Mead from fresh cherries

I've had a couple of requests for this recipe.

6 gallon recipe

14 lbs freshly picked and frozen tart cherries (tart cherries are far better than sweet in a mead or wine)
18 lbs blackberry blossom honey - dark and fragrant
20 oz Zante Currants
water to seven gallons
71B1122 yeast

OG 1.090 before adding cherries

Place thawed cherries in a straining bag. Practice good fermentation control with oxygenation early on and staggered nutrient additions.

Rack in 1 week to 10 days (about 1.010) to a 3-gallon carboy on top of 3 pounds more unpitted cherries and a 5-gallon carboy with 5 pounds cherries.

After another three weeks it should be completely dry at .096 or lower. Rack into a 6-gallon carboy on top of 1 qt blackberry blossom honey and a can of Welch's White Grape Concentrate. Add six campden tablets or 3/8 t (teaspoon) k-meta and 1.5 t of potassium sorbate.

Bulk age for 9 months. After three months, add 1/4 oz heavy toast American oak.

This is a semi-sweet mead that's also quite tart.

I absolutely LOVE your labels! and your goblet is rather epic too! This sounds like an absolute BLAST to make, and I think I'll try something similar now that Cherry Season is here!

WilliBChrist said:

I absolutely LOVE your labels! and your goblet is rather epic too! This sounds like an absolute BLAST to make, and I think I'll try something similar now that Cherry Season is here!

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Thanks! Funny I read this post just as finished the last sip of a (second) bottle of the very same Cherry Mead. What better way to spend a Midsummer's Eve than in the back yard under candle light and in the company of a loved one and an excellent mead?

summersolstice said:

Thanks! Funny I read this post just as finished the last sip of a (second) bottle of the very same Cherry Mead. What better way to spend a Midsummer's Eve than in the back yard under candle light and in the company of a loved one and an excellent mead?

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IM too impatient, can i just buy a bottle from you ? hehe...lazy beer drinker

Summer, did you use a total of 22lbs of cherries or did I miss something?

so why a 3 gallon and seperate 5 gallon carboy? Could this recipe be cut down to use just a single fermenting vessel and single secondary??? I only have some many fermentation buckets and better bottles!! ha ha ha. I got your Caramel Apple mead going into one of them.

Of course you can scale it down. I always make my mead and wine according to SG rather than volume. Additionally, the fresh cherries in the secondary required me to use more than a single 5 or 6 gallon carboy. This was a new recipe in uncharted territory, thus the "non-traditional" sizes.

well...time to get out the old credit card, and order up some more supplies!!!

so I'm trying something similar to you recipie, I wasnt able to find tart cherries so I had to settle for sweet. I'm just expierementing with a gallon batch and its been in the primary for almost a week and is sitting around 1.002 so I'm probably going to rack it either today or tomorrow. My question is, its tasting a bit warmer of alcohol than i expected and if racking it onto more cherries would help mellow it out. also, its almost a purplish color, will the aging on oak later turn it amber again?

what is Zante Currants? I am trying to find it on morewine, no luck.

Google is your friend: Zante Currants

summersolstice said:

Google is your friend: Zante Currants

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thanks, I found them afterwards, so you put them in in raisin form?

Im gonna say Ditto with the label,,,bad ass (and yes I just used 3 commas instead of periods to indicate a pause) but I have 1 comment and 1 question. This wine yeast, the 1122 is just naturally a very attenuative and fast fermenting yeast compared to beer yeast? Or do you still have to add a proper amount of yeast nutrient and aerate really well.

I would LOVE to make this as a christmas present for my friends and family, so I hope to make this one at some point.

Well I made this back in late May and is currently conditioning in a better bottle. Waiting for it to cool a bit more before I bottle. I figure a good solid 6 months should be good right?