I was thinking of putting together a recipe for a blue berry mead 10-12% ABV with mild sweetness. I am afraid of using a yeast that is overly voracious. I know that Schram recommends in the Meadmaker book to fruit a base mead. I have never actually done this. I have about 8 lbs of fruit in the freezer. Has any one tried both methods? Are the fruit flavors more vibrant if you fruit a base mead rather then ferment with fruit in the carboy? Any challenges in the process?
Blue berry mead
- Thread starter Womack
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Not sure how its goin to come out but I just put together 3.5lb honey, 2.5lbs blueberries, raisins and d47. We will see.
One way to find out! This is the next morning. Had picked some fresh maine blue berries, had some extra honey kicking around. Threw it together.
Nice! what you may find is that the fruit will cause for more losses. though there is a way to fix that for fruit in fermentation. if you put fruit in a filter bag and ferment in a brewing bucket the fruit sits suspended in the primary then. you can pul it out easily before racking in to the secondary.
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Using fruit right off will give you the fermented fruit flavors. Using fruit after fermentation will give you fresher fruit flavors that are somewhat true to the fruit.
Fruit during fermentation is easy, especially if you use a bucket. Fruit additions post fermentation are harder as you need to keep everything under airlock.
Some folks will do both and attempt to get the best of both worlds. Personally, I've tried it all and now only do fruit additions during fermentation. I prefer the fermented flavors and the ease of the technique.
Fruit during fermentation is easy, especially if you use a bucket. Fruit additions post fermentation are harder as you need to keep everything under airlock.
Some folks will do both and attempt to get the best of both worlds. Personally, I've tried it all and now only do fruit additions during fermentation. I prefer the fermented flavors and the ease of the technique.
I'm also all about easy. I like to ferment with the fruit. Also why I use a bigger carboy size than my batch size. So this will truly be a 2 gallon batch.
I think there are three periods you can add fruit. #1 is during primary fermentation or when the fermentation is going heavy. #2 is after primary fermentation when the yeast has slowed down which is supposed to be more gentle on the fruit. #3 is after the mead is stabilized so that fruit doesn't get fermented.
With my blueberry mead that I am working on, I added 1/3 of the blueberries at the beginning and I will be taking them out tomorrow. I have them in a bag. Soon, since my SG is 1.004 already, I will rack the mead onto the remaining 2/3 of the blueberries. I am hoping from what I read that the fermentation will be more gentle and I won't lose all the berry goodness through the airlock. I am using buckets for both of these fermentations but will move to a carboy later.
I love seeing the pictures of the meads fermenting in the carboys but I am not ready to give up my buckets since they are so easy to deal with. My mead and blueberries started off dark like yours but has now turned more of a raspberry color.
With my blueberry mead that I am working on, I added 1/3 of the blueberries at the beginning and I will be taking them out tomorrow. I have them in a bag. Soon, since my SG is 1.004 already, I will rack the mead onto the remaining 2/3 of the blueberries. I am hoping from what I read that the fermentation will be more gentle and I won't lose all the berry goodness through the airlock. I am using buckets for both of these fermentations but will move to a carboy later.
I love seeing the pictures of the meads fermenting in the carboys but I am not ready to give up my buckets since they are so easy to deal with. My mead and blueberries started off dark like yours but has now turned more of a raspberry color.
You don't really need the raisins if you're going to put the fruit in primary.
I've done both ways -- fruit in primary and in secondary...
I've done it JAOM style with pretty much 4# blueberries, 3.5# honey per gallon, some cinnamon. I've never needed to add raisins.
I've also done a base with honey, some spices and something like EC-1118 or 71b yeast. For something like that, I use commercial nutrient and let it go for about 2 weeks. Then I add about 2-3# of frozen berries for about a month.
