Pineapple Melomel... My first Mead

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scox80

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Long post warning.... I have been gone since right before I started this batch. I coach high school football so from July to December (hopefully if we make the playoffs) which we did... all the way to the championship! Which we lost!!! Which means this stuff has been sitting untouched since July 13th.

Let me begin with my plan for Sunday July the 13th. I knew that the months and weeks to come we're going to be filled with juggling football and the SWMBO. If I try to throw brewing in there... well that just wouldn't be fair. So I wanted to get some "stuff" out of the way. Anyway... as I was saying, I was going to have a brew day on this fine day. I told SWMBO what was going to occur on this day so she took the kid and went to her parents house to stay out of my hair. My friend came over and the plan was 15 gallons of Appfelwein and 2 gallons of mead. One Malkore's not so ancient, and one of my own recipe's. Which is Malkore's, sub Pineapple for the oranges, pineapple juice for the orange juice, and vanilla beans for the cloves. I already had 10 gallons of a dark hefe that I make to taste like sierra nevada. And 5 gallons of appfelwein waiting to be kegged.

So, the appfelwein went as usual. Let's be serious that is one hard recipe to screw up. After sitting and staring at my ferm room, a bathroom sealed up with an A/C in the window, we decided to clean all the equipment. I wanted to be damn sure I wasn't going to screw up my first batch of mead from an infection......

Everything with the "mixing" of the ingredients went wonderfully. I planned to use gallon Carlos Rossi wine bottles. Cheap and easy.. .and I had two gallons of cheap ass, not too bad, wine to get HAMMERED off of. So everything is in the bottles, both of them. I take the OG reading the Pineapple Melomel had a 1.090 OG. I thought this can't be thats crazy! Well after retrieving my back up Hydro it read exactly the same. So I split the remaining must with my buddy and it was, well quite frankly, heavenly! Obviously very sweet... BUT... I love honey, vanilla and pineapple. My friend was under the assumption that the finish product would end up tasting like that, just with an alcohol content. I let him believe it, he was talking about it for days after. HAHA.

On to the malkore's. I took the OG and I don't even remember what it was. I think around 1.060. The reason I don't remember is... well when I was putting in the airlock. I pushed to hard!! The little rubber thing went all the way into the bottle. Oh yeah so did the airlock. This made a slight but very annoying mess all over my kitchen floor. Well no big deal right, I'll rack it into another bottle and put on a new airlock. Well that bottle requires a specific size of stopper. I only had two. One on the pineapple mead and one in the bottom of that stupid bottle. And, being that it was already 5:00 on a sunday, no LBHS was open. So I capped and got one the next day... hoping for the best.

Now to today. I only went into the Ferm room three times. To grab my carboy's of appfelwein when they were ready to be kegged. I can check the interior temperature from outside the Ferm room and it stayed between 62-66. As it they were forbidden apples from the garden of eden, I stayed away from them. I don't have very much patience.... at all! Had I been consciously aware of the meads I would have tasted them every month and would probably have about a quart left. I never even checked to see if there was airlock activity. I could smell the elephant farts coming from that room so I knew that the Appfelwien was frenzied. So, today... actually 2 hours ago. I decided tonight was the night to rack them away from the fruit. I know, I know I shouldn't have left it sitting on the fruit for so long but oh well. I'm sure back in the day they didn't have such strict brewing rules. So, I'm sure it will be fine. I started with the Malkore's. It had a very thick layer of green and white mold. I racked a bit in the middle of it and yes it tasted like goat piss! I nearly threw up and died. If you've ever seen the Bill Cosby Himself stand up where his wife's head opens up and light pours out of her eyes, ears and mouth. Well that was me! I quickly grabbed a jar of ginger and downed a lot of it. I figured if it would work with sushi it will work with goat piss!

Then I racked over the Pinapple Melomel. Took a gravity reading of 1.016. I used a sweet mead yeast too. I had no idea it would turn out that dry. I was very excited. I just hoped it didn't taste like rotten pinapple. So I poured the contents of the hydrometer tube into a glass. Put it into the fridge till I put away and cleaned all the equipment.

So, I pulled out the glass from the fridge. It had a very pleasant nose. A slight hint of vanilla and a very present smell of Pineapple. Not a sweet pineapple smell. Just pineapple! I took a small sip and let it sit in my mouth for a little. It was amazing!! No rotten flavor! No vanilla flavor... just vanilla nose. I can't even explain it. The aftertaste is the best part. When I swallowed it, it was like taking a shot. The alcohol hit me hard. I'm not gonna lie. I went back and filled up my glass. Well three quarters of the way up. If you like pineapple I totally recommend it. Well sorry about the thesis! I appreciate you reading this whole thing. Let me know if you try it out. I will be making a bigger batch of this soon.

Oh yeah, I am going to let the mead sit for a few days. Then bottle to sit a while longer.

Once again sory for the long post.
 
Wow, that was a heck of a post...

Sorry to hear Malkore's didn't turn out, but ya win some and ya lose some, especially if you don't look at it for 5 months without even knowing if its fermenting haha. Glad to hear your Pineapple turned out so great, 1.016 should have a pretty nice sweet finish to go well with the pineapple's tartness. I actually plan on using vanilla beans in varying amounts in most of my wines and meads now, I love the softness and subtleness it brings. And in general vanillin is really good at making other flavor's pop.
 
Hey Tusch, I ordered this stuff from Amazon a few months ago, and it's vanilla *paste*. Basically just ground up vanilla bean scrapings, which I think is better that using extract but simpler than buying beans and scraping them. If it sounds like a good idea to you, might be a good way to experiment with vanilla.
 
I prefer to use split and scraped whole vanilla beans, but paste would certainly work well. Buying beans is easier for me really. They keep as whole beans for a very long time, so I can buy a large stock of them. I just cut them lengthwise and then run the back of the knife down the inside, just a few seconds per bean before throwing them in. Also I make my own extracts so I would have no problem using that if I ever chose to try it out instead of the beans.
 
So this post is a little bit late, hopefully someone will check this out. But I made a pineapple melomel a few weeks a go. We let it sit until fermentation stopped and then we racked it to a secondary and let it sit for another week. We only made a gallon. But when we bottled it and tried it, it tasted terrible, not like goat piss or anything, and definitely not like rotten pineapple. It just tasted strange, almost like medicine.

I was wondering if anybody has any suggestions on what went wrong or do I just need to let it age for a few weeks?

Thanks.
 
Can you describe the taste in more detail? Also posting your exact recipe will help.

I just made a pineapple mead myself back at the end of July and it is sitting in 2ndary as we speak.

When I transferred it it tasted hot, i.e. alcohol hot, but I know that it will mellow in time. I plan to age this for another 6 months then bottle, then age 6 more.

Here's my recipe for comparison...

1 gallon batch

OG 1.116
FG 1.002

2.5 lbs. (40 oz) clover honey
1 raw pineapple (flesh and core grilled, skins simmered in 2 qts of waters for 30 mins)
4 oz. brown sugar
1 packet Lalvin 71B yeast
water to 1 gal
1/4 tsp DAP
½ package of yeast that had been microwaved and then chilled


Secondary
2 Vanilla pods
¼ cup rum with 2 oak cubes soaked for 4 weeks

Cut pineapple and add skin to 2 qts of water and simmer for ½ hour. Grilled pineapple, allowed it to cool and added it to the primary along with clover honey (2.5 lbs). Added the water used to simmer the skin once chilled and added additional water to make 1 gallon total. Added 1/4 tsp DAP and prepare yeast and then pitch. Follow with ¼ tsp of DAP for two days in. Aerated daily for first 3 days.
 
The taste was a little strange, it was my first mead ever made and the first one I ever tasted also, so I was unsure what it was supposed to taste like. There wasn't any sweetness to it, just a very strong alcohol flavor.

I only made 1 gallon in case I screwed up, so I have about 8 bottles left that I am aging now. Hopefully they will turn out better if I give them a few months.

Here is my recipe.

-3 lbs clover honey
-1 lb pineapple chunks, cut into roughly half inch cubes.
-1 gallon of water
-Champagne yeast, dried but then activated.

I made sure to pasteurize the pineapple by steeping them in 200F water for half an hour.

I haven't given up on mead yet, I have plans for making just a plain honey mead (no fruit or any other additives), but I'm curious as to the recommended time that mead should age. I've read anywhere from a few weeks to a full year.
 
Im still fairly new to this, but for the beginner/impatient mead maker, your looking at probably 4 months minimum before a taste to see how its getting on, anything before that and it will taste like you described. I am currently drinking mine once they reach the 4 to 6 month range, one bottle every 3 weeks or so to see how they progress. The last bottle however I am keeping for at least a thurther 6 months so i can see what difference a full year will make.
 
You mentioned champagne yeast so it is likely that the yeast fully fermented the sugars so you are most likely looking at a dry mead. Think dry white wine. But it is hard to know with out hydrometer readings.

Given time some sweetness will come back, although it might not be as much as you'd like. Also the alcohol taste will mellow.

As Insomniac said aging will help improve the flavor. My suggestion is because this is only a 1 gallon batch to wait as long as you can. A year minimum. Now I normally can't wait the full year before I taste my mead but when I do I am always amazed at how the flavor changes over time. Mead making is definitely an exercise in patience.

But while you wait its a perfect time to get another batch going.
 
Im still fairly new to this, but for the beginner/impatient mead maker, your looking at probably 4 months minimum before a taste to see how its getting on, anything before that and it will taste like you described. I am currently drinking mine once they reach the 4 to 6 month range, one bottle every 3 weeks or so to see how they progress. The last bottle however I am keeping for at least a thurther 6 months so i can see what difference a full year will make.
My first real planned out mead was practically undrinkable until the one year mark. Is a strawberry mead, made it for SWMBO last march. Last august it was jet fuel, last christmas it was not so much jet fuel, this may it was DELICIOUS.

Same with the Ancient Orange mead I made last august for everyone to have for christmas. I should've started it in february or march because I found a bottle that I had forgotten about and we opened it up a few weeks ago. OH MY GOD IT WAS GOOD. I had even fudged up the recipe by adding too many cloves, so at christmas time the cloves were overpowering the mead. But now? hot damn it was good. SWMBO's aunt and uncle told me to make them a big five gallon batch of it.
 
Hmm this is very intriguing. I once saw a video of B. Nektar Meadery (in michigan I believe) on youtube and they were talking about there new pineapple coconut melomel. The way he described it was "We just fermented pineapple with honey, then, once that was done, threw a crap load of coconutty goodness, and let it soak up all those flavors." Obviously it is slightly more technical than that, but what do yall think?
 
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