Spiced Pumpkin Apple Mead?

After my first batch turned out drinkable, albeit a tad on the strong side, I wanted to make more. (My recipe was a simple 2 Gallons preservative-free, not-from-concentrate apple juice and 7 lbs of honey and Premier Cuvée Dry Wine Yeast from Red Star)


My plan is to not ferment without the spices, just the honey/apple/pumpkin.
Then mull the spices in before bottling.
I really just want cinnamon, and I played with the idea of just adding a small stick of cinnamon to the bottle when bottling and see how that works.

Anyway my concern is ratio of flavors. I want it to be balanced, I don't want one flavor to stand out too far above the rest.

Any suggestions on how much of what to use? (2-2.5 gallon) batch.

I'm thinking:

1 gallon Apple juice. (same as I used before)
1 gallon water
1 meduim sized can of all-natural Pumpkin

Then adding honey until my OG reads to where I want it.
I want it to be a medium mead, not too sweet or dry, but not nearly as strong as my last batch.

Is it the pre-spiced pumpkin can or the raw pumpkin? Adding just pumpkin will make it taste like vegetables, not pumpkin pie. But it could help add some body to the mead. All the pumpkin flavor will come from when you add the spices.

MarshmallowBlue said:

Is it the pre-spiced pumpkin can or the raw pumpkin? Adding just pumpkin will make it taste like vegetables, not pumpkin pie. But it could help add some body to the mead. All the pumpkin flavor will come from when you add the spices.

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I was planning on using 100% pumpkin. Some of what I was reading suggested that adding spices during primary could produce off flavors.

My plan was to ferment with just the pumpkin, apple and honey. After fermentation mulling the brew in spices, then bottling.

I used pure pumpkin and added my own mulling spices into the primary and so far it's great, even for a mead that only had the yeast pitched on the 29 of June. It's really sweet, like an ice wine, which helps at this young stage and it tastes like apple pumpkin pie. You could be right about adding the mulling spices after the primary as I get a bit of a bitter aftertaste but I'm betting that after months or a year in the bottle that will be gone. Still I can't believe it's this drinkable already. I started it at an O.G. of 1.155 and it stopped at 1.033. I used EC-1118 (sorry fb, I was ignorant of k1-v1116, hahahaha) and ended up with an A.B.V. of about 18.5%. High alcohol mead is supposed to take a long time to be drinkable but this is good now and should be divine in a year. One difference with mine is I used all apple juice, no water so it is a pumpkin cyser. I think next time I will aim for a lower sweetness and use 71-B to keep the ABV down a bit too.

Any suggestions on what yeast to use? I want something that'll ferment with a clean taste, but only to about 12-14%.

Red Star Cotes De Blanc has been good for me, but can be vigorous in cysers to my experience. Are you going to be able to keep it on the cooler side of things, fermentation temp-wise?

MarshmallowBlue said:

Red Star Cotes De Blanc has been good for me, but can be vigorous in cysers to my experience. Are you going to be able to keep it on the cooler side of things, fermentation temp-wise?

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Usually the apartment is kept between 70-75F.

Lalvin 71b would do a great job with having the lower alcohol aroubd 14% and having a nice "smooth" flavor profile. When I did my last apple pumpkin mead I used an ale yeast actually, London ESB 1968. But I aimed for a 9% ABV mead. Also think about adding in 1 part your pumpkin and 1/2 part sweet potatoe. If you really want some pumpkin flavor that will help bring it out and balance out the apple flavor.

I plan on using 71-B for my next pumpkin cyser and I'm liking the sweet potato idea.

+1 on sweet potatoes as a pumpkin enhancer, and I've never used 71B; but I wouldn't use Cotes Des Blanc with Apples unless you can keep it cold.

Arpolis said:

Lalvin 71b would do a great job with having the lower alcohol aroubd 14% and having a nice "smooth" flavor profile. When I did my last apple pumpkin mead I used an ale yeast actually, London ESB 1968. But I aimed for a 9% ABV mead. Also think about adding in 1 part your pumpkin and 1/2 part sweet potatoe. If you really want some pumpkin flavor that will help bring it out and balance out the apple flavor.

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Sweet potato? How does that work?

Trust me. Or better yet make a pie! Use two exact recipes but for one make the total fruit value the pumpkin and the other 2 part pumpkin 1 part sweet potatoe. The sweet potatoe one will tast more pimpkiny and not be as focused on the spices. The same should translate into mead.

This was my final recipe:
6 qts Apple Juice.
34oz 100% pure pumpkin.
6.5lbs honey
2qts water.
Lalvin 71B 1122
OG 1.099

Didnt do anything special with the pumkin, though the cider i started the next day I roasted it with brown sugar before mixing with the apple.


Heres my question, the mead wil ferment to 12.6(ish) percent.

I want to rack onto some brown sugar for my secondary, yeast goes to about 14% so how much sugar should I add to leave a little yeast to bottle carbonate?