Step 1

Prepare your berries. Mash fresh berries or thaw frozen berries and put them in your clean primary fermenting bucket. Pour about a gallon of boiling water over them to sterilize the berries and draw out the juice.

Step 2

Stir in the pectic enzyme, yeast nutrient, and acid blend. Put the lid and an air lock on the fermenting bucket and allow it to rest until the next morning to about 70 degrees which is ideal for red wine yeast.

Step 3

Stir the mixture with a sanitized spoon. Strain out the leftover blackberry pulp with a mesh bag into another sanitized bucket. Add sugar until wine reaches a reading of around 1.090 on your hydrometer.

Step 4

Sprinkle your yeast over the juice mixture. Check the packet to see exactly how much you will need. Cover the fermenting bucket and make sure your airlock is tight. Within a day or two you should see carbonation and bubbles - this means your yeast is at work and the wine is fermenting. Blackberry wine tends to ferment violently, so watch it closely during the primary ferment and stir it daily for about a week.

Step 5

After a week of primary fermentation is up, use a sanitized siphon to rack the wine into your glass carboys. Put air locks on the carboys and leave the wine to do a secondary ferment for a month or two.

Step 6

Rack the wine again to get rid of sediment (the small particles that have fallen to the bottom of your wine). This is a good point to taste the wine and make any adjustments necessary.  Let the wine ferment for another few weeks.

Step 7

When the wine has no more bubbles, sediment, or carbonation it is time for bottling. Take the final gravity of your wine and make sure it tastes how you would like. If you want to stabilize your wine, add the potassium sorbate or campden tablets a few days before bottling.

Step 8

Bottle the wine and cork it. Age for about 5 more monthsbefore tasting. The bottled wine should stay good in a cool, dark place foryears.