brewing forage with no processed sugar

[xhalmers_860]

Hey, I am into brewing, making mead and beer and things. I really want to have a go at blackberry, eldeberry, rowan and hawthorn, maybe bilberry if I have a spare 95 hours one weekend, but am dismayed that all the recipes call for a lot of added sugar. I can understand this with rowan or hawthorn maybe, but surely blackberry has a lot of added sugar in it. This seems to be against the point

So this thread is for either a) if anyone has made wine or beer out of these without added sugar, or b) if anyone has some nice natural substitutes (lets assume honey is cheating) for bought sugar.

I have a couple of ideas:

1 Apicius says that the romans used to boil grapes down until they were at half or 1/3 of their volume, and use this as a sweetener. It must have been pretty sweet because they used it as a preservative. My copy of his cookbook (the oldest!) says this was called Passum or Caroenum. Maybe you could try this with apples or blackberries?

2 stock up on birch sap syrup in the spring and use that.

 

[Toddy]

Problem with stewing down apples is that you concentrate pectin, the stuff that makes jam thick.....

Either use grain for ale or beer and add your fruit, or use honey.

The boiled down grape juice is also called verjuice and it's like a very dry untangy vinegar, sort of....doesn't compute well. Concentrated grape juice, from very carefully chosen varieties is sometimes used as the basic starter medium in diy wines.

Bound to other much more experienced than I am brewers along though

Fruit leather made from apples is lovely, made from brambles on their own can be very, very sour.
Same happens when you juice them.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[TasMonk]

The boiled down grape juice is also called verjuice and it's like a very dry untangy vinegar, sort of....doesn't compute well.

I don't want to step on any toes, but verjuice is the juice from pressing unripe grapes (or occasionally other fruit). This un-ripeness is what gives verjuice it's sharp acidic falvor, and no- it would not be a good addition to the fermentation process unless you were specifically trying to adjust the acid balance.

So this thread is for either a) if anyone has made wine or beer out of these without added sugar, or b) if anyone has some nice natural substitutes (lets assume honey is cheating) for bought sugar.

I have a couple of ideas:

1 Apicius says that the romans used to boil grapes down until they were at half or 1/3 of their volume, and use this as a sweetener. It must have been pretty sweet because they used it as a preservative. My copy of his cookbook (the oldest!) says this was called Passum or Caroenum. Maybe you could try this with apples or blackberries?

2 stock up on birch sap syrup in the spring and use that.

In most recipes the additional sugar is simply to raise the final alcohol content to what has become the modern expectation of wine strength. It is entirely unnecessary as long as the final product remains "dry" and has sufficient alcohol content to prevent subsequent bacterial infection (3-5% alcohol, if memory serves, which most fruit should achieve without additional sugar). So from this perspective maybe just ignore it and enjoy a the weaker traditional product.

If you would rather increase the sugar content, and thus the resulting alcohol level, there are a number of techniques available in the wild:
- adding honey is the obvious one, and makes a drink traditionally called a "melomel" (honey and fruit fermented together). Note that honey ferments very slowly, and adding a lot of honey may make the wine take a very long time to finish fermentation, increase the risk of "stuck" fermentation and possible renewed fermentation after bottling.
- adding higher sugar-content fruit juice to lower sugar-content juice, though this is mostly useful for modest increases.
- adding fruit juice that has been boiled down is very effective and has been traditional since ancient times. Note that if some degree of caramelization takes place in the reduction this will add yet another flavor component to the end product (which may be a good or a bad thing depending).
- adding dried sweet fruits such as raisins, currants, etc will increase the sugar concentration. This is often used when the "cooked" or caramelized flavours of reduced juice are not wanted or when one wants to limit the type of fruit (ie: using raisins in grape juice).
- other forms of sugar can be used including reduced juice/saps or syrups of trees (maple, birch, etc) or other plants (sugarcane, sugarbeets, etc).
- if you have grain available, this can be sprouted then dried, ground, and boiled up then reduced down to a syrup that would increase the sugar concentration while also adding an entirely different flavor dimension.

I hope this helps! Good luck.

 

[lannyman8]

as above no added sugar will result in a alcohol content less to what we normaly know, cider has no added sugar and comes in between 5 and 7 %, i would say use pure juice, add no water at all, the finished wine would be awsome in flavour once matured for a year or so. i might even give it a go with elder berry this year now...

elderberry would be a good place to start, it has quite a high sugar content, just make sure you collect the prime berries, totaly ripe with the stalk turning deep red to.

good luck and keep us up to date of how you get on... im of to get some apples for cider....

enjoy....

chris.

 

[Toddy]

Your not stepping on any toes TasMonk
The same name is used for different things, that's all.

Boiled down a bit it was used to preserve meats and so on in the past. It's a pickling method.

Good cider needs consideration about just which apples are used, rough stuff can be virtually undrinkable.

cheers,
Toddy