Making mulberry wine at home is very simple. At this time of the year (May-June) is when fresh yummy mulberries ripen a lot on trees. It is also the time of year when bees make lots of delicious honey. Combining mulberries and honey makes us great mulberry wine, or morat mead.
Let's see how to make it now:
Ingredients
- 6 kg mulberries
- 1.5L honey
- 500 grams rock sugar
Notes on the ingredients:
You can use non-pasteurized honey for better fermentation results. Pasteurized honey may have killed off some microbes that are good for the fermentation.
The extra rock sugar we add is to help keep the ferment going for longer (because it takes longer for rock sugar to dissolve than refined sugar); and it's also for longer storage. Sugar is a food source to keep our microbes (which help us make the wine) alive.
Now let's see the making steps:
Step 1: Prep the Berries
For the mulberries, if there's still a little stem left on the fruit, you can use scissors to snip it off. You can pluck the stem off by hand but it may damage or cause the fruit to juice out. To wash the berries, dip them in salt water for some seconds.
After the salt dip, some folks quick-steep them in hot boiling water. This helps lessen a bit of that tangy taste and helps the wine not develop that "SCOBY-like" or jelly-like thin layer on top.
Then, when it's done we can let the water drip off and begin the second step.
Step 2: Add Berries + Honey + Sugar
In a clean jar, add in a bottom layer of berries. Then, sprinkle some sugar on it. Then pour some honey in. Keep doing this layer by layer like a lasagna until it reaches near the top. We'll use some sugar on top as weight to keep the berries down.
Then, close the lid.
The Fermentation Process
You can let the jar ferment on your kitchen counter. To kickstart the ferment faster, you could bring it outside under very light sunlight. After 2 days, you may see that the rock sugar has fully dissolved with the honey, creating a juice underneath. You can sit the jar then in a cool dark dry place to let it keep fermenting,
On the 15th day, it can actually be ready to use and you can have a taste. It will now smell really good. The taste is sweet-n-sour like that of fruit juice. When you try a mulberry at this time, it will be more crunchy and does not have that first tangy taste.
If you like some more alcohol taste to it, let it ferment for some time longer, up to 6-8 months to over a year. It won't go bad. The alcohol content will now be stronger. The smell and taste will also be strong. You may actually finish with a dry drink.
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