Secondary

I plan to rack my plain Mead on to either frozen Blueberry or frozen Cranberry's this weekend depending on what I can find. If I can't find frozen Cranberry's I might do Dried Cranberry's instead as I know I can get them. Any way my question is do I need to do anything to the berry's before racking. And is 0ne pound of Berrys good or should I go with more per gallon. This is being racked into a 2.5 gallon and one gallon container.

BluesGuy said:

...do I need to do anything to the berry's before racking. And is 0ne pound of Berrys good or should I go with more per gallon.

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Thaw them to room temperature before racking onto them.

Regarding the amount per gallon, I'm sure you'll get several suggestions all of which are based on one's personal taste. In my case, it's 2-3 lbs/ gal. for blueberries, and ~1/2 lb/gal. for cranberries.

The amount of fruit can vary based on the base mead recipe - OG, honey variety, yeast type, and SG at racking. Knowing this information can be helpful (hint...).

O.G. = ~1.124

12 lbs Clover Honey
2.5 gal Water
3 small Cinnamon stick
2 Clove Whole
1 package D-47

F.G at Rack..1.010

Total volume just shy of four Gallon

Ended up getting three pounds of Craisins

and three pounds of frozen blueberry's

My thoughts are the 3lbs of berrys in the one gallon bottle

and the 3lbs of Craisins in the 2.5 gallon batch...I want a strong cranberry flavor will probably add more cinnamon and clove as well in the larger batch.

BluesGuy said:

I might do Dried Cranberry's instead as I know I can get them. Any way my question is do I need to do anything to the berry's before racking.

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You might want to look at the ingredients on the dried berries. It seems I was looking at some dried berries a couple of times and they had some kind of oil in them. I didn't want to take a chance on the oil so I passed.

Checked the ingredients....Cranberry's..suger

sounds like you got a nice spiced mead there as it is.

I don't use any spices for fruit meads myself but cranberries sound better than blueberries if I were going to add them to a spiced mead.