How to Select Sweet Blackberries

One cup of blackberries contains 50 percent of your daily vitamin C, 47 percent of your daily manganese, 36 percent of your daily vitamin K and 31 percent of your daily fiber, according to SELFNutritionData. When they are perfectly ripe, they are intensely sweet with a hint of tartness. Overripe blackberries taste sweet but bland, while unripe blackberries are unpalatably sour. Blackberries offer several visual and olfactory clues that reveal when they are at their peak of flavor.

• 1

  Sort through the blackberries in question, removing any that are partially or fully red or green rather than completely dark. These berries are not fully ripe and will not be sweet.

• 2

  Examine the remaining blackberries, looking for any that are partially shriveled or overly soft to the touch. These are overripe and will not have the brilliant sweetness or familiar hint of tartness that a perfectly ripe blackberry should have. Remove these blackberries from the batch and discard them.

• 3

  Search through the blackberries, removing any that have visible mold. This will generally be an obvious section of powdery whiteness. These will not taste appropriately sweet.

• 4

  Smell the blackberries. Unripe blackberries will have little to no scent, while overripe blackberries will smell cloyingly sweet with a hint of rot. Perfectly ripe blackberries will smell very similar to the way you would expect them to taste: sweet and intensely fruity.