can separate if you want a continuously crystal clear drink as you pour.

KVEIK GRAPE ALE RECIPE

Jump here to get to the recips without all this wibble…

Grape ale at 2 weeks (opened as a wet cork was pushed upwards)

Due to hubris and an understanding partner I have planted a Pinot Noir and a Chardonnay grape vine and plan on either a Pinot Wrotham or Meunier to make sparkling wine. The Pinot Noir is the eldest at four or five years old and has previously had the grapes removed to help get a good root stock established. This year was the first I time I left the grapes to harvested, though I did not have enough to make wine. The obvious solution was to combine the grapes and beer to make a grape ale.

Pinot Noir grapes at the start of verasion (posh name for ripening)

Grape ale sounds like a total gimmick and I have never seen a bottle for sale anywhere though there are certainly commercial versions. It sounds like a beer for beer wankers and having read about them I think the ideas and descriptions are a little bit muddled. Grape ale is not a beer/wine hybrid… it is a beer with grapes in like any other beer with fruit. It tastes like a beer first and foremost. The dominant taste is malt and moderate but certainly noticeable hops. Mouth feel is like a traditional ale without the thicker vinocity of a red wine. The grapes do add a slight refreshing astringency and a fresh acidic bite to the beer with a delicate floral fruitiness to smell and taste. Even though I used red grapes and the skins were left macerating in the beer as it ferments this is not like pouring a glass of red wine into a pint of Carling as the grapes.

The chosen 7% ABV is a mid point between an ale and wine and was the starting point of the recipe. Knowing I had 3.5kg of grapes I worked out I could make the equivalent of three bottles of wine. My freebie recipe software was not able to deal with this so I used a Pearson Square to work backwards to determine how much grain I needed to use. Only 2.2kg of malt for 15 litres total to drink at 7%. This grain bill was then divided into two thirds pilsner malt and a third wheat malt to get a balanced base for the grapes to work with. Usually I hate wheat in my own beers but I this really worked well making a light, simple but very nicely flavoured base that really hides the alcohol behind the pleasing fruit.

As the malt was simple this determined that the rest of the recipe was simple too. Hops was mild with only 17 IBU of Saaz added as a bitter addition at the start of the 60 minute boil. No flavouring additions were added at the end so that the grapes could get a decent voice in this beer. Yeast was similarly basic with Voss Kveik used for a reliable fermentation that would really dry the beer out with out too much yeast character added.

Kveik as everyone always tells “you ferments like a beast”

Using the Kveik also side stepped a tricky fermentation conundrum of red grapes traditionally fermenting at up to 30°C as opposed to a traditional ale fermentation of about 19°C. In the end I started the grapes fermenting in my warm kitchen and let it free ride for a week probably at 25°C for a couple of days when it really kicked in. The grapes were picked and crushed in a hop bag to allow the juice to be extracted into some clean sterile water that was boiled and cooled. Campden was added to kill any potentially trouble some wild yeast and possible contamination from a mouse that had nibbled a few grapes. If there had been no pesky rodent I may have considered a wild fermentation for the grapes. The grapes fermented quickly and vigorously with the Kveik for a week (it probably sat for a few days fermented out) before the wort was added and a second fermentation kicked up within 20 minutes. Using the hop bag to contain the skins and seeds meant I could quickly remove them when I though enough tannins had been extracted. Too little tannin and there is no point using grapes but too much would dominate and ruin the beer. Just a week later the beer was dry as a bone and was bottled with only moderate carbonation to be a bit like a pet-nat wine.

The beer will age for six months so it can be popped open for a spring time evening. I was forced to open one battle after two weeks and it tasted even at this young age delicious. The astringent sensation should stay but any slight bitter tatsing tannins develop, acidity should drop to a lovely pleasing zing.

Grapes: L picked and cleaned R after fermentation and a squeeze

I see no reason to tinker with this recipe though it does rely on periodic tasting to determine the grape skin removal. Making this can sit happily between my summer saisons and autumn Biere De Guarde. I may develop another recipe in tandem next year that is far more ambitious using a combination of 71B wine yeast and a saison beer yeast to similarly allow a mid range fermentation temperature but more yeast expression. It should be noted this is virtually the only wine yeast that could work in conjunction with a beer yeast as it lacks the “killer” enzyme. A little oats might be added in that beer for body and spelt or rye replacing half the wheat for some malt character. Hops could be more elaborate with Tettnang replacing the Saaz and some floral or lemon notes in flavour/aroma/dry hop additions. I would love to be able to get some Mandarina Bavaria in conjunction with another hop to work with the grapes. All that is next year and I am more than happy with what has been bottled.

An experiment with the pomace left over from beer and future wines will also be used in a recipe and hopefully a high alcohol aged “cru” beer using EC1118 Champagne yeast and Brett aged on oak… sorry.. the grape ale was really inspiring. 7% and bottled in a wine bottle too!

I would love to hear any one else experience with grape ales like this. Thanks to The Ant 06, Drink more beers, Skindiddy and Walfredo Bramley for ideas along the way.

KVEIK GRAPE ALE RECIPE

Batch:15L
Start gravity:1.044 grain (plus the grapes)
End gravity: Probably about 1.00.
ABV: 7%
IBU: 17
Colour: 3 SRM plus the grapes
Water profile: Thames tap moved towards a lighter beer profile.

EXTRA FERMENTABLES

Fermentable	Wright	Percentage	(Per litre)
Grapes	3.5kg	N/A	233g

FERMENTATION 1 (GRAPES)

Grapes destemmed and crushed in a sanitised nylon hop bag to keep the skins. Juice and the bag of skins left in 2 litres of boiled then cooled water and pectic enzyme and a campden tablet added to sanitise and destroy pectin for 24 hours.

5g Voss Kveik added and alloed to ferment out in ambient conditions of about 25°c using a fermentation jacket to help. Left for seven days though fermentation could have been a lot quicker.

GRAIN BILL

Malt	Weight	Percentage	(Per litre)
German Pilsner	1.4kg	63.6	93g
Acid Malt	360g	9.8	24g

MASH

67°c for 60 minutes Sachrification rest

1litre of water to every 500g of grain. Vorlaufed until the wort runs clear. Sparged with water at 67°C to bring it to volume of 12.5L before the boil.

BOIL

Hops	Alpha	Weight	(Per litre)
Saaz	5.3%	17g	1.13g

FERMENTATION 2 (MALT)

Bag of skins and seeds removed and wort poured onto this after seven days. Allowed to further ferment as it wished.

Bottled after a week in 750ml wine bottles with cork. Low carbonation in bottle. Leavesix months before opening.

BLACKBERRY SOURDOUGH SAISON 1

Click here to jump straight to the recipe

The plan was to make a sour saison that was tart and full of blackberry flavour. What I made was a very sour kick to the knacker bollocks saison that was full of blackberry flavour. I’m well pleased with this even if it makes most peoples eyes implode.

*12 bottles worth were bulk aged but this was hurredly bottled so some sediment is visible.*

If you are reading this after Armageddon then please take note that it was written in a simpler time under lock down during Covid 19. I’m saying this because like a lot of Walthamstows glitterati I started making sour dough. I was off work, dogging was banned and I needed a hobby…. aaaaanyway…

Previous to this I have only made one sour beer and that was using keffir grains as the souring agent. It was bit of a pain in the arse though produced a nice mildly soured sloe saison with the knowledge and kit I had. Since then I have wanted to get a good reliable souring agent that was easily to hand rather than use expensive commercial lactobiscillus cultures that need refrigeration to keep and a good bank balance to buy regularly… which I don’t. Using sour dough seemed like a good idea as it seems happy at room temperatures and I have a happy culture that sits on my shelves. It is fed on spelt or rye flour when ever I can be bothered to make a loaf and it really does the job souring the bread.

*This monstrocity is the pellicle that formed after two weeks of the blackberries fermenting and souring. Yummy!*

There are many views on how to sour a beer and I will leave that to people smarterer and more eloquent that what me is. Amongst the myriad of methods you can either sour then boil the wort or boil then sour the wort. I decided to boil as usual then sour afterwards as I wanted the starter to be able to interact with the yeast and hopefully create a more complex beer than kettle souring which happens preboil.

*Hitting the acid and sacch rest bang on target*

I wanted a very sour beer and to create an ideal wort I used both an acid rest in the mash and acid malt. The mash started with the 45°C ferulic acid rest then my usual 63°C Saccharification rest then it had an extra 60 minutes at the same temperature when the acid malt was added. Acid malt can inhibit sacchrification if initially added so it needed this extra step to bring pH down to give the souring bacteria a good head start as well as enough sugar to be in the wort to ferment.

Once I had boiled the wort for 30 minutes without any hops it was then cooled to 30°C and had the sourdough starter added. The sourdough starter was prepared a day earlier using a sterilised jar to minimise any contamination. 50g of the regular starter was dropped into a jar then had 50ml boiled and cooled water and 50g of flour added. This then sat overnight to get happy and vigorously souring. This is the same method with some precautionary sanitising as I use to make a big loaf and as I know it works I was happy to apply it to the beer to get a large colony of bacteria.

*L to R Sourdough starter, added to the wort, mixed into the wort.*

The wort complete with starter was then poured into a demijohn so that it could be in airtight conditions to sour with out any hint of oxidation. Sitting in my hot kitchen that had daytime temperatures around 25 to 27°C it started within a few hours and by the next morning the airlock was happily burping. Sourdough starters are a mix of bacteria and yeast so this could be either from a heterofermative lactobiscillus strain producing carbon dioxide and/or yeast. I have no way of knowing and all I know is that it was happy and both smelled and tasted not only sour but good after two and half days. In future I may push this longer and also measure the drop in acidity – for now it was just left to do its thing. After this it was added to the remains of an existing beer that had just been racked away onto some fruit.

*Post souring but pre blackberries. A slight haze appeared on the soured saison from the souring bacteria.*

I chose to put this onto the remains of the existing beer for a number of reasons. One is cost – I have used an inexpensive souring agent and now I get to recycle some yeast. Being honest it was not the monetary value I was interested to but doing as much of the work as possible with ingredients available at anytime. As well as cost the yeast was also extremely happy and potent having gone from the small vial for the initial beers inoculation to a full sludgy cake at the bottom of the fermentation bucket. It was there sitting happy and ready for a new beer to ferment. It also meant I could “reuse” the existing hops in the remains of the beer but also have a soured beer too. Hops generally inhibit lactobiscillus but combining them now meant I could have a reasonable hop profile to about 7 IBU and have a decently soured beer with out the hops interfering and probably aiding the creation of more complexity.

The intact blackberries sanitising with campden to kill any wild yeast and bacteria.

The blackberries were combined at the same time. They had sat for 8 hours in a minimum of water with campden added to inhibit wild yeast and any bad bacteria on the skins. After the water was drained away the berries were smushed by my clean sanitised hands and and poured into the fermenter.

Over the next few hours the sealed lid of the brew bucket swelled with an extremely vigorous fermentation within. After 24 hours the blackberry content had become more visible through the opaque brew bucket sides, turning from a very pale to bright pink as juice was liberated from the berry flesh and circulated in the beer.

BLACKBERRY SOURDOUGH SAISON RECIPE

Batch:14L (including the 2litres of previous beer)
Start gravity:1.07 (plus fruit addition)
End gravity: Probably about 1.00.
ABV: 7% from the grain, probably 8% with the blackberries.
IBU: 7 (estimated)
Colour: 4 SRM before the fruit addition
Water profile: Thames tap moved towards a lighter beer profile.

GRAIN BILL

Malt	Weight	Percentage	(Per litre)
German Pilsner	2.8kg	75.9	233g
Acid Malt	360g	9.8	30g
Vienna	330g	8.8	27g
Munich	150g	4.4	12g
Caramunich	50g	1.5	4g

EXTRA FERMENTABLES

Fermentable	Wright	Percentage	(Per litre)
Blackberries	1.1kg	N/A	92g

MASH

45°c for 60 minutes for Ferulic Acid rest
63°c for 60 minutes Sachrification rest
63°c for 60 minutes Acidification rest

1litre of water to every 500g of grain. Vorlaufed until the wort runs clear. Sparged with water at 63°C to bring it to volume of 12L before the boil.

BOIL

No hops on a 30 minute boil

FERMENTATION

Sour-dough starter made with 50g base starter, 50g sterilised water and 50g spelt flour. Allowed to get to a vigorous fermentation in a jar before being added to the 30°c cooled wort after the boil. This was allowed to sour in a sanitised and closed demijohn for two and a half days until it was to may taste.

Poured onto 2 litres of left over wort form a previous brew that used the same basic grain bill and was mildly hopped. The WLP4021 Saison II yeast was already active in a healthy colony so the soured wort was not aerated except ambiently when poured in. Sanitised and crushed blackberries added at the same time.

Temperature was allowed to free ride straight up to 28°c using a fermentation jacket to help. Fermentation was very very active but kept in the sealed bucket to allow the blackberries to infuse for 10 days so no observation or measurements taken to minimise the chance of oxidation.

Bottled after three weeks in secondary that allowed sediments to settle. Low to moderate carbonation in bottle.

Any ideas or advice always accepted (as long as you are nice!)

BLOOD ORANGE SAISON RECIPE 1

I feel I should apologise in advance as this is the first beer post I am dropping and writing it on a new bit of blog software so its bound to go fucky…

Blood orange saison (it looked so much better in real life – updates may appear!) It is almost luminous in natural light.

Having had some luck with a Seville orange wine I made a few years ago I decided to make some blood orange wine, then use the left over zests to add to a saison. Saisons are naturally dry so it would be odd to try and keep the sweetness of an orange so no flesh or juice was added. As there was no possible sourness from the obviously absent juice I did not try to sour this with lactobacillus relying only upon the saison yeast.

Only zests were added. No pith and no juice.

The orange zests were added as the wort came off the boil and infuse as it cooled to try and keep as much aroma as possible. To accentuate the zestiness and add some depth I used a small amount of mandarina bavaria hops late in the boil and as a dry hop. The mandarina was added on day six of fermentation when the gravity was at 1.032 sitting five days in a nylon bag before it was pulled out. This is the first time I have ever dry hopped so I was hesitant to use a huge amount playing it quite conservatively. Generally I don’t like overly hoppy beers and saisons are usually mild to moderately hopped anyway. I imagine many will want more of a kick, particularly those over the pond of the American persuasion.

The grains were relatively simple with a pilsner base and oats because I like them and rye because I wanted to test it. The resulting base has decent mouth feel from the oats and tastes wonderfully dry from the slight prickle of the rye. Mash thickness was thinner than my usual with an equivalent of 500g grain to a litre and a half of water during the mash due to oats and rye being thick and gloopy. It had loads of time in a step mash that many will find excessive and I cannot really say if it was truly necessary. I’m a sucker for work and punishment I guess. At lauter it was vorlaufed allowing the first runnings to run through again for clarity. It was then sparged and the grain bed spiked to get as much wort as possible – efficiency was sky high and I initially overshot so made a little extra.

The head stayed for a decent time (for once)

Fermentation was pretty happy using 3724 saison yeast. This yeast can often stall and it did on day five or six when I pitched some Mangrove Jacks M29 taking the chance to dry hop. I prefer this as a second strain to 3711 that is often used to restart a stuck fermentation. Although I did not test the final gravity it tastes bone dry with pleasing bite.

This is certainly my most ambitious beer in terms of recipe using three hops and dry hopping hoping that they can work in conjunction with the orange zest as an adjunct. As the beer has aged the orange flavour has become more pronounced but it is still nuanced and dare I say delicate as I wanted. Next time I may add five or so Seville zests to get a range and depth of flavours. Grain might be simplified to mainly pilsner of have spelt added or replacing the rye. It may also be a split batch with one being aged with Brett or soured to see how they compare. I am very happy with the final beer as it stands now and will certainly make another batch.

Blood Orange Saison With Oats and Rye

Batch:12L
Start gravity:1.068
End gravity: sorry I didn’t check but it was bone dry. Estimate was 1.07.
ABV: planned to be 6.7 but may be more.
IBU: 25
Colour: 4 SRM

Water profile: Lovely Thames tap moved crudely towards a lighter beer profile.

GRAIN BILL

Malt	Weight	Percentage	(Per litre)
German Pilsner	3kg	79%	250g
Rye Malt	400g	10.5%	33g
Flaked Oats	400g	10.5%	33g

MASH

Clucen rest of 45°c for 30 minutes
Saccharification rest of 63°c for 90 minutes
Saccharification rest of 68°c for 30 minutes
Mash out at 77°c for 5 minutes

1.5 litre of water was used for every 500g of grain. Vorlaufed until the wort ran clear. The grain may need to be spiked to allow sparge water to pass though. Sparged with water at 77°c to bring it to 14L before boil.

BOIL

Hop	Alpha	Weight	Time	(Per Litre)
Herkules	13%	6g	60min	0.5g
Tettnanger	3.7%	8g	60min	0.7g
Tettnanger	3.7%	6g	20min	0.5g
Tettnanger	3.7%	8g	10min	0.7g
Mandarina Bavaria	7.2%	8g	10min	0.7g
Mandarina Bavaria	7.2%	28g	Dryhop	2.3g

Zest (no pith) of 10 blood oranges was added at flame out. Stayed in the beer through fermentation for maximum flavour extraction.

YEAST

3724 Saison yeast rising naturally to 28°c
M29 Saison yeast added on day five until dry.

Bottled after 21 days and strongly carbonated. Allowed to age for at least a few months and served cold from a fridge.

Any ideas or advice always accepted (as long as you are nice!)

BLACKBERRY TIP WINE RECIPE

Firstly I would like to give a big shout out to “Dog-of-Tomorrow” for reminding me to post a few more recipes, I hope you are reading this and find it interesting.

I always hate the name bramble wine as it sounds like its from a 1950’s Women’s Institute lecture so I have called this a blackberry tip wine. I imagine that brambles are the plant and blackberries are the fruit so this is technically incorrect but I have a weird phobia of the word “bramble.”

Initially it was intended as one of the weird and not wonderful wines I have made like rowan berry and I thought it would be an odd curio at best. The aroma and delicate taste however is a bit of a revelation. It is not as pungent and floral as elderflower but still decently strong like a rose wine. There is a very slight leafy herbal edge as it is all leaf and stem but certainly not like an oak leaf, walnut leaf or the peppery edge of dandelion. In fact it is so nice I may have found the base for a planned “English” Vermouth, I may use it for a saison beer addition and if I can to a planned propper blackberry berry wine later in the year.