Blackberry Mead

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rogaldorn

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Hey guys, sorry to post a question that's been asked before, but I have been digging around and can't find a solid answer.

I want to make some Blackberry Mead for Christmas presents next year, and I need a good recipe that won't be extensively complicated to make. I would like to make a small batch (maybe 2-3 gallons).

I would like the mead to be sweet, but not like a dessert sweet, more like a mead you can drink deeply without puckering from the dryness. I don't want something so sweet you can only have a small glass before you put it away.

All that being said, how would you handle this? I have gathered that I will probably like a mead that involves first fermenting the honey, then racking to secondary onto blackberry mash (as opposed to fermenting berries first), since I think the blackberries will change flavor as a result of the fermentation.

I plan to probably backsweeten at bottling with some extra honey.

What would you guys do?

Thanks so much everyone! I really appreciate it!
 
I'm tagging this, because I'm interested in the responses. I'm interested in methods of coming out with a melomel as you describe. Not dry, but not on the really really sweet end.
 
I want something... like a nectar of the gods. :)

I just want it to be a little sweet, smooth, easy to drink. My friends and I also want to be able to crack open several bottles together and celebrate life.
 
I've used the backsweeten to taste method with cider, then add campden tablets so it doesn't keep fermenting. There are also yeasts out there that give up the ghost while there's still some sweetness left - Wyeast has a "sweet mead" strain. Haven't used it so can't speak to whether it's REALLY sweet or more off-dry. I think you'd have more control with the backsweeten method but you do have to either pasteurize when you reach the level you want or put up with preservatives, which some people don't care for.
 
Sweetness can be relative though to other factors such as ABV. Ex: I have a cinnamon vanilla mead that has a SG of 1.030 which is considered desert sweet but because it sit at ~14.5% ABV it does not feel that sweet when you drink it and is very drinkable.

I would suggest pair a startig gravity and yeast that should finish around where you want, while hitting the higher end of that yeasts alcohol tolerance so that if it eats more than you want and is dry you can more easily back sweeten because the yeast should be well pooped out.
 
bubbachunk said:
Sweetness can be relative though to other factors such as ABV. Ex: I have a cinnamon vanilla mead that has a SG of 1.030 which is considered desert sweet but because it sit at ~14.5% ABV it does not feel that sweet when you drink it and is very drinkable.

I would suggest pair a startig gravity and yeast that should finish around where you want, while hitting the higher end of that yeasts alcohol tolerance so that if it eats more than you want and is dry you can more easily back sweeten because the yeast should be well pooped out.
Click to expand...

Well it will be my first real chance to make mead, so any suggestions? :)
 
bubbachunk said:
Sweetness can be relative though to other factors such as ABV. Ex: I have a cinnamon vanilla mead that has a SG of 1.030 which is considered desert sweet but because it sit at ~14.5% ABV it does not feel that sweet when you drink it and is very drinkable.

I would suggest pair a startig gravity and yeast that should finish around where you want, while hitting the higher end of that yeasts alcohol tolerance so that if it eats more than you want and is dry you can more easily back sweeten because the yeast should be well pooped out.
Click to expand...


Recipe? That sounds DELICIOUS.
 
You may find that the considerable acidity in blackberries (after the fermentation strips them of their sugar) can make a dry or demi-sec mead seem more puckering than you initial supposition might lead you to believe. The best blackberry meads I have made were fermented in primary on the fruit for about 25-30 days, about 4-5 lbs of fruit/gallon, and finished with about 1.025-1.030 of RS.
 
Well that's why I planned to add the berries to secondary, after much of the fermentation has been completed. I thought that would leave more of the berry sweetness.
 
rogaldorn said:
Well that's why I planned to add the berries to secondary, after much of the fermentation has been completed. I thought that would leave more of the berry sweetness.
Click to expand...

Fair enough. The thing you may want to make sure of then is that you give the yeast enough sugar up front that it hits its alcohol tolerance before the residual sugar from remaining honey and the berries is exhausted. Are you dead set on finishing with 3 gallons? If you are willing to be a bit flexible, I'd start with a gallon of honey, dilute up to ~3 gallons with H20, get 'er going (and don't use EC-1118 or some other yeast strain that will head for 20% like a bat out o' hell. I'd use 71B-1122), and add the fruit to the fermentation later.

I have stopped using fruit in the secondary lately for the most part. I do have one wide-necked 3 gallon carboy that works well, but getting fruit into a standard carboy takes forever. If this was me, I'd be tempted (for the sake of ease, which I like) to use a bucket primary and put the fruit in about 7-10 days after the fermentation was really cranking along. You can avoid having a lot of the berry character go out through the airlock, and still not have to deal with getting fruit through the neck of a carboy (twice!). Maybe you have a cylindro-conical and this is all moot, but that's my take on it.
 
KenSchramm said:
Fair enough. The thing you may want to make sure of then is that you give the yeast enough sugar up front that it hits its alcohol tolerance before the residual sugar from remaining honey and the berries is exhausted. Are you dead set on finishing with 3 gallons? If you are willing to be a bit flexible, I'd start with a gallon of honey, dilute up to ~3 gallons with H20, get 'er going (and don't use EC-1118 or some other yeast strain that will head for 20% like a bat out o' hell. I'd use 71B-1122), and add the fruit to the fermentation later.

I have stopped using fruit in the secondary lately for the most part. I do have one wide-necked 3 gallon carboy that works well, but getting fruit into a standard carboy takes forever. If this was me, I'd be tempted (for the sake of ease, which I like) to use a bucket primary and put the fruit in about 7-10 days after the fermentation was really cranking along. You can avoid having a lot of the berry character go out through the airlock, and still not have to deal with getting fruit through the neck of a carboy (twice!). Maybe you have a cylindro-conical and this is all moot, but that's my take on it.
Click to expand...

Well I'm not dead-set on anything, but a gallon of honey is quite a lot more than I had expected to use for 2-3 gallons of mead. I thought a gallon of honey was enough for 5 gallons.
 
It can be, if you want a dry traditional.

Mead is a different beast than beer. It is helpful to think about the value of the 15 or so 750 Ml bottles of mead you would get from the batch you are talking about. A really good blackberry mead (as good as the one you're about to make) would run you at least $20 a bottle, if you can find it. That's $300. If you drop $40 on a gallon of good honey, another $30-40 on blackberries, and $5 on yeast and nutrient, you've got $300 worth of mead for $85. Theirs: $20/bottle. Yours: $5.67/bottle. Good work, man. And they should last you 2-5 years, if you spread them out.
 
So you think about 12 pounds of honey then? It's about $3.50 a pound here, so... Yea, right about 40 bucks for the honey. Not bad.
 
I bought a 5lb bottle of clover honey at Sam's for ~$12 not long ago. Bakers and chefs brand, product of USA, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, India. From what I've read, it's not the greatest since the processing has removed a lot of the flavor, but the fruit in a melomel would help cover that up. I figure it's good enough for my first test batch.
 
rogaldorn said:
Hot damn! Is it good honey? That's a steal compared to other sources!
Click to expand...

Well its not artisan honey, but you can enhance your mead with more fruit, I like to split the fruit, half in primary ferment, and then ferment out stabilize then rack into secondary with other half. Makes a damn good mead. :mug:
 
jakel and Avtar, I don't mean to pick on you, because I've heard it many times, but the philosophy about making up for low quality honey with fruit or spices cuts as much mustard with me me as thinking you can make a good beer with crappy malt because you've got good hops. Quality in, quality out. Low quality in...

It may be decent, but it won't be as good as you can do, and I'm out of time in my life for mead that isn't as good as I can make it. There are too many other phenomenal things out there to drink. YMMV.
 
I used to think the same thing Ken -

I've got a raspberry melamel made with Safeway-brand clover honey that's been really good (at about 2.5 years old now).

I've got an oaked cherry melamel made with orange blossom honey that is ##@$%*#&^%* amazing right now (and it's only been in the bottle 3 months - was started about a year ago). So much more complex depth, flavor, aroma, etc.

I will never make another mead with plain ol' Safeway-brand (or equivalent) clover honey again (well, accept for the experiments I'm doing with really crazy mineral content water from Manitou Springs).
 
What are the thoughts out there, as far as a 5 gal. batch, as to how much honey should be used? I was thinking of making a sweet mead 12-14% with about 15 lbs of frozen blackberrys. I just dont want it so sweet you cant drink it.
 
rogaldorn said:
So, anyone have a recipe for me?? :)
Click to expand...

I'll play, but this is only my second batch of melomel, so I could be way off...this is for a 3 gallon batch:

Fresh Blackberries: 7 pounds
Honey: 8 pounds
Yeast: probably the 71B

I'm going for a medium sweet. Comments are welcome! I think I'll add the berries to primary after a week or so.
 

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