Blueberry Mead

Just started the blueberry melomel. OG was 1.13 and used lalvin d47 yeast. This should give me a solid 16% ABV with a touch of residual sweetness. I will post the receipe in the receipe section.

Got a bit too much must in the fermentor. My towel covering the top was a beautiful purple and the blueberries were trying to push it off. I am going to split off a gallon and then drop it back in when we go to the secondary.

Excellent color and that Texas honey smells super strong!

An update! Everything is in the secondary. Airlock has slowed to a crawl after two weeks. The color is looking very nice as the lees are dropping.

I am going to try things a bit different with this batch since being on a forum and getting some questions answered by Ken Schramm. He said he doesn't rack very often and recommended even a bit of moving the lees as active yeast can become covered and die due to being covered by dead cells. So I am going to leave this on the lees until it has cleared completely. I have seen an Fruit Cyser that has been left on the apples for 6 months and it won a contest.

I will check the gravity about once a month and update the thread.

Recipe and directions for a noob to mead making, Please.

Pirate Ale said:

Recipe and directions for a noob to mead making, Please.

Click to expand...

Check under the Mead Receipes sections, I have it listed there. If you have any questions give me a yell. Here is a picture of the batch right after going into the secondary. http://marks.iwarp.com/cgi-bin/i/images/blueberry_mead_2.jpg

Checked the gravity last night. It was 996! Still not tasting very good.

Added 1.5 lbs of Clover honey and she is bubbling away this morning back to about 1 bubble every 3 to 4 seconds.

This stuff s now wonderful. The harshness is comming down, while still dry the nose has both the blueberry and honey. My wife started bogarting the test vial. Airlock activity has ceased and clearing is comming along great. Some new pictures here!

My brother and I made a Blueberry Mead (our first mead ever).

It was GREAT. I'll have to check the brew log book for amounts of this and that.
It was a 5 gallon batch.

I had a 1/2 of a 1 gallon ziplock bag filled with fresh blueberries that we hand picked of off my Grandpa's Blueberry bushes. I Froze them in the freezer, thawed them out and froze them agian.

We did a full volume boil.
Near the end we dumped in the bag of frozen blueberries.

Using the very large mash pattle, I smashed the berries on the inside of the kettle wall.


I believe I may still have a few bottles of it stashed some where.
It was a light pink color. Absolutly clear. I recall having to add more honey after several months of fermentation to remove some of the dryness.
(did I mention it packed quite a punch?)

**now that I think about it, after several months of fermentation, after activity more or less stopped, I may have ran it throught a plate filter before adding the additional honey to make it less dry and more sweet. It had so much alcohol at that point, contamination wassnt a real concern.

Out of the people that sampled it, the only ones that did not care for it where those that prefered a dry wine. go figure...

I took some up to a local brewery and one of the brew masters commented on the difficulty of working with the blueberry (flavor).

(I just smashed the flavor out, lol, being our first mead, we had nothing to compair it to.)



I have loaded up on blueberrys over the summer, I have several bags in the freezer just waiting to become mead. (A good winter project).



Once I dig up the page in the brew log, I can post what I put in it.

It is finished and has been stabilized. I backsweetened to a 1.20 gravity and put it in the dark for aging. It still has some clearing but not bad when in a glass. Very nice blueberry flavor and nose, not overpowering but easy to tell it is blueberry and still has the honey taste and smell. For those whom have tried Chaunchers it is not as sweet but could still handle being served with or after a meal. I believe this will improve even more within the next 6 to 8 months.