juice rules

[meadsome]

hello all i am a newbie made my first batch of mead 9/9/09 its still in the primary. I still don't really know what i want to do with it because i want to make 50 different meads lol luckily i have 12 more pounds of honey. I used 12 pounds of blueberry honey. used k1V-1116 yeast with nutrients and energizer. Everything went fine but i am curious what kind of rules there are to adding "juice to the secondary of the mead" or should i add it to the primary while still somewhat active. I guess what are the do's and donts of using fruit juices. I am a newbie and have no clue so start with a basic and move up to advanced dos and donts list of using juice for mead.

Thanks
Meadsome

 

[fatbloke]

hello all i am a newbie made my first batch of mead 9/9/09 its still in the primary. I still don't really know what i want to do with it because i want to make 50 different meads lol luckily i have 12 more pounds of honey. I used 12 pounds of blueberry honey. used k1V-1116 yeast with nutrients and energizer. Everything went fine but i am curious what kind of rules there are to adding "juice to the secondary of the mead" or should i add it to the primary while still somewhat active. I guess what are the do's and donts of using fruit juices. I am a newbie and have no clue so start with a basic and move up to advanced dos and donts list of using juice for mead.

Thanks
Meadsome

No expert, only how things have panned out for me.......

Juice (from whatever source), in primary takes the full force of the fermentation........

Juice in secondary, tends to retain a lot more of the fruitiness of the juice, but the sugar will invariably ferment to alcohol (unless you're adding the juice when the yeast used for the ferment is already close to it's maximum tolerance of alcohol - when that's reached, the yeast invariably will "poop out" and you're left with some residual sugar...)

Juice into the finished ferment, will of course, retain the maximum flavour of the original juice/sugars etc etc and therefore the fruitiness of the added juice - it depends on how much is used, as to how much the actual strength of alcohol is reduced (which it will be when effectively "watering down" a finished ferment). This is a common way of "back sweetening" i.e. to use a juice to top up, or add additional fruit flavour.

I don't think that there's many actual "rules" other than what you're adding must be within the hygienic boundaries so that you're not introducing any "nasties" that might have a detrimental effect i.e. like acetobacter for example.....

regards

fatbloke

 

[meadsome]

thanks fatbloke. excellent that is great information. I read some other posts and someone had mentioned 1. 100 percent fruit juices and 2. no preservatives. should you ad anything extra when adding the fruit juice? I'm gonna add juice and real fruit my mead is gonna be real dry and like you said i want to sweeten it up just a bit. Any additions needed when i add the juice? The juice i'm adding is strong so i'm thinking 1 gallon for the 5 gallon batch should do it making 6 total gallons of mead.

 

[wayneb]

If you would like that juice addition to bring some sweetness along with the fruit character, I would encourage you to consider "stabilizing" the mead with metabisulfite and potassium sorbate shortly before you add the juice. As Fatbloke mentioned, any sugar additions can conceivably re-start fermentation. Although yeast have a natural ethanol tolerance past which they will not live, there always seem to be a few hardy souls remaining in the must, viable well past their "expiration date." If enough of those extra hardy cells remain in your must, then the fruit addition will simply get them going again!