I think blending has a lot of promise for fruit wine, and I love hearing about successful blends. So yours was one part cranberry to four parts blueberry? I’ll have to give that a try.

Trader Joe’s sells a 100% cranberry juice called “Just Cranberry.” It might work as well as your “hippy cran.”

Erroll

The slow fermentation you mention reminds me of a similar problem with blueberries. My first batch of blueberry fermented slowly, stuck, resisted my efforts to restart, before finally fermenting to dryness. After that, I did some reading and it turned out that other people found blueberry tough to ferment. I started thinking it was something in the blueberries – some peculiar bit of chemistry that inhibited yeast. The funny thing is that my second batch of blueberry was much more concentrated (almost 100% blueberry instead of 3-4 lb per gallon) and it fermented quickly with no trouble. Now my thinking is nutrient deficiency or a pH crash (I didn’t measure pH in either batch, so I can’t be sure).

After reading about how good your cranberry wine is, I’m getting really impatient to bottle mine!

Erroll

An interesting problem with making Cranberry is that it has some sort of built in component that causes it to ferment very slowly. I’ve had some where it was still slowly fermenting a year or more later. My next batch I’m going to ensure I put more yeast nutrient and yeast energizer. A year in the bottle and Cranberry is awesome. Just have to pay attention because it is a real cork popper. — I have no problem using mixed fruit concentates. I just look for the 100% pure juice and no preservatives.

Makes me want to pay with “100% money, dollars!”

The juice aisle in Trader Joe’s, with all that unfermented wine, is a dangerous place for me. The apple juice is a real bargain. A gallon, in a glass jug, sells for less than an empty gallon jug in the homebrew shop. But yeah, I should check out their cranberry juice.

Erroll

Aaron