Dragon Fruit

**Insomniac** · 08-06-2011, 08:13 PM

Has anyone used these before? I just found them at ASDA, are sort if sweet with a spicyness to them. Almost tempted but not sure if they will work.

Rounsy · 08-06-2011, 10:38 PM

Ohhh that sounds interesting... gotta see if I can find some....

retty · 08-07-2011, 12:55 AM

That's the one similiar to a prickly pear right? I'm tempted but the store that has em selfs them at 7.99 a pound. That's a little out of my price range for 10 pounds

Haven't tried it myself, but I imagine it's similiar to prickly pear.

**Insomniac** · 08-07-2011, 02:04 AM

It looks similar but has white flesh, I've not had prickly pear before so don't know if they taste similar. Here they are £1 per fruit and seem to weigh about 10oz each, not sure how many I would need for a 5l batch. May just jave to give it a go once I have a fermentor free.

retty · 08-07-2011, 03:03 AM

Take a bite of one and make an estimate? I'd GUESS you'll be good with 15 in a 3 to 5 gallon batch. I wonder if the seeds would impart tannins too. You might want to research that first.

**Insomniac** · 08-07-2011, 11:54 AM

They taste fairly mild, I was thinking 10 to 15, juiced, in 5l. How strong tasting is prickly pear? If thats fairly mild too i coukd j7st follow that recipe

ExoticMeadMaker · 08-07-2011, 12:22 PM

Ive seen those weird looking fruit at the asain market and was intrested as well, but like retty said out of my price range

retty · 08-07-2011, 01:47 PM

I ate prickly pear once, I don't know if I had a fresh or unripe one, but it was a lot like watermelon and I think with a hint of some other fruit. The flavor was very mild to me so I think you'll be safe modifying a prickly pear recipe. If you don't want to go by the prickly pear recipe, you could always do a watermelon mead recipe.

**fatbloke** · 08-07-2011, 01:51 PM

Hum ? I know I've tasted them, but for the life of me, I can't remember what they tasted like.

As for using them to flavour a mead ? I'd have thought it would probably be better to make a basic traditional, then when the fermentation has finished, rack it off the lees and then peel the fruit, chop it up and put it in a muslin bag, before racking stabilised mead onto it.

That way, you will get as much of the flavour of the fruit as possible, rather than risk losing any during the fermentation stage......

I certainly wouldn't pulp it, as that makes it more likely to damage the seeds and impart some "seed bitterness" to the batch (just like when you blitz a kiwi fruit).

Ha! I'm also a little suspicious of them (yes, I just saw them in my local ASDA as well). They are "too flashy" for my liking, in the same way that the big retailers only buy "pretty" looking varieties of fruit, because we're all too much like "mug punters". Sure they look wonderful on a shelf, but when you cut into that lovely looking, large fruit, all you end up with, tastes like watered down pap, with a minimal flavour (think big strawberries, Kenyan blackberries, hell even tiger prawns - big, juicy looking, but lacking in any real flavour).

**Insomniac** · 08-07-2011, 04:32 PM

Well the seeds are neant to taste "nutty" which may not be too bad. If I go with this I might try juicing and filtering a few in the primary and then doing as fb says and suspending them in a bag in secondary. Will see how I feel when I get my current batches to bottle.