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Not sure if it would be shine, brandy, or whiskey. I searched and couldn't find anything. I have a lot of blackberries and am wanting to make some alcohol with it. Anyone know of a good recipe to use the blackberries?

I guess you'd just make a normal blackberry wine and distill. I'd call it a blackberry brandy. This is the recipe i use for blackberry wine, This recipe is for 1 gallon, so scale up as needed.

Put 2kg of blackberries in a clean fermenting bucket, pour over 4 litres of boiling water, mash the fruit then cover and leave to cool. Add a teaspoon of pectic enzyme to help it clear, and keep it covered. After one day dissolve in 1.4kg of sugar and add some wine yeast plus a teaspoon of yeast nutrient. Cover and leave for four or five days, stirring every day. Everything is strained, under as sterile conditions as you can manage, through a muslin cloth and put in a demi-john for about six weeks. Rack off into a fresh demi-john and bottle a few weeks after that or when you remember.

Skip the pectic enzyme unless your worried about scorching.

just mix em up and pitch yeast?

You need a lot of blackberries to make schnapps. There is no recipe, just crush, ferment, distill.

A Strawberry Panty Dropper style liqueur uses a lot less.

I am going to be going with like 12 gallons.

Myself, I like to juice the blackberries and I find the juice could benefit from a bit of nutrients but other than that it's pretty much like any other brandy, blackberry juice or crushed blackberries and yeast. My blackberries produce about 5.5 to 6% alcohol but it takes a lot of them to make enough juice to distill.

I made a batch with blackberries this summer.
Macerated them in 40% ABV neutral from a birdwatchers ferment. Distilled twice through my potstill and with very conservative cuts.
Let them be there for 3-4 weeks and strained it.
Another week for letting the solids settle on the bottom and strained it through a cotton cloth.
It has a smooth lightly sweet taste and a very dark colour.
Could be dilluted and used for desserts..

I have tried to make blackberry brandy every year since I started bending copper. Three things I have learned.

1. It takes a shitload of blackberries. Two shitloads to make good cuts.

2. Don't add sugar.

3. Listen to cranky.

Good luck.

Anything made with fruit, would be Brandy. Anything made with grain would be whiskey. Anything made illicitly (untaxed) would be shine.

Just a thought.
Blackberry's don't have much sugar, so it would take a bunch to ferment enough alcohol for a run.
The flavor is delicate and the still will strip the flavor out.
I'd recommend macerating the blackberries in some neutral spirits to extract the flavor.

What about using a white grape juice concentrate to give more volume, don't dilute too much and do one run, make a low proof Brandy and enjoy!!

shadylane wrote:Just a thought.
Blackberry's don't have much sugar, so it would take a bunch to ferment enough alcohol for a run.

I see this said frequently and maybe it is true in some areas but where I live my blackberries have just as much sugar as just about any other fruit. It does take a lot of them to make alcohol out of but it took me 100 pounds of grapes to make 12 gallons of wine and 140 pounds of pears to make a single bottle of pear brandy, and it takes around 16 pounds of apples for a single gallon of cider, that's 192 pounds of apples for a 12 gallon brandy run. It takes a lot of anything to ferment enough to make a run in almost every situation.

skow69 wrote:Three things I have learned...

3. Listen to cranky.

I would add that to notable and quotable but it might be considered too altered like that Now if I could only get Mrs Cranky to do that