Homemade blueberry wine is an excellent drink with a very delicate and at the same time tart taste with subtle berry notes. Blueberry wine at home is made of high quality with a rich bouquet, rich dark color, moderately sweet and slightly reminiscent of the taste of grape wine. If blueberries are combined with red and white currants during cooking, you can get a drink that resembles classic Cahors to taste.
The benefits of blueberry wine
A glass of blueberry wine after an exhausting working day will help you relax and tune in to a pleasant evening. Along with an undeniable mild taste, blueberry wine also has the most beneficial properties. Making wine from blueberries at home allows you to save most of the vitamins present in perishable fresh berries.
The use of this drink within reasonable limits will help strengthen strength, prevent the development of many diseases. Blueberries can be called a real storehouse of vitamins and essential minerals. The antioxidants contained in it rejuvenate, cleanse the body of toxins.
In folk medicine, blueberries are used in the treatment of diseases of the kidneys, intestines, skin and diabetes mellitus. Adding various medicinal plants to homemade wine during the preparation process helps to get a real medicinal drink used for medical purposes.
Essential Ingredients
Craftsmen prepare real blueberry wine at home based on fresh berries. In areas where the blueberry crop is impressive, the raw materials can be prepared independently - the collection process is quite pleasant and uncomplicated, but quite long. It is recommended to prepare a wine drink from a large amount of blueberries - at least 4-6 kilograms, while the berries must be taken ripe, but not overripe.
For all its watery consistency, blueberries, crushed into a homogeneous mass, give little juice, so a small amount of water is added to the concentrate.
To avoid too sour taste, sugar is added during cooking. Thus, the standard set of products for making wine consists of 3 ingredients: blueberries, sugar and water.
Traditional recipe
Despite the apparent complexity, the classic recipe for preparing blueberry wine at home is simple. It consists of several stages:
- Pre-harvested 4 kilograms of ripe blueberries are thoroughly washed and sorted, removing garbage and overripe berries. After that, they must be dried by spreading on a baking sheet, paper towels or other bedding.
- Dry berries are poured into an enameled pan and thoroughly crushed with clean hands or using a hand blender.
- The berry puree is left for several days, during which time the juice will settle, and the remaining berries will rise up. From them you need to squeeze out the remaining liquid, and pour the resulting juice into large glass bottles.
- 1 kilogram of sugar is dissolved in 6 liters of warm boiled water and the resulting syrup is added to blueberries.
- A rubber glove is put on the neck of the bottle and left to ferment in a warm, dark place for 1.5 months, periodically rearranging the wine container in order to activate the yeast.
- After time, the wine is filtered and poured into bottles that need to be put in the basement for final ripening. For this, it may take from 3 months to a year, during this period the liquid needs to be filtered several more times.
Blueberry Wine with Honey
The blueberry wine recipe at home has undergone changes over the years, new interesting ingredients appear in it. Adding honey to blueberry wine gives the drink a sweet and mild unusual taste. For cooking you will need:
- 4 kg of processed blueberries;
- 400 g of honey;
- 2 kg of sugar;
- 5 liters of water.
The cooking process is similar to the classic recipe, it differs only in that at the stage of creating the syrup, honey is also added to warm boiled water. Do not forget that all equipment must be sterile, this will help avoid bacteria.
Souring wine
To make blueberry wine at home ferment with 100% probability, it is recommended to add wine yeast or sourdough to the raw materials. With your own hands, you can prepare a yeast like this:
- Prepare a handful of grapes or raisins, rinse well.
- Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the berries.
- Pour the mixture with 2 cups of warm water and leave in a warm place for several days.
The standard recipe for cooking remains the same, but at the first stage, ready-made yeast or settled yeast is added to the blueberry mass.
Blueberry wine at home is of excellent quality and is stored for up to 3 years. The best way to preserve the taste of blueberry wine is to pour the drink into oak barrels and leave it in a cool dark place, but for lack of such containers you can store wine in glass bottles.