Soon to be cherry melomel

I just ordered a gallon of orange blossom honey from Miller's in CA.

Here's my plan (3 gallon batch):

9 lbs honey
7 lbs cherries
Lavlin 71B-1122 yeast
hightest's SNA
water to ~ 3 gallons

After a month or so, I'll rack to secondary on another 7lbs cherries. In the meantime, I'll have made a batch of show mead using the same orange blossom honey and 71B-1122.

After another month or so (maybe longer for secondary), I'll rack to tertiary and top off with the show mead; bulk age, rack as neccessary; bottle when crystal clear and age for a long time.

What do you all think?

Sounds yummy!

Thanks summer; I was drooling over your cherry wine and cherry mead recipes and decided I needed to get one going!

summersolstice said:

Sounds yummy!

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Yes it does.

Cherry mead is most awesome. After seeing summersolstice's, I had to make one myself.

I didn't use raw cherry, but used oregon puree. It was made in june and I bottled about 11 bottles of it dry as it is, then mixed up some cherry concentrate and honey and backsweetened the rest in a 3g carboy I plan to bottle in a few weeks once I'm sure it's stable and clear.

I'd love to get my hands on enough real cherries - maybe next year when they're in harvest I'll do another batch like that.

Sounds really good. I've been thinking about using some fruits in my batches, I've just never gotten around to doing it. I do have a 1g batch that I have added some cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to. It's aging in the back room now. So, when you add fruits like cherries, does the finished product have a really strong cherry flavor? I know it probably depends on when you add them and how much you add, I guess what I'm getting at here is for instance if AZ adds 7lbs in primary and then 7lbs more gets racked onto in secondary for the 3g batch, will this produce an extreme cherry bomb that will need to age for several years? Or will it be something much more subtle that congeals well in only a few months?

I used quite a bit of frozen cherries in mine and I'm drinking it now after it bulk aged for a year and it's been in the bottle for 4-5 months and it's good now but likely to get better. Be sure to add k-meta to preserve the color.

So I'm about to mix this thing up in the next day or so, but I have a couple of questions for the mazers out there.

- Do I need to thaw the cherries?

- Do I (should I?) pit the cherries?

- Should I use campden if I do the no-heat method?

- How do I get a reliable OG using the no-heat method?

- How long in the primary? I'm assuming until fermentation is done

- How ling in the secondary? I'm assuming a few weeks

- when should I add k-meta to preserve the color?

- if I add k-meta, could I still make this sparkling (would you want this sparkling or still?)

AZ_IPA said:

- Do I (should I?) pit the cherries?

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I have no personal experience on this topic, so what I'm about to say is second hand. I recently toured a distillery, and they said that the pit gives kind of an almond taste from the cyanide. Nothing strong enough to mess with your health, but do you want that flavor?

CandleWineProject said:

I have no personal experience on this topic, so what I'm about to say is second hand. I recently toured a distillery, and they said that the pit gives kind of an almond taste from the cyanide. Nothing strong enough to mess with your health, but do you want that flavor?

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Yeah, Schramm's book says the same thing - sorta a nutty, almond, woody flavor and subtle vanilla aroma.

I'm just too lazy to want to pit that many cherries!

AZ_IPA said:

So I'm about to mix this thing up in the next day or so, but I have a couple of questions for the mazers out there.

- Do I need to thaw the cherries?
yep..get that juice loose!!! room temp

- Do I (should I?) pit the cherries?
I would. they can leave off flavors

- Should I use campden if I do the no-heat method? Nah, the fruit has been frozen, so you don't need to worry about it, I only campden on fresh fruit.
- How do I get a reliable OG using the no-heat method? take the reading after mixing all ingredients and BEFORE pitching your yeast. Try and get the reading at 70F..or you'll need to compensate + or - for temp variances
- How long in the primary? I'm assuming until fermentation is done I'd say a minimum of 2 weeks on the fruit, max of 4 weeks.then rack off the old cherries, and into secondary.

- How ling in the secondary? I'm assuming a few weeks. Until it clears and fruit drops out..then rack to a tertiary for bulk aging.

- when should I add k-meta to preserve the color? to tertiary for bulk aging

- if I add k-meta, could I still make this sparkling (would you want this sparkling or still?)

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my preference is sparkling..and yes, you can make it sparkling if you are kegging. No problem at all.Dan

flyweed said:

my preference is sparkling..and yes, you can make it sparkling if you are kegging. No problem at all.Dan

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Thanks Dan,

I won't be kegging, so if I Kmeta, I'm outta luck for sparkling....

how much will the color fade over time without Kmeta?

Using K-meta will not prevent you from having a sparkling mead, but if you use 71B with 9 pounds of honey in a 3 gallon batch, you'll be very near the tolerance of the yeast and may not be able to get it to carbonate regardless of sulfites. If you use yeast with a higher alcohol tolerance, the K-meta will not prevent bottle carbonation, especially if it is added at the start of fermentation. By the time fermentation is done, the free SO2 level will be quite low.

If you want benefits from SO2 in preserving color, it should be added with the fruit as it is thawing to inhibit polyphenol oxidase, an enzymes that can cause color loss. Adding it after fermentation may actually cause some bleaching of color through reversible binding with anthocyanins.

Medsen

true to the above..to stop ferment..usually you'd use both sorbate and bisulphite(K-meta) and then keg, or bottle still. K-meta alone MAY not stop fermentation and you COULD still get carbed bottles. I haven't read many of the bottle pastuization threads, but I think some of those guys were saying they are having some success bottling sparkling ciders and meads then pasturizing to kill the ferment. So you may want to look at those thread.