Cherry Berry Mead

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rideincircles said:
I am about to rack my mead to its 3rd vessel. I would say that my mead will be completely different and more potent since I used D47 yeast. It has now fermented to around .997 and I am debating on what to do next. I want it to finish sweet and can't decide whether to add more honey and let the d47 max out in alcohol tolerance or just add the combo to kill fermentation. I am leaning towards adding more honey, but I will only be able to guess what the alcohol level is at and I don't know how much further the D47 can go.

I never measured gravity higher than 1.094 I think, but it has 17 lbs of honey added at various times, and 12 lbs in primary was the 1.094 reading. It started off with 12 lbs of frozen strawberries and 96 oz of cherry white grape juice and added 4 lbs of strawberries in secondary. I am done with strawberries and need to rack it off the fruit, just debating on which step next.

During primary it tasted and smelled super yeasty from the d47, but now that part has mellowed and it has super alcohol burn and is very dry. The strawberry flavor is good though and I expect this to keep improving. Just want it sweeter.

I would back sweeten it, just try and remove as much of the yeast as possible....so basically your fermenter should be clear in the bottom.
 
Thanks for the recipe, made this today. 2 gal batch

mead.jpg
 
I finally got around to racking mine and adding Kmeta and Sorbate to it to backsweeten. Mine deviated from the recipe quite a bit after my yeast did nothing. I used D47 instead which has a much higher tolerance. I ended up with 12 lbs of strawberry in primary, and 4 in secondary with 17 lbs of honey for fermentation. I backsweetened with 3.4 more lbs of honey which totals at 20.4 lbs of honey. When I checked before adding honey, the gravity was at 1.002. I am hoping to keep this in the 1.02-1.03 range and I estimate its around 1.023 currently. I am guessing (added honey at different times) the OG was around 1.120 or so, and went to 1.002. Not sure why I measured .996 earlier. That puts it around 15.5% I think.

Since I used D47, I will be letting this bulk age for a while and I am not sure if I will bottle it still or get a keg for it. Would like to get a 2.5 gallon keg and carb half and bottle the other half still. This pretty much fills 5 gallon carboy to the brim. If I need to add any more honey I will have to sample it a few more times. It has a lot of umph in the honey flavor since I used Texas natural honey, along with a strong bite from the alcohol. I am just hoping I don't wind up with any D47 temp issues.
 
Liking the sound of this one just made my first mead a moam so will have to wait until thats ready before starting this one quick question does it matter if you use a cheap honey as honey is getting very expensive in uk now ? Thanks for this recipe
 
Draffish said:
Liking the sound of this one just made my first mead a moam so will have to wait until thats ready before starting this one quick question does it matter if you use a cheap honey as honey is getting very expensive in uk now ? Thanks for this recipe

Cheap honey that taste good is good honey!
 
dtfleming said:
Here is mine at bottling today with trying a sample. turned out great. FG of 1.002.

Good looking bottle, let it age as long as possible....the flavors really come out with time!
 
Hello here is my attempt at this beautiful sounding recipe. I have never made mead before. I had some at a brewery last night and decided to make some today. I used all the ingredients listed in the recipe, combined in a brew pot and heated until hot (175°F). I allowed the mix to cool to 80°F and added 5 tsb of yeast nutrient and LALVIN 71B-1122 WINE YEAST. My OG is spot on at 1.13. Only thing I did different was that I did not puree the strawberries. I mashed some and left a lot in their current frozen form. Here are some pics. Will keep you posted.

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Ok so I woke up this morning to find the airlock blown off and foam pouring out of the top of the carboy. Is my batch ruined? I know the foam is from very active yeast. How can I control it?
 
Ok so I woke up this morning to find the airlock blown off and foam pouring out of the top of the carboy. Is my batch ruined? I know the foam is from very active yeast. How can I control it?

You can get a blow off tube or you can sanitize a piece of aluminum foil (about 6 inches wide) and loosely cap the top of your fermenter...several inches should drape down the side, to prevent wild yeast from getting in. Do this for 2 days and then you can put back on your airlock.
 
Mine is getting better as it goes along. It is 6 months old now since I bottled it. It still has a very slight hint of a bitter taste but I believe that is from the strong honey I used and probably the berries too. Flavor is great to me.
 
Hello fellow brewmates,

I am brand new to this, but have been reading and educating myself for several months. Recently I have purchased a 6 gallon glass carboy and 7.5ish gallon fermenter bucket. I am very, very interested in this breaking my brewing virginity! A few questions I have...

I am going to utilize the fermenter bucket as the primary then racking off into the 6 gallon carboy. I am using the mead calculator to the best of my ability and am aiming for 14% abv. By doing such, I know my brew place has Lalvin 1122... is this a decent choice yeast for this recipe? I know that you can "use any kind of yeast you want", but I reallly want to have a good first go around! haha!

I am interested in a medium sweet mead. I am aware I can backsweeten with honey and chemical additives, but I'd rather not bother with that! This is what I was aiming to do....

Yeast: Lalvin 71B-1122
Batch Size (Gallons): 6 Gallons

18 Pounds Clover Honey
12 Pounds of Frozen Strawberries
2 Quarts Welch's White Grape Cherry 100% Juice
2 teaspoons of yeast nutrients
Lalvin 71b-1122
1 Gallons of Water to heat/ rest to fill to 6 gallon mark.

By doing this to the calculator, it has potential of 14.84% but of course should die at 14% due to yeast tolerance of 1122... correct? Leaving a sweet taste remaining due it not reaching maximum potential? Am I understanding this correctly?

Thank you for looking at my post and providing guidance to a newbie.
 
nighthawk311 said:
Do you recommend making a starter with the wyeast sweet mead? If not, should I pitch 1 or 2 packets?
Starters are great on any brew, because it lets you know that the yeast are viable and help ramp them up in order to consume all of the fermentable sugar without stressing the yeast and causing off flavors....if you don't have the ability to create a starter, 2 packets will get you there as well.
 
I made this tonight with WLP720 Sweet Mead Yeast(which was the closest available at my LHBS). Also had trouble finding the White Grape/Cherry Juice, so I used Welch's White Grape, Added 1 pound of pureed cherries with 10 pounds of pureed/whole frozen strawberries. Probably a little heavier on the pureed side than whole, and pretty close to 12 pounds of Honey.

I've mostly brewed beer and cider in the past, tried one wine that tastes fine, but doesn't appear to have been degassed properly(just a little bubbly on the tongue).

So... Do I need to worry about degassing this like a wine (this is my first mead, and have only done one wine)... or will the racking prescribed in the recipe take care of it to make it still?
 
No need to degas but with the additional fruit, you may need to let this one bottle age longer in order to mellow the flavors


Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew
 
Thanks for the reply, I may have made it sound confusing. I actually ended up with 11 total pounds of fruit, not 10 pureed AND 10 whole pounds of strawberries, but a mixture of both pureed and whole, with the one pound of cherries.

It's aggressively fermenting in primary, I guess I'll find out how i did sometime this summer.

Thanks again.
 
Cherry Berry Mead
Recipe Type: Extract
Yeast: Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead
Batch Size (Gallons): 5 Gallons
Original Gravity:
Final Gravity:
Boiling Time (Minutes):
Color: TBA (see photo) D'Oh! I haven't figured out how to add photos, yet.

Hi Folks,

This is my first attempt at mead and if this comes out drinkable, I'm taking a day off and getting drunk.
Having read this recipe (posted by SD-SILM, 05-14-2011) I thought, 'I can do this'. *BWAHAHAHA!

Well, it all started out the same. *The recipe calls for:
12 pounds of Light Amber Honey (I bought 15 lbs. of SueBee White Clover)
12 pounds of Frozen Strawberries (bought 15 lbs.)
2 Quarts of Welch's White Grape Cherry 100% Juice
2 teaspoons of yeast nutrients
Wyeast 4184 Sweet Mead (The closest I could find was Sweet Mead/Wine Yeast WLP720)
1 Gallon of Water

I started out following SD-SLIM'S notes by boiling a gallon of water. *While the water was boiling, I poured 12 pounds of honey into my mixing pot (I had previously poured off 3 lbs. to use elsewhere), then used the boiling water to rinse the rest of the honey out of the containers. *Once the containers are clear, discard the remainder of the boiled water (the hotter you make your base, the more cooling you will need to do).
Now you have honey and water, it's time to add the Welch's juice and Yeast Nutrient... Mix everything together and pour into fermenter...add cold water to bring up to five gallons...mix or shake to combine ingredients and aerate.
SD-SLIM advises, 'At this time you want to add strawberries... I prefer to purée my berries and place them into the fermenter, it is my experience that it helps speed the process and really brings in the berry flavor'.
Well, that's where everything went to hell. *At this point, I was at the 'Now you have honey and water' stage and reading ahead. *My brewing kitchen is in a studio apartment above our regular kitchen. *So I went downstairs and began pureeing 12 lbs. of 'frozen strawberries'. *Ever tried that? *I wound up with a red Slurpie CONCENTRATE. *Now, how in the heck am I gonna get that into a carboy? *I needed a LARGE funnel with an output big enough for sliced strawberries that didn't get completely puréed. *2-liter 7-Up bottle to the rescue. *Meet the Redneck Fruit Funnel. *A wooden spoon handle makes a perfect ramrod. *So I took that upstairs, added water to the 5-gallon carboy to the five gallon level, funneled the super Slurpie into the 6-gallon carboy, turned around and saw the Welch's juice, still on the counter (SHOSBOT!).
Ok, I can still do this. *I poured off a little over a 1/2 gallon of honey and water and more water, so that I could get the Welch's juice into the 5-gallon carboy.
In hindsight, I think SD-SLIM might have meant that the fruit goes into the fermenter with the honey, water, and juice PRIOR to bringing the water level up to five gallons. *I was thinking the only way to fit five gallons of honey/water and juice (the mix) into 12 lbs of strawberries is to put it all into a 6-gallon carboy. *But that still left about a half gallon of mix leftover. *I at least had the foresight to add the yeast and the nutrient into the 6-gallon prior to adding the mix.
Well, like I said in the beginning,*if this comes out drinkable, I'm taking a day off and getting drunk. *We'll see in about 6 months.
 
Just brewed a half batch of this (a few days ago) and it was one of the easiest recipes I've ever tried. It looks, smells and seems like a killer recipe...which of course, is why I brewed it!

The only substitution I made was to use White Labs sweet mead yeast. I'm going to have to use self control to keep a few bottles back for the holidays!
 
Made this back in February but never posted back. It's been in secondary for a few months now. Thinking about getting ready to sulfate it and add gelatin to fine, then going to back-sweeten and age in bottles till October or so. I also used the White Labs sweet mead yeast.
 
Got a batch working 8 days ago, for 3 gallons

8.25 lbs Sourwood honey
8 lbs frozen strawberries
3 quarts Welches white grape cherry


Filled the headspace with water added some nutrient and pitched D47...

...been bubblin ever since:ban:

Although I think the strawberries messed up my OG, hydrometer read 1.080 but Beer Smith said 1.131 was closer
 
Racked to secondary today, gravity 1.00, tastes hot but I think this is gonna turn out fantastic! Thanks again the the recipe!!!!:mug:
 
My very first ever brewing attempt (cider) is just about to go from primary to secondary. With my birthday being roughly six months away, I think this will be my second attempt. I'll think I'll splurge just a smidge and use some local blackberry honey as the base.
 
I just bottled my variation of this. My sweet mead yeast was dead when I pitched it and didn't make it by the brew store, so I ended up adding a packet of D47 I had lying around which turned this into a beast. I finished off with around 20.5 lbs of Texas wildflower honey, and 17 lbs of strawberries in it. I started it in January of last year and then back sweetened and let it sit in secondary for over a year. I racked one more time and then bottled it yesterday. It finished at 1.030 and still is a tad hot since its around 17% abv, but the honey and strawberries mix nicely and has a strong honey flavor with strawberry background with a warmth going down. It didn't end up totally clear, but I am not too concerned about that.

No clue how old I will let this get, but my pipeline at my house fills an entire fridge, about 6 boxes in my closet and i have 5 kegs on draft. I will have no problems aging a lot of this. I may consider this recipe again and try for the recipe and keg it to see how it is carbonated, but I have more new things to try before I commit to it again.
 
Took a bottle of this to my local homebrew club meeting last night, everyone really liked it, I got tons of questions. This is for sure a winner, I might even enter it into the next competition!:rockin:
 
Will the one vial of Wyeast be enough for 5 gallons? I am fairly new to mead making. Do I need to prepare a starter?
 
I always recommend making a starter, especially with mead and pitching some nutrient when you toss it into the carboy.
 
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