A couple of beginner winemaking questions

[thecornflake]

I'm about to embark on my first ever home winemaking, using foraged blackberries and a simple recipe found online. I've started reading up on it and got my equipment ordered. I have a coupel of queries I either can't find or am gettin gconflicting information on. There seems to be 2 camps of winemakers - the first one does everything by the book, sterilises everything religiously and does things like 'multiple racking', fining, etc etc. The others just mix it all up, throw it in a demjohn and that's it.

So my questions -

1) When the mixture goes into the demijohn from the bucket/fermenting bin does the demijohn have to be full? If I have a 5 gallon dj and a recipe for 1 gallon of wine therefore (apart from the obvious reason of more wine) should I therefore multiply it up and make 5 gallons or will 1 gallon be ok in a 5 gallon dj? TBH I'd rather only risk ruining 1 gallon on my first try.

2) DO I need to add extra acid? The recipes don't seem to mention it much but a lot of people on here seem to putting lemon juice in.

3) Is it worth buying (admittedly cheap) proper wine bottles (planning on using plastic djs so not sure if I can just leave it in them)?

4) With bubbler, junior or super airlocks are there any real differences?

[frozenthunderbolt]

Air lock is an airlock dont worry.
Yes your DJ needs to be full really - better to exclude air.
Definitely better not to leave in plastic for a long time once the alcohol has formed - pay for the bottles, keep them clean and sterilize well and you can get away with re-using them over and over.
Whether you need to acid depends on how acid your fruit is to start with. yeast needs a somewhat acid environment to grow well. Juice of 1/2 a lemon per gallon is probably ok to start out with as a beginner wine maker - later you may want to measure the acid and consider adding measured amounts of different acids.

[thecornflake]

Well all the stuff turned up today, and I have bags of frozen blackberries filling up my freezer so here goes. I'm using a very basic recipe and just trying 1 gallon to see how it goes. I have 2 plastic demijohns so I might try starting a different recipe after the first one is in a dj.

One thing I have noticed is a lot of people mentioning yeast nutrient, but I don't have any. Is it that important for blackberry wine?

[frozenthunderbolt]

NUtrient will give you a quicker, cleaner and stronger fermentation. In a pinch 2 teaspoons of mollases will help you out a bit - just be aware it may alter the taste somewhat. Nutrient is not expensive to buy from a brewshop though.

[gregorach]

You don't need to buy wine bottles, unless you want a whole set of really spiffy matching ones. Just clean and sterilise used wine bottles (even if you don't have any, I'm sure you can find someone who does) rather than taking them to the bottle bank. Half the reason I started making wine was that I couldn't be bothered to recycle the bottles.

[thecornflake]

Nutrient and pectic enzyme have now been aquired. And all family members briefed to not throw away wine bottles.

Currently a rather nice smelling blackberry/water mixture is sitting in a cupboard, yeast and nutient to be added tomorrow...

[ina]

Nutrient and pectic enzyme have now been aquired. And all family members briefed to not throw away wine bottles.

Btw - beer bottles do well, too. Especially if they have those wonderful old fashioned permanent clip on tops - or whatever they are called!

Or whisky bottles. Or any other clean bottle, really.

[MKG]

Any old bottles will do - but NOT if you're thinking of making anything fizzy. For sparkling wines - including elderflower champagne - you need proper bottles (the champagne type which will take the pressure) or, safer still, PET bottles (the stuff wrapped around lemonade and cola in the supermarket).

Otherwise frozenthunderbolt can give you a very graphic description of what might happen

Mike