Blackberry Brandy

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John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
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Pembrokeshire
I am desparate for the tutorial for this nectar!
Please help a desparate drunk...
I cannot wait for the sloes and sloe gin, need wild fruit booze now!:beerchug:
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
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Mercia
John,

Its not finished yet...I can post what I have to date if you like?

Red

PS - I still have a few of bottles of a rather good blackcurrant wine kicking about. PM me your addy and I'll post you a Grumpy Old Bushcrafter relief package to keep you going ;)
 
saw a mention some where of Hawthorn Brandy :confused: as theres loads of Haws about any idea or i will just chuck em in a bottle and see what happens :eek: :D as i usually do

Oh Slider Quick n easy Take one milk bottle od cider of the nice man at the wilderness gathering drink the top out and put in a good slug of Sloe Gin ;) :beerchug:

ATB

Duncan
 
I like the idea of a bottle od cider Dunc. Still slurring even now huh?

Red

:D it all went wrong the moment Simon says ( the bald guy with me :rolleyes: )
we will take it easy thursday night just have a couple :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek: :eek:

then get up Early Oclock friday to find ALL the weekend beer gone half the Sloe Gin and 2 pints of Cider :buttkick:

and the Gorrilla had been round

So as the saying goes we had to improvise, adapt and over come for the rest of the weekend just to keep up the supply of the essentials
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,108
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Pembrokeshire
Thanks for the offer Red.
Truth to tell I only started this thread to isolate a booze thread, hopefully with interesting recipes for wildbooze.....
Haw Brandy/Gin sounds good.
I am getting to the end of my Sloe Gin.
The blackberries are ripe.....
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
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Mercia
<g>

I have a cracking pictorial for blackcurrant wine into which you can substitute blackberries (I have - it tastes like port at the end).

I'll stick up what I have later on.

Just received a very fine drinking horn from Eric too - time for the mead recipes soon. Or my spiced mead which is more properly a metheglin of course.

Hmmm a horn full of that would be an Eric Metheglin :D

Red
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
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Okay, this is an old recipe. Very much in the style of "medicinal purposes" (seriously - it used to be used by the spoonful to ward of colds etc.). Very simple but a lovely comforting drink.

First pick your blackberries. Nice ripe plump ones. Discard those that are too "squishy" to pick cleanly or too hard to come away without the stalk. If no-one ever taught you, the right way to pick a blackberry is to hold it between thumb and forefinger and turn it to 90 degrees from the stem - not to pull it straight off.

As a small aside, I picked up a great bit of foraging kit recently from a supermarket - a lidded 2 gallon bit of imitation tuperware with a hinged lid and a shopping basket handle - perfect for blackberrying!

So get your blackberries home. You will need one pound of blackberries per full sized bottle of brandy. I always end up picking lots but hey, whats not to like ablout blackberry and apple crumble with any extras?

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Weight your blackberries out. I have a set of balance scales (old fashioned bloke that I am). So I put a glass bowl on the pan side and balnce it out with metric weights (I have both) on the weight side. I then add a pound weight to the weight side and keep putting blackberries in the bowl until I have a pound in the bowl

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I then wash off the blackberries by emptying the bowl into a collander and running them under the tap

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I put each pound of washed blackberries into a large jam pan and add half a pound of sugar per pound of balckberries

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When you have weighed out as many pounds of blackberries as you wish to make bottles of brandy, put a low heat on under your jam pan. Don't go in with a high heat or you will burn the sugar. You want the juices to start to flow from the berries and make a lot of liquid before increasing the heat a bit to ensure all the sugar is dissolved

After a bit of gentle stewing your berries should look like this

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Now, its important to let your blackberries and sugar cool down before going any further. You could just remove the pan from the heat, but I tend to cool in glass bowls. Effectively you have a sort of runny jam at this stage. Its worth remembering though that hot jam is VERY hot. If you add brandy to it now, all the alcohol will evapourate.

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Now, you need to mix in one 75cl bottle of brandy for each pound of blackberries. mix well with a metal spoon (blackberries stain wood something awful). Whatever you use needs to be able to be sealed. I use tightly lidded white food grade plastic buckets but, for a small batch a glass bowl covered in clingfilm is fine

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Put a lid on and leave for five days or so for the brandy to take on all the flavours of the balckberries. Alcohol will avpourate so a good seal is important here. You could use a demijohn and airlock if you like.

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I'll post the rest when mine is ready - I should get about 6 full sized bottles from this as the juice adds to the amount of liquid. For those of you planning to buy brandy, just get a reasonable cheap brandy - the blackberry flavour will overwhelm best Armagnac!

Red
 

John Fenna

Lifetime Member & Maker
Oct 7, 2006
23,108
2,843
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Pembrokeshire
Oh you good man! - please have lots of invisible rep!
Starting NOW!

:You_Rock_
Come on you other booze hounds, lets have loads of recipes!
Hips, Haws, berries of all sorts are coming good now, someone must have a method of turning them into glorious booze!
Sounds like I have a problem does it not?
I call it an interest!:beerchug:
John
 
got this from INEBG forum

http://www.givingground.com/page37.html

for rose hips in brandy

we do Vodka or brandy or Gin
with Coffee, Sloes, Damson, plum, Blackberry, Mullberry
and Suger (demararha for th coffe vodka)

in the usual Sloe Gin way

ie chuck it all in shake every day for a few weeks
leave friut in for 3-6mths
Bottle for 1 year ( yeh right :lmao: :beerchug: )

put the removed fruit into Cider for a bit ie Slider this releases the Alcohol the fruit absorbed from teh spirit into teh cider as well as the taste Damider is noce to (damson/Cider) DO NOT DRINK IN PINTS :eek: well not more n 1 anyway

then remove and use friut for Crumble with apples etc :naughty:
 

gregorach

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Sep 15, 2005
3,723
28
50
Edinburgh
Hips, Haws, berries of all sorts are coming good now, someone must have a method of turning them into glorious booze!

Bah - it's all very nice, I'm sure, but it's not turning berries into booze - it's merely flavouring booze you've already got.

However, I do have a gallon of blackberry wine fermenting merrily, and my strawberry wine is ready to bottle... ;)
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
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Okay, we now have to deal with a large bucket of highly alcoholic runny blackberry jam. Thats my kind of problem :mrgreen: .

First thing is to get rid of the big berries. Don't try to use a fine mesh to begin with - it just clogs. Something like a collander is fine.

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It helps to move the fruit around gently with a metal spoon. Don't push it through the holes though. You will end up with a collander full of booze soaked blackberries

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The blackberries must be carefully disposed of since they are very boozy and will stain anything they touch. Mt preferred method is a bowl of icecream and a spoon :eek:

A look in the pan shows we still have "bits"

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Time for a finer filter - a fine metal seive this time

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This will get all the pips etc. but leave a bit of fruit pulp. Next step is some fine cloth (muslin, jam bag etc.). Feel free to skip this step.

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Have a try at this point and see what you think. If its still too "jammy", bung in a demijohn

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Throw in some pectic enzyme (this is available from brew shops and dissolve the "sticky" element of jam. You can then completely clear the brandy using wine finings. Neither of these steps are needed or traditional - they can give a very posh result if you intend this for gifts etc.

The pectic enzyme takes about 3 days to work, then the finings another 3, so use a bung or airlock in your demijohn. Don't worry if you haven't got a demijohn, use an old 5l water container or similar.

When you have the brandy as clear as you want it, taste it. It will have a very strong blackberry flavour. It might even be too strong - if so dilute (with more brandy not water) until you arrive at the flavour you prefer. Then bottle. I'll show this step next week

Red
 

gregorach

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Sep 15, 2005
3,723
28
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Edinburgh
gregorach,

I'll post my berry wine tutorial if you like?

Red

I thought I'd already seen it... Blackberries from last year, no? I seem to be getting by OK anyway - although I slightly over-sugared my blackberries at the weekend - OG of 1.096 if I recall! Might take a while to get it dry enough for my taste, but I'm sure it'll work out in the end... ;)
 

gregorach

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Sep 15, 2005
3,723
28
50
Edinburgh
I used Gervin strain GV8 - "for quality red table wines". Apparently it should go to 16&#37;, which is more than enough.

Half the fun is in the finding out!
 

British Red

M.A.B (Mad About Bushcraft)
Dec 30, 2005
26,709
1,947
Mercia
Be careful to pass the hips through a fine filter Dunc. they contain fine "hairs" that are horribly irritating (sorry if I'm teaching me grandmother there)

Red
 

firebreather

Settler
Jan 26, 2007
982
0
49
Manchester
We have been making great stuff with standard general purpose yeast from the supermarket. So far we have
dandelion wine
cherry wine
carrot wine
tetly tea wine
mead
friut tea wine from lidl
apple wine
elderflower wine
elderberry wine
elderberry wine from a kit.
peach wine
plum wine
basically anything we can get our hands on either foraged or cheap from the friut man at the market or to be honest anything we can think of :D .
It has got a bit silly recently but good fun. All I can say is dont waste your time with posh yeast just make it with whatever you have it will work in surprising ways :lmao:
Greg
 

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