I made a blueberry port earlier this year. My suggestions would be to
first use twice as much fruit per gallon as you would for a normal
fruit wine (Jack keller reccomends 6 lbs per gallon instead of 10). Be
carefull though. In my recipie I used fresh fruit for both the
blueberry and elderberry and it became hard to get enough fruit per
gallon to make the wine (when considering the additions of sugar
needed)

second, add sugar to the fermentation to top out natural alcohol
production. You will hankyour self later when you only have to add
half a liter of brandy instead of 4 liters of brandy.

Use brandy. Do not use unflavored spirit, like everclear. It boosts
the alcohol enough, but it tends to make the wine taste like a mixed
drink instead of a port. Brandy has the je ne se quois needed to make
it taste right. Use a pearsons square to determine how much to add.

You may think that you do not want the tannin in there. But with all
that alcohol and sugar, you will be glad if you let some the the tannin
get extracted. Otherwise you may find the wine tastinig a bit insipid.

I would let the fruit ferment out fairly well and then just set the
fruit bag in a colander and lightly press out the remaining juice.
Well actually i would press it out with a sausage press, but I have
that luxury.



Adam Preble wrote:
> I am planning to make a blackberry port soon. I'm trying to keep the
> berry taste in the final result, which I think means using more fruit
> than for a regular wine. It's going to be a dessert wine for friends.
> I'm hoping to have it ready fairly young, and wanted to know what I
> should do to extract the juices.
>
> The plan here is to use 10 pounds of berries per gallon. I want to halt
> fermentation while it's still fairly thick and sweet--perhaps
> 1.045--with the addition of sherry until ABV is 22%. With the
> additional berries, I'm trying to anticipate the amount of sherry I
> might need. Specifically, I am trying to gauge my OG.
>
> How many gravity points can I expect per pound of berries per gallon?
>
> Also, I'm trying to determine how to extract the juice without too many
> tannins. I don't see this lasting many years and thus don't want to
> wait that long to even get there. My first effort with real fruit was a
> cranberry wine that I squished by hand after a primary fermentation. I
> see recipes that involve crushing before pitching yeast.
>
> I don't have a press, so my plan right now is stuff the berries in nylon
> bags, and seep with boiling water. When cooled, pitch yeast for primary
> fermentation. Note that I'll put in some additives like some citric
> acid, but that's not my primary concern. Near the closing gravit I
> want, I plan to lightly squish the berries. There's this thing at the
> homebrew store for pushing floating berries down that I think would
> work. I'd add some pectic enzyme afterwards. The squishing would be light.
>
> I'm hoping for some tips before I go all out on this because I'm looking
> at 50 pounds of blackberries, which isn't necessarily cheap. That and
> my cranberry wine is extremely bitter and will take a long time to age.
> I don't want to see that with this port.