Your favorite Melomel

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digdan

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Once the fruit season is in full effect I'm headed to orchards, but I have yet to decide what kind of melomel to make.

I need input on personal experiences and successes with melomels. What was the tastiest melomel you've made/had, and what were the pitfalls you ran into

I'm open for anything, citrus, berry, melon or otherwise.
 
I made a plum melomel from black & Italian plums that just ROCKS! Double additions of fruit (1st in primary, 2nd in secondary), Just the right level of tartness, Beautiful red color from the skins, 12% ABV & goes down real smooth. It took 2 years before it was drinkable though, mostly due to the wildflower honey I used. Use clover, or alfalfa honey & it might be ready quicker. Everyone who tasted it just raved about it. I'll be making it again this year for certain, maybe a double batch.

If you're wanting to try a citrus melomel, I'd use zest only If I were you; I learned the hard way that the juice adds very little flavour to a mead, but it adds a great deal of acid. I've got a blackberry melomel going now, I'll let you know how it turns out in about a year & a half. Regards, GF.
 
I've done well with blackberries, but most years I have a lot of blackberries to experiment with. I've made multiple batches of blackberry 'cider', by fermenting the crushed berries; then I add the honey to part of the crop.
 
I did a Strawberry melomel last year when the price of Strawberries went way down that was really good.

Recipe I followed:

Strawberry Melomel

Ingredients:

9 lbs orange blossom Honey
1 lb clover honey
12 lb strawberries
Sweet Mead Yeast (White labs)

Procedure:

Clean and hull the strawberries; chop into a few pieces. (Don't crush
them or you'll have an impossible mess at racking.) Put them into a
sanitized plastic-pail primary.

Bring 2 gallons of water to a full boil. Remove from heat and
immediately add the honey; stir thoroughly. (This will sterilize the
honey without cooking the flavor out of it.) Cool to about 150-160F,
pour over the berries in the primary fermenter with 2 gallons more of cold water. Cool to pitching temperature (below 80F) and add yeast starter. Stir thoroughly to mix and aerate.

After 5 days, push the floating mass of strawberries down into the
fermenting mead (the equivalent of a winemaker's "punching down the
cap").

After the strawberries have become very pale--probably ten days or more-
- strain out as much of the strawberry mass as possible, then rack into
a glass carboy. Be prepared for the racking tube to clog. (A stainless
"Chore Boy" over the bottom end of the tube will help.)
 
Does the flavor of strawberries carry through? Was this a medium, dry, or a sweet melomel?

I did a Strawberry melomel last year when the price of Strawberries went way down that was really good.

Recipe I followed:

Strawberry Melomel

Ingredients:

9 lbs orange blossom Honey
1 lb clover honey
12 lb strawberries
Sweet Mead Yeast (White labs)

Procedure:

Clean and hull the strawberries; chop into a few pieces. (Don't crush
them or you'll have an impossible mess at racking.) Put them into a
sanitized plastic-pail primary.

Bring 2 gallons of water to a full boil. Remove from heat and
immediately add the honey; stir thoroughly. (This will sterilize the
honey without cooking the flavor out of it.) Cool to about 150-160F,
pour over the berries in the primary fermenter with 2 gallons more of cold water. Cool to pitching temperature (below 80F) and add yeast starter. Stir thoroughly to mix and aerate.

After 5 days, push the floating mass of strawberries down into the
fermenting mead (the equivalent of a winemaker's "punching down the
cap").

After the strawberries have become very pale--probably ten days or more-
- strain out as much of the strawberry mass as possible, then rack into
a glass carboy. Be prepared for the racking tube to clog. (A stainless
"Chore Boy" over the bottom end of the tube will help.)
 
Only have done a few so far but the black raspberry melomel is easily my favorite. Ofcourse for that one I picked my own fresh berries and used locally produced unprocessed honey, so the ingredients were much higher quality than my other attempts. However this one is so good I will definitely be picking black raspberries again this summer for another batch.

Craig
 
Blackberry sounds like something that will make my list. I would assume you use blackberry honey as well?

Anyone got a kickass blackberry melomel recipe they would like to share?
 
Blackberry sounds like something that will make my list. I would assume you use blackberry honey as well?

Anyone got a kickass blackberry melomel recipe they would like to share?


Blackberry is my favorite as well, in either wine or mead. No need to use expensive blackberry blossom honey. I like to use about 3 pounds of berries and about 1.75 quarts of honey per gallon to get to about 1.090. Follow the appropriate nutrient addition guidelines and, aside from possibly adding more or less berries in the primary and some more berries in the secondary and oak during bulk aging, that's pretty much all the recipe I use.
 
Does the flavor of strawberries carry through? Was this a medium, dry, or a sweet melomel?

You do get a good strawberry aroma as well as a strawberry flavor. It came out really good for being my second mead. Edit: it came out pretty medium as far as the sweetness, but still can kick your butt. :) The sweet mead yeast stopped at a good spot.
 
Blackberry is my favorite as well, in either wine or mead. No need to use expensive blackberry blossom honey. I like to use about 3 pounds of berries and about 1.75 quarts of honey per gallon to get to about 1.090. Follow the appropriate nutrient addition guidelines and, aside from possibly adding more or less berries in the primary and some more berries in the secondary and oak during bulk aging, that's pretty much all the recipe I use.

Hey SS, I have a Blackberry aging right now (4 months). I have some medium toast oak cubes. Is an ounce good for a 3-gallon batch?

PS sorry for the hijack. :D
 
Hey SS, I have a Blackberry aging right now (4 months). I have some medium toast oak cubes. Is an ounce good for a 3-gallon batch?

PS sorry for the hijack. :D

It isn't so much the amount, but the time you leave it in, that determines the flavor/aroma. An ounce is certainly not too much for 3 gallons but thief a little every couple of weeks. You want to shoot for a profile that offers slightly too much. It will then age and integrate well.
 
Do yourself a favor and try a Honeydew melon mead. SWMBO insisted we try, and I'm happier with the results of this mead than any other we've done.

If you do try it, over-ripe melons seem to work the best, and shoot for about one and a half melons per gallon, rounded up.
 
Do yourself a favor and try a Honeydew melon mead. SWMBO insisted we try, and I'm happier with the results of this mead than any other we've done.

If you do try it, over-ripe melons seem to work the best, and shoot for about one and a half melons per gallon, rounded up.

I have thought about trying this since I am growing honeydew melons in my garden and love eating them, but had not found a guideline or someone who had tried it.
 
Anyone got a formal Honeydew recipe?

Honeydew mead

18# light honey (this batch came from a huge local grocery store that sells local wildflower at a decent price)
seven over-ripe honeydew melons (EDIT: I'll be using about three more melons next time)
water to five gallons
narbonne yeast (3 quart starter)
staggered yeast nutrient additions (per HighTest)

We did fruit in primary. Cut melons in half, then cubed into aprox. 1-inch cubes which were placed into a coarse nylon bag, then pounded all to bits with a potato masher after the bag was put into a fermenting bucket. Must was mixed in a separate sanitized bucket, then poured over fruit. Pitched yeast, staggered nutrient.

Primary was three weeks, secondary four, cold crashed for two, presently crystal clear in tertiary (three weeks now). Will be bottling soon, and this one is drinkable now. Gonna be tough to keep my hands off of these bottles!
 
Thanks for the Recipe. What do you mean by "per HighTest" ?

and how do you stagger your yeast nutrients?
 
Read the Mead sticky...

It was written by the member hightest and he is a big proponent of staggered nutrient additions. He knows way more than most of us about mead so he is one of the go to guys and experts (along with solstice and wayneb and others)
 
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