Make my blueberry mead better

[RIC0]

First post and yes I"m a MEAD newbie.

I brew beer but have never made MEAD. That's about to change.

I will be doing a 1 gallon batch in a glass gallon jug.

I Will be using good honey, not junk, 3lbs should be good from what I've read.

I want to add a hint of blueberry flavor but not sure how much and when.

Please offer advice and thank you for your input.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Hey, RIC0. Welcome to the forum!

Had you thought about your yeast yet?

 

[RIC0]

I have not to be honest I was going to stop by the local brewery supply house and have them hook me up with what they would suggest.

I'll be more than happy to look for what you suggest...;D

 

[Busymust]

Hint of Blueberry?

I am by no means an expert, but here is my experience:

I used the contents of one pint of fresh blueberries, washed and rinsed thoroughly, pureed, and then placed in the bottom of a 1 gallon carboy.
I added a plain sack mead must to fill much of the rest of the carboy. The must was just honey, spring water, orange zest, bee pollen, black tea, and yeast (Lalvin K1V-1116) which was in its secondary fermentation and whose SpG had fallen to about 1.004. The must became dark violet and its fermentation rate picked up a bit as the yeast (and no doubt a wild yeast or two) started eating the blueberries. The final result was rather dry, (1.001) a bit like a red wine, and did have a distinct taste of blueberries. The tannins in the berries caused it to clear very swiftly without needing any clarifiers.

If you wanted just a hint of blueberries I would suggest a smaller quantity and to cook them down just a bit to kill off the wild yeasts. Just watch the temperature carefully as the aromatics and flavors will break down easily.

 

[Khan]

I just bottled a pretty good batch(IMHO) of blueberry mead . You must be only making a gallon with just 3lbs of "Mystery Honey". If you want a hint of blueberry, I suggest adding it to your secondary. a pound & a half should do it for a single gallon; or you can do what I did and put the berries right into primary, but that changes the character of the berry-flavor a bit.

There is no need to do anything other than wash the berries when you put them in, the yeast will do their job regardless. No need to boil anything (unless you REALLY want to), because you might loose some of the flavor that you are trying to put into your mead. I prefer Lav. EC-1118 (a champagne yeast) because it finishes dry and has no problems being forgotten about for periods of time.

Would you mind sharing your recipe, so that you can get more than just the anecdotal ravings of another newbie?

 

[Chevette Girl]

K1V is a good solid choice for a wide variety of applications and was one that I was going to suggest, but you don't have to worry about wild yeasts when you're using it. It's got a kill factor so it triumphs over competing yeasts. It's also got a pretty high alcohol tolerance so it depends on how dry you want this mead to be.

And just a note, cooking any fruits runs the risk of giving them a cooked taste and also setting any pectin that may be present in the fruit. If you're worried about other organisms, I'd suggest adding a crushed campden tablet 24 hours before pitching. I sometimes steam crabapples and pears to make them easier to mash, but I don't find they get a cooked taste because they're in larger pieces, but I can see it being pretty easy to overcook blueberries if you're not careful.

Back to yeasts...

RC-212 is also a good choice for dark berry/red wine if you can pamper it adequately, I've used it quite successfully in a few applications but you just have to give it lots of nutrients and energizer or it kicks up a stink... literally.

71B is great if you can remember to rack it off the lees.

D47 is great if you can keep the temperature under about 70F, otherwise it makes stink...

EC-1118 is a good solid performer you can safely ignore, but some people find it blows all the delicate aromas and flavours right out the airlock during its extremely vigorous fermentation, and as Khan said, it'll take most things pretty dry.

Even bread yeast makes a pretty good mead as long as you make sure it's sweet enough and properly balanced with some tannin/bitterness and some acidity, I've found the basic recipe for Joe's Ancient Orange works for a lot of things, I just haven't tried it with blueberries yet. Bread yeast and 3.5 lb honey per gallon, starting gravity usually works out to around 1.125 and usually finishes around 1.025 for me.

I will defer to how much blueberry to add as I haven't done a blueberry mead myself, but I'd suggest doing an advanced forum search with blueberry as the search term started by user THawk and reading through his brewlogs, maybe ask him some questions about how strongly the blueberry flavour comes through; he's been using blueberry a lot lately. When I do get around to trying a blueberry JAO, I'll be looking at his logs myself.

 

[Busymust]

Thanks!

Wow CG, you're a fountain of information!

 

[Chevette Girl]

*grin* Thanks! You can learn a lot on this forum and if you keep repeating it to others who haven't read it all yet, you can even remember most of it...

 

[RIC0]

WOW you guys/gals are great.

Here's what I will be using and if someone things I'm going about it the wrong way, please let me know. I'm all for be educated and doing it right with the advice of those that know what they are talking about.

Honey will be from a local source here in Indiana. It comes in 1lb jars and I believe is not processed like something you buy off the shelf. The local organic butcher shop carries It, I would think it's good and cost is like $8 a jar.

Water will be a gallon of Distilled water from grocery, same thing I use for my beer.

Yeast,,, well I'll be calling the local brewhouse supply to see what they have in stock, they should have plenty of options.


So will the water, honey, yeast and pint of blueberry all go in together? I say hint, I love blueberry so if it's more than a hint I'm down with that.

I've got a mulberry tree and blackberry bush in the back yard so come spring I'll be making some with that.

Again your alls advice is greatlyl appreciated.

 

[fatbloke]

First post and yes I"m a MEAD newbie.

I brew beer but have never made MEAD. That's about to change.

I will be doing a 1 gallon batch in a glass gallon jug.

I Will be using good honey, not junk, 3lbs should be good from what I've read.

I want to add a hint of blueberry flavor but not sure how much and when.

Please offer advice and thank you for your input.

Two things to remember, fermented fruit tastes different, so too get plenty of colour, but less fruity flavour put the fruit in primary.

For a more fruity taste, rack a stabilised, finished batch onto the fruit in secondary.

Personally, I've found I prefer the later.

You can split it too. Say you're thinking of using 3lb of fruit per gallon. Then split it into, say, 1lb and 2lb, then after its been frozen and thawed, add the 1b of fruit to the must (no yeast), then add the required amount of pectolase, then pitch the yeast 24 hours later.

Once its finished, rack it off the lees and stabilise it, then a day later, add the 2lb.

Obviously, that not a "set in stone" method, just an example. It could be varied in a number of ways........

 

[Chevette Girl]

The taste of fruit in primary is not the same as the fruit juice with added alcohol, it does change the flavour some. Some of us prefer our fruit fermented, some like Fatbloke prefer it in secondary.

You have blackberries? Or are they black raspberries? (I didn't discover the difference myself till a few years ago). If they're blackberries with the solid core and you like your meads sweet, here's a recipe for next year...

 

[RIC0]

For a more fruity taste, rack a stabilised, finished batch onto the fruit in secondary.

Ok this seems to be what I'm looking for. Now once I rack the stabilised and add the fruit do I need to add anything else or do I just let it sit??

and if so how long? at what point do I rack it again?

I understand mead needs to sit and sit for a long time I'm in no hurry as I want a good finished product. If it sits a year then so be it...8)

 

[RIC0]

Well my 1st gallon has begun....;D

1 gallon glass carboy.

Distilled water.

2.5 lbs of Gunters orange blossum honey.

2.5 grams of Lav. EC-1118 yeast.

Fermenting room is around 68 degrees. I've got 5 gallons of beer that shows 64 degrees according the thermometer sticker on the side of the bucket. It's been in the primary for 7 days now.

Once I add the 1 lb of blueberry's when it's racked to the secondary, how long do I leave it like that?? What are the next steps??

Thank you for your time and opinion it's appreciated.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Ok this seems to be what I'm looking for. Now once I rack the stabilised and add the fruit do I need to add anything else or do I just let it sit??

and if so how long? at what point do I rack it again?

I understand mead needs to sit and sit for a long time I'm in no hurry as I want a good finished product. If it sits a year then so be it...8)

Most of the time I don't leave anything on the fruit longer than two weeks, then rack it. Just don't tell that to the year old pair of JAO's I racked off the orange bits today... but a couple of weeks is all you need to get the maximum extraction from the fruit, you won't get much benefit from leaving it any longer and it may start to develop off flavours as the fruit starts to break down.

 

[RIC0]

Sooooo, when I rack to a secondary it's going to have less liquid than it did from the start, i'm guessing at no time you add more water to get it back to were you started??

 

[Khan]

Sooooo, when I rack to a secondary it's going to have less liquid than it did from the start, i'm guessing at no time you add more water to get it back to were you started??

I usually top it off with some honey/water (50/50), nothing to worry about if you have it stabilised, just makes it a bit sweeter... but you could use water if you really wanted to. some people use glass marbles (food-grade of course) to make up the difference in volume. or you can purge the extra space with inert gas, like CO2.

 

[RIC0]

Things are going well and I guess my next question since it appears this 1118 yeast is going to dry things out, do I need to add anything to the jug while it's fermenting after fermenting??

Nutrients, acids, boogers??

I'm just wondering if I'm going to have this over powering dry blueberry moonshine conconcion in a few months?

Maybe I'm just paranoid and the simple, jug I have going will be just fine?

The Steps below are what i plan on doing, i'm new so I could be stepping into a pile of crap and not know it so point out the do's or dont's.

This is a 1 gallon batch.

ferment for 2 weeks.
rack to secondary.
put in 1/2 lb of fresh frozen blueberries, if 1/2lb will fit.
wait 2 weeks and rack to another jug.
this will leave me with just the juice which will still have the airlock installed and I plan to leave it like this for a few months.

Everyones time and opinion is greatly appreciated. Sometimes searching for answers can be somewhat overwelming with what you find.

 

[Chevette Girl]

Dunno if boogers would help, but acid won't help, nutrients will but only if you get them in for the first half of the fermentation. And for that (and to tell you if 2 weeks is indeed the correct amount of time to leave this in primary) you really need a hydrometer... Adding nutrients before 1/3 of the honey's sugars have been consumed is good, the yeast don't really use it after that point.

 

[RIC0]

Dunno if boogers would help, but acid won't help, nutrients will but only if you get them in for the first half of the fermentation. And for that (and to tell you if 2 weeks is indeed the correct amount of time to leave this in primary) you really need a hydrometer... Adding nutrients before 1/3 of the honey's sugars have been consumed is good, the yeast don't really use it after that point.

I've got a hydrometer and took a reading already to see what the SG was..

I say 2 weeks I should have just stated once it got to FG i would add the blueberries.

I'm just being paranoid...

It's still fermenting away, not to fast not to slow what I would think just right.

now the JAO i did yesterday using the fleishmens yeast like in the directions, that stuff aint in no hurry... LOL

 

[YogiBearMead726]

Sorry for chiming in a bit late, but I'd reconsider using distilled water. While it is true that it is more pure that spring water or tap water, it is also lacking in micronutrients and trace elements that your yeast might otherwise be using. As with brewing, mead making can benefit greatly from having the right water chemistry going on. Think of it this way; if we can't safely consume large amounts of distilled water, why subject our happy little fungi friends to it?

If you're game for experimenting, try doing two batches of JAO or some other mead side-by-side, where one batch uses distilled water and the other uses bottled spring water. That way you can see which you prefer. And if you're feeling really ambitious, you could go one step further by comparing different brands and even trying out some tap water. ;D