For my Marine friend returning home: Viking Blood Mead!!!

My good friend is in Europe somewhere right now on his last deployment. We became friends about midway through my career, and deployed together to Iraq in 2006. For his triumphant return in a few months, I figured what better than mead?!




Pitched the yeast about 5 minutes before this pic.

I used Waldmeister's recipe here:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/viking-blood-meat-280382/

12 Liter Cherry Juice
4 Liter good Water
1 Kilo Cherrys
2 Kilo Sugar
2 Kilo Woodhoney
20ml Antigel Enzym
8 gr.yeastnutrisal
1 Päk. Burgund Yeast

I managed to get some Forest Honey on Amazon... it's fairly dark and has a very interesting flavor.. very unlike the usual honey varieties I use for mead. I made a few changes to the recipe besides dividing it down for a 1 gallon batch. I used all cherry juice and no water, I used a little extra honey and a little less sugar (500g honey, 300g sugar, instead of equal parts), and I left the cherries for the secondary... though I'm not sure if Waldmeister intended them to be in the primary or what. OG was ~1.120

The yeast I used was Lalvin RC 212.. the first time I've used this type, and the first time I've used a Burgundy yeast at all. I'm anxious to see how this stuff turns out.

You're a good friend!

Hopefully this will be ready by time he gets back. Be sure to feed nutrients incrementally during the early fermentation, and give it a good swirl a couple times a day to degas it during primary (be careful, as it can bubble up through the airlock if you're too vigorous...one of the reasons I use a blow off tube rather than an airlock....) This will maximize the chances of it being ready quickly. You have potential to go completely dry with that yeast and OG, so if you find that it's a bit harsh dry, consider stabilizing with metabisulfate and sorbate and lightly backsweetening. Even a small amount of background sweetness can really temper that "newness." Wish I could have a glass with you both when he gets back stateside!

biochemedic said:

You're a good friend!

Hopefully this will be ready by time he gets back. Be sure to feed nutrients incrementally during the early fermentation, and give it a good swirl a couple times a day to degas it during primary (be careful, as it can bubble up through the airlock if you're too vigorous...one of the reasons I use a blow off tube rather than an airlock....) This will maximize the chances of it being ready quickly. You have potential to go completely dry with that yeast and OG, so if you find that it's a bit harsh dry, consider stabilizing with metabisulfate and sorbate and lightly backsweetening. Even a small amount of background sweetness can really temper that "newness." Wish I could have a glass with you both when he gets back stateside!

Click to expand...

Thanks for the tips. I do usually follow the staggered nutrient addition method, also thanks for the heads up on the dryness. Neither of us are fans of overly dry meads, so I'll keep my eye on it. It'll still be a bit young by the time he gets here, but he won't mind letting it age to perfection as far as that goes.

5 days in, coming along nicely. Haven't taken a gravity reading yet. I'll see about it tomorrow.



Hopefully it's a bit of a deeper red once it clears and all that. If not, as long as it's delicious I'm happy.

I've had some color loss from additions of juice/fruit in primary. You can recover some color by adding a little more juice to top off when you rack it. You will probably kick up a small bit of fermentation again, but it shouldn't be too vigorous, and the color will carry through better to the glass...

A belated update for anyone curious:

Here's a pic after I racked it off of the cherries and back sweetened a bit. I used more of the original forest honey, because it has a really interesting bold flavor.




This stuff smells EXACTLY like cherry Pez. I was too lazy to dig up the notes on it, so I can't remember the final gravity, I'll post it up next time I take a reading.

I let it bulk age since the last update of this thread. Bottled it today and set some aside for myself.

It fermented all the way down to the .995 range, then I back sweetened it to about 1.010. A touch sweeter than I wanted, but it still ended up very nice. It still smells a bit like cherry pez. The cherry flavor is blended nicely with the bold forest honey, but is on the verge of being masked by it. If I make this again, I'll probably use a different back sweetening honey, and bring the sweetness down to about 1.005. Not perfect, but still very very drinkable.

He only gets 4 bottles... I needed one for myself.




This ended up being transitioned from welcome home mead to a wedding present for the same guy.

Bugger, already bottled.......

Was gonna suggest you steeped some hibiscus flowers in it while aging to improve colour, as well as wrapping the jug in aluminium foil to preclude light and bottling in green glass for the same reason.

We're all a little stupid in the English speaking west, and "eat" with our eyes too much. Hence if you can make it look as good as it likely tastes, you have a real winner on your hands.....

Either way, glad to read it tastes excellent......

Except for the couple of pictures I took, it was aged in near complete darkness. A light bulb was on for a minute or so maybe once a month or less. If I could find those bottles in green, I definitely would bottle them that way, but those bottles only exist in clear. The bottling and the label were the important factors for me.

I'll try the hibiscus flowers next time.. generally I don't mess around with the appearance of my wines too much, but seems like it would be fun for this one since it's going for the blood theme.

TeufelHundenM198 said:

Except for the couple of pictures I took, it was aged in near complete darkness. A light bulb was on for a minute or so maybe once a month or less. If I could find those bottles in green, I definitely would bottle them that way, but those bottles only exist in clear. The bottling and the label were the important factors for me.

I'll try the hibiscus flowers next time.. generally I don't mess around with the appearance of my wines too much, but seems like it would be fun for this one since it's going for the blood theme.

Click to expand...

Ok. I was just wondering. Theres a nice hue to it in the jug, but it looks like a darker more brownish hue in the bottle so it seemed more like light damage and I presumed it was more likely a clear glass thing.....

As I say, its just a cosmetic issue but its also a hell of a nice gesture for your friend....

TeufelHundenM198 said:

The cherry flavor is blended nicely with the bold forest honey, but is on the verge of being masked by it. If I make this again, I'll probably use a different back sweetening honey, and bring the sweetness down to about 1.005. Not perfect, but still very very drinkable.

Click to expand...

Glad your friend made it home safely! I've been looking to make a cherry mead and stumbled upon this thread. This will be my first mead so I have a couple of questions.

What type of honey would you use to backsweeten? When you are backsweetening are you just adding a little honey and stirring up the mead and taking gravity readings to see how much you have added? Or do you use some sort of calculator to figure out how much honey you need to hit a certain gravity target?

I've read in other threads that the taste of cherry eventually becomes less and less. Was this a problem with you since you used cherry juice instead of water?

Last one...when would you add hibiscus to help with containing the red color?

Thank you ahead of time!

rorymcg said:

What type of honey would you use to backsweeten?

Click to expand...

Blackberry and Tupelo honey are my two favorites. If I make this again, I'd definitely go with one of those two.

When you are backsweetening are you just adding a little honey and stirring up the mead and taking gravity readings to see how much you have added? Or do you use some sort of calculator to figure out how much honey you need to hit a certain gravity target?

Click to expand...

I don't have a preferred method really. There's this mead calculator that some folks use:

http://www.gotmead.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=745&Itemid=16

For this mead I just kinda guessed and added something like 1/2 lb of honey, maybe a bit more.

I've read in other threads that the taste of cherry eventually becomes less and less. Was this a problem with you since you used cherry juice instead of water?

Click to expand...

Well, I haven't had another taste of this since my last post, so I can't say where the cherry flavor is currently. I believe my friend is planning on opening a bottle next month, so I can post about it then.

Last one...when would you add hibiscus to help with containing the red color?

Click to expand...

As far as I know, at any point during the aging. I probably would have racked it on to the hibiscus in the secondary and left 'em for a while.

TeufelHundenM198 said:

As far as I know, at any point during the aging. I probably would have racked it on to the hibiscus in the secondary and left 'em for a while.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm trying to get the ingredients this week to make a 1 gallon batch. Could you rack into the secondary with the hibiscus and cherries or would you do those separately? Also, read on Viking's Blood Meat thread that he cooked his batch at 21 days to kill off the yeast. Did you do this too? I know you don't want to age your beer on a yeast cake for more than a few months, but didn't realize this was the same for mead. Perhaps killing off the yeast and then adding the cherries will backsweeten it then. And did you use tart cherry juice?

Thanks!

rorymcg said:

Thanks for the quick reply! I'm trying to get the ingredients this week to make a 1 gallon batch. Could you rack into the secondary with the hibiscus and cherries or would you do those separately? Also, read on Viking's Blood Meat thread that he cooked his batch at 21 days to kill off the yeast. Did you do this too? I know you don't want to age your beer on a yeast cake for more than a few months, but didn't realize this was the same for mead. Perhaps killing off the yeast and then adding the cherries will backsweeten it then. And did you use tart cherry juice?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

I put my cherries in the primary, but if I was doing one item for color and one for flavor, I wouldn't do them at the same time. It might be ok, but I just like to keep things separate.

I didn't pasteurize this, and don't do so with any of my meads. If you feel like there's too much yeast in there, just rack it out of the secondary.

I didn't use tart cherry juice.

TeufelHundenM198 said:

I put my cherries in the primary, but if I was doing one item for color and one for flavor, I wouldn't do them at the same time. It might be ok, but I just like to keep things separate.

I didn't pasteurize this, and don't do so with any of my meads. If you feel like there's too much yeast in there, just rack it out of the secondary.

I didn't use tart cherry juice.

Click to expand...

Okay sounds good, thanks for the advice! Why do you think the original recipe calls for half sugar half honey? Would it be bad to throw out the sugar and just go 800g of forest honey? Would that be too much of this honey since it is bold?