Date Melomel

Happened across a display of dates at my food wholesaler yesterday, decided I'd like to make a date wine... then decided maybe a mead would be better.

I've got the base cooking up now:

5 lbs honey
1.25 gallons water
1 lb, 14 oz pitted dates (weight without pits), chopped up
2 bananas, sliced (thought it would be interesting!)
1/2 vanilla bean, sliced, etc.

Holy ****, does it ever smell / taste good. The flavor from the dates is coming out bit by bit, and the scent is amazing.

Anyone attempted a date mead? Any idea if the results are gonna be anywhere near as good as it's starting out?

Your starting gravity may be a bit too high with the recipe you've outlined? Did you check it? What yeast are you using.

Dates make a good mead, but I find the flavor is somewhat subtle. It gives lots of body though.

Do you cook the dates in the water though? I find that extracted a lot of flavor, at least initially.

I don't have my gravity reading on me at the moment, but it wasn't unmanageable. IIRC we used a sweet mead yeast from white labs, the same as we used on the Cuties mead we make.

MedsenFey said:

I find the flavor is somewhat subtle.

Click to expand...

+1 It takes a lot of dates to be able to actually taste them. Regards, GF.

I just got my judges info back from my date mead and I will have to post it this weekend. The main comment was dates were to soft and alcohol was a bit to hot. I think age might help everything blend and I think the dates add a nice depth to the honey but if you want more date flavor you can back sweeten with date syrup.

FWIW, I have a sherry recipe that uses dried figs and dates and raisins that has a more full date flavor and it sits on the actually fruit instead of just syrup.

I made a date mead last year that is aging right now. I agree that aging is very important. When I bottled it last year it still had a pretty high alcohol taste.

What I did was take 1 pound of dates and lightly simmered them till all I got was mush. I strained out the date mush added honey and topped off to 1 gallon. It clarified quickly >3 months and was bottled 3 months later.

I would say the 1 Lb of dates per gallon is minimum. I got a light tasting, full bodied melomel. If I make it again I would do 1 lb in primary and another in secondary to give the best taste / complexity.

Hrm, I didn't think of adding some to secondary. I left the date mush in primary, will rack it off at a week, I think.

Maybe I'll taste then, and see if we should toss new dates in secondary?

Sounds like a good plan. Just don't leave the dates on for too long (more then 5-7 days) don't want "off" flavors.

I have a date concoction in a secondary right now that's part beer, part mead, part date wine, plus maybe a few other parts something else. I used five pounds of dates in about a 3-gallon batch that I started in late January, and there was a strong date flavor at first. However, the date flavor is basically gone now, or melded with other flavors to the point where it's not very noticeable.

Links for more info: recipe overview ----- brewer's log