18.3.1 Test 13 F-Extracting wild blackberry concentrates from spent pulp

Wowza, shazam!  What an intensely flavorful extract!!

I extracted concentrate from spent wild blackberry pulp, after squeezing the berries for juice, that both Grayfox and I found delightful and my Le Cordon Bleu chef tester friend said it came as close to tasting exactly like the fresh black berries it came from as he had sampled.

The essence of blackberries

We learned from cannabis that terpenes, terpenoids, and flavonoids are where it’s at from a flavor and aroma standpoint so what I did different was extract with a mixture of 50% 190 proof ethanol and 50% water to extract both the water-soluble flavonoids and only marginally water-soluble terpenes.

After pressing and vacuum filtering, I then removed the alcohol and most of the water boiling under -23” Hg vacuum, to keep the temperature below 66C/150F, so as to minimize heat effects on the aromatic constituents and retain their individual flavors.

Experiment 3F Extract and concentrate the terpenes and flavonoids from fresh picked wild blackberry pulp, after the juice is squeezed out of it. 

Because blackberry seeds add unwanted flavors when fractured, I pressed the fresh berries instead of macerating them.

3F-1       I started with fresh wild black berries handpicked by Moi on Oak Island in Sturgeon Lake, at the confluence of the Willamette and the Columbia rivers.

3F-2       I smashed the berries by hand using a potato masher to avoid rupturing any seeds and pressed out the juice using a t-shirt rag for a juice bag.

3F-3       I soaked the left-over pulp in a 50/50 mixture of water and Ethanol for an hour and after vacuum filtering, I removed the alcohol and reduced the water by boiling under vacuum.

The end result was that the combination of the ethanol and water extracting the terpenes and flavonoids provided a fuller spectrum extraction than water alone.