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Lundvarr · 03-04-2010, 03:14 AM

Does anyone have experience brewing sumac mead? I all of a sudden got an urge to make a batch of sumac mead. Right now I am thinking of sumac, black berries, and wormwood extract. Only problem is the lack of black berries being in season!

Anyways I'd like to make a 5 gal batch. I think I might be better off starting with a straight mead, fermented to max with a little remaining honey for a slight chardonay sweetness.

No experience with any of the above wines.

Thoughts?

Cheers!

Lundvarr · 03-04-2010, 08:27 PM

Okay scratch the wormwood and add currants?

Emerald · 03-05-2010, 03:23 AM

If I remember correctly, doesn't sumac berries taste kinda like a sour lemon? I can remember making an odd reddish pink drink out of them during my girl scout camp way back when, Not my favorite but not intolerable.
Go with what makes good hard lemonade. Maybe?

Yan · 03-05-2010, 03:54 AM

I would skip the fruit or go minimal on it, myself. Sumac would probably give a nice pink colour and tart citric acid character to an otherwise plain mead, but I tend to think it would make a mead with fruit a little too tart unless you went easy on the fruit and sumac, or if you had something pretty tannic in there or a lot of sweetness to balance it. Sumac is pretty tart stuff. It would be a good acidifier, say, in place of an acid blend, but I'd be careful mixing it with acidic fruits. And wormwood is bitter, so it might bring it along, but tastes bloody awful, IMHO.