Cherry Mead Recipe

Anyone have good experience with Cherry Meads? I know the more tart the more flavor you will get out of them.

My daughters boyfriend sales cherries in California, and is coming back to Idaho with a bunch of left overs. He is going to give me a large box of them.

I'm going to assume they are sweet. Anywho

Request for Recipe

please help me forum-ulate one up :rockin:

Looking to make it medium and sparkling

digdan said:

Anyone have good experience with Cherry Meads? I know the more tart the more flavor you will get out of them.

My daughters boyfriend sales cherries in California, and is coming back to Idaho with a bunch of left overs. He is going to give me a large box of them.

I'm going to assume they are sweet. Anywho

Request for Recipe

please help me forum-ulate one up :rockin:

Click to expand...

I would say you should start a base mead today.
~3# per gallon of a decent honey, nothing too expensive.
Nutrient additions, aeration ect.

When the cherries get to you, mash and de-pit them. then freeze the pulp and skins.

Once you primary fermentation slows, maybe 1.025 range rack onto the the thawed cherry pulp for 6 weeks.

you can blend the honey with cherry juice initially if you want a stronger flavor.

In the cherry vanilla (3 member) group brew. We used cherry juice and honey for our base melomel. Then I racked onto cherry puree for 11 weeks. Now it is on 3 vanilla beans.

I made a cherry mead from cherries I picked last summer and it turned out great! If I remember correctly, I used about 2 lbs tart cherries per gallon in the primary and another pound per gallon or so in the secondary. I pitted the ones in the primary before I did quite a bit of research and found I didn't need to pit them, so they went in the secondary whole. The color of the cherries fade as fermentation progresses, leaching the color into the mead.

I am tinkering with a 1-gallon cherry mead recipe as well.

I was thinking about 3 lbs honey and 1.75 lbs crushed cherries in the primary; then racking onto another 1.75 lbs crushed cherries in the secondary - following a staggered nutrient addition the whole way - then bulk aging until clear.

here's a quesiton - 1.75lbs of cherries is going to take up quite a bit of space in a gallon jug - would it be appropriate to top off with something (water, cherry juice, more must) when racking off the secondary into a tertiary to bulk age? Or would I be better off with marbles or something else to fill the dead space left over after the cherries are gone?

I always make my recipe to fit the secondary. That means using a larger primary and a smaller secondary - e.g. a 2-3 gallon primary pail and a 1 gallon glass carboy, or a 5-gallon pail and a 3-gallon carboy.

I don't see your recipe SS. Mind sharing

summersolstice said:

I always make my recipe to fit the secondary. That means using a larger primary and a smaller secondary - e.g. a 2-3 gallon primary pail and a 1 gallon glass carboy, or a 5-gallon pail and a 3-gallon carboy.

Click to expand...

that sir, is why you are a meadster, and I'm a beer brewing trying to make mead! I may tier this one up a little - I have a bunch of 5-gallon pails and two 3-gallon carboys, one of which is full of apfelwein that needs to be bottled soon. Better get back over to safeway and pick up a few more lbs of cherries. Thanks summersoltice!

digdan said:

I don't see your recipe SS. Mind sharing

Click to expand...

Done. In the mead recipe section.

I am waiting for cherries to come down a bit in price as they are a bit pricey where I live at the current time. I am looking forward to starting something based on Summersolices recipe.

summersolstice said:

Done. In the mead recipe section.

Click to expand...

Thank Solstice for posting your recipe. And if I may, that mead looks amazing. And P.S. I really like the label.

My cherry mead started with 5 gallons of straight wildflower mead in a 6 gallon carboy, and once mostly done with primary ferment, added 1 gallon of cherry puree/juice, let it sit for a while to finish fermenting out, then transferred to a 5 gallon carboy to bulk age.

Use Lalvin 71B!

Came out awesome...

I started a mead three weeks ago with 12 pounds of local wild flower honey, 1 can of Alexanders Burgandy Juice Consentrate, two jars of E.W.Knudsen's Sour Cherry Juice and enough water to bring it to six and half gallons total. Hope to end up with a full five-gallon Better Bottle for some bulk aging. Haven't made the taste test yet but it smells wonderfull and has a beautifull color.