Hey that sounds delicious. Do you mind posting up a recipe?
this was a 4 gallon batch
started by sanitizing everything I thought I would need plus some extra stuff with starsan, including wiping the counters down with it, yeah I have a bit of ocd in that area.
First I made a traditional mead.
Primary
14 pounds of orange blossom honey
spring water up to 4 gallons
lalvin D47, 2 packets, rehydrated in 1 cup of 104*F water with 2 tsp honey and 2g of nutrient blend.
Secondary
4 pounds of pineapple
2 pounds of mango
Tertiary
6 Pounds shredded coconut
4 madagascar vanilla beans
Aging
Wine tannins (as per package instructions)
2 tsp Acid Blend (just wanted a hint more bite)
No heat method, room temp water, honey in a large stainless steel pot, add a gallon of water, first part of nutrients and wisked the crap out of it to blend well and start some aeration
added must to fermenter, topped off with remainder of water, shook to make sure it was nicely incorporated.
took gravity reading 1.126
pitched yeast after 15 minutes of rehydrating, shook to mix again
I use a ss airstone and medical grade oxygen at this point, on 0.5 l/min let it go til the foam reaches the neck of the fermenter, let it settle for a couple minutes (I do this while cleaning everything else up) I give it about a half dozen shots of O2. If you dont have o2 available, shake the he!! out of it for a good 10 minutes, incorporate as much oxygen into it as you can.
Air locked and by morning it was churning nicely (rarely have more than 8-12 hours of lag time)
aerated by agitating (shaking the fermenter back and forth like a washing machine) 3 times a day and adding O2 with the sanitized airstone once a day.
at around a G of 1.105 I added the second third of the nutrients, mixed with a 1/2 cup of boiled and cooled water, aerated the must first to avoid eruptions, slowly poured in the nutrient slurry, then added oxygen after to help mix it in some, I know the yeast would find it, just another ocd thing.
Continued the aeration/oxygenation schedule until hit a G of 1.084-1.085, followed same procedure as above to add the final dose of nutrients and oxygen, then just let her be for awhile, when it hit a FG of about 1.012 it had finished, checked it 4 times over about 10 days due to my work schedule, it didn't budge and I was happy with that.
I dusted with pectic enzyme and then added 4 pounds of super ripe fresh pineapple and 2 pounds of ripe fresh mango to secondary and racked the mead ontop of it, airlocked it and let it sit for about 4 weeks, it was kind of funny because some fruit dropped and rose again, think it found some residual yeasts still alive and the additional sugar gave a small burst of last stand type fermentation. Finally a bunch of the fruit had dropped and stayed at the bottom.
I then got 6 pounds of unsweetened organic shredded coconut, added it to a clean (and obviously sanitized) carboy, racked off the pineapple/mango onto the coconut, and for the hell of it because I had some I wanted to use 4 madagascar vanilla beans split only, had about a half gallon that wouldn't fit that went into a sanitized 2 liter bottle and into the back of the fridge, came in handy later for topping up. Airlocked and Let it sit on the coconut for 3 weeks, most dropped out.
I then racked it back into the 4 gallon fermenter and used the fridge stuff to top up to prevent too much head space, I also added a small amount of wine tannin and acid blend as for my tastes it needed to be brightened up a little and the additional sweetness from the fruit needed something to balance it.
Then just let it sit, airlocked to clear (the pectic enzyme and tannins make that go better) bottled and into the basement it went.
from primary through aging it was kept in a room at 62-64*F
Next time, and this is just for my own personal taste I will probably up the pineapple to at least 6 pounds and leave the mango at 2 just as a complimentary flavor.
Take it, use it, tweak it to your own style, enjoy some tropical melomel
