The Lazy Forager: #27 – Bubbly Blackberry Beverage

So, blackberries, eh?! There's a lot of them! And early too, right? I've been picking ripe blackberries all through July here in Bristol, which sure does seem early - but then everything's been early this year, what with the hot and dry spring/summer (some might say 'drought'...) we've had. 

 

And whilst the seasons have been incrementally shifting for a number of years now, and have become overall more unpredictable, this year does feel like a somewhat bigger shift. Basically, take any trusted UK foraging almanac and look at the 'August' section, and you'll notice that a lot of the listed plants have been out in force for several weeks already. Including oodles of blackberries!

 

One of my big ambitions for this year is making blackberry wine. I got four demijohns from a neighbour a few years ago, live in a tiny flat and have no previous wine-making experience. What could possibly go wrong??

 

Well, turns out... preparation, for a start. Last weekend I went and picked nearly 2kg of blackberries before realising I didn't have any of the fancy accessories one needs for successful wine making, like brewer's yeast and sterilising fluid and siphoning equipment and whatever else. But, undeterred and not one to waste a bumper crop, I cast around for 'easy wine making' recipes. And came across this delightful recipe on Insteading for blackberry wine / kombucha / fizzy tasty drink!

 

I've absolutely loved my fun improvised process and its delicious results. If you're surrounded by blackberries and at all partial to a fizzy berry-y kombucha-y beverage - I say give it a go!

 

Equpiment needed:

• Large jar or fermentation bucket, depending on quantities
• Wooden spoon
• Square of muslin
• Bottles (plastic or glass)
• Funnel
• Sieve 

Recipe:

• 250g blackberries
• 450ml water (filtered)
• 1 tbsp honey
• 3 tbsp sugar

Preparation:

• Wash all equipment with soap and hot water - no need to sterilise, just make sure it's clean. We're trying to attract a certain kind of bacteria (so don't scupper your chances by using chemicals), while making sure everything's clean enough to have got rid of the nasty type of bacteria we don't want.
• Do not wash your blackberries. In order to ferment, the brew will need the activity of the wild yeast that's already on the berries (yumm!).
• Filter your water (or use spring water if you're lucky enough to live near a spring). The chlorine in tap water can kill the yeast and bacteria we're trying to attract.

As I had rather a lot of blackberries, I scaled up the recipe and used a fermentation bucket instead of the suggested Kilner jar. Make sure to leave about 5cm at the top of your receptacle so that your brew can safely froth away.

Add the berries to your jar or bucket, bung in the sugar and honey, and proceed to give it all a good squish. Once it's nice and runny, add your water, cover it with the muslin (secured with a rubber band, piece of string or whatever you've got to hand) and ritually stir it at least three times a day for three days. 

After a day or two, you should start seeing a bit of froth, which shows that it's fermenting as it should. Keep smelling and tasting it, and when you're happy with it, strain out the berries and decant the liquid into your bottles. The recipe suggests plastic bottles if you're a beginner, which was a handy tip and worked really well: I used some old tonic bottles I had lying around (washed and cleaned, of course) - considerably easing the worry of bottles exploding on me in the night (or any time, really)! This is because you need to seal the bottles so the CO2 can't escape, in order for the end result to be carbonated. With plastic bottles, you'll be able to feel them expand with the pressure and can whip them in the fridge, where they will stop fermenting. For me, this was a couple of days after keeping them at room temperature in as cool and dark a place I could manage - aka my bedroom.

I opened my first bottle of blackberry fizz a few days ago, and with due caution decided to do it outside, which was well advised! I hope the roses enjoyed their blackberry microbe shower. I'm certainly loving the end result - sprig of mint, spritz of lime, delicious!

Because I had slightly more of the stuff than I knew what to do with, I've also decided to experiment with making blackberry vinegar (by simply leaving some of the juice to ferment further in muslin-covered bottles at room temperature) and one demijohn full of 'wine'. Not sure if there'll be any difference in outcome between the vinegar and the wine! We shall find out. 

In the meantime, I've got a fridge full of blackberry fizz to get through!