Melon Melomel

The first of my current batches is close to bottling time and my honey is arriving in a couple of weeks so have started planning my next batch which is to use Melons. It will be a 5L batch.
I have gone and bought 2 Honeydew and 2 Galia melons. I figured I would leave them in the fridge for a week to ripen and then shove them in the freezer until I'm ready for them.

Has anyone made one of these and have any hints, I already have a packet of s-04 open so I guess I will use that if it's still viable. I want it nice and sweet so I guess 4lb of honey?

Should I put it in simmering water and mash it to get out all the juice or just ball it and put it in?

Any tips would be much appriciated!

Insomniac said:

The first of my current batches is close to bottling time and my honey is arriving in a couple of weeks so have started planning my next batch which is to use Melons. It will be a 5L batch.
I have gone and bought 2 Honeydew and 2 Galia melons. I figured I would leave them in the fridge for a week to ripen and then shove them in the freezer until I'm ready for them.

Has anyone made one of these and have any hints, I already have a packet of s-04 open so I guess I will use that if it's still viable. I want it nice and sweet so I guess 4lb of honey?

Should I put it in simmering water and mash it to get out all the juice or just ball it and put it in?

Any tips would be much appriciated!

Click to expand...

dunno that yeast, but probably still 3 to 3.5lb of honey, because the melon has some sugar in it.

You'd have to be careful with melon as well, I understand that it's a bugger for going mouldy, but if you used any kind of heat treatment on it, you kill most of the flavour, and what's left, taste-wise, has a "cooked" flavour to it. So I'd guess that it's a cut/de-seed/scoop routine.

don't forget pectic enzyme. Sure I'd have thought that melon wouldn't produce too much pectin, but pectolase also helps with colour and flavour extration.

Cheers fb! Yeah, already got the pectic enzyme ready Sounds like good advice will avoid the heating routine this time then, you recon just stick the melon flesh in the demijohn or try and juice them (potato masher and a seive maybe?).

Well that's up to you. I don't know how melon actually fares under fermentation. Whether it virtually collapses/disappears, being so much water. But you might get more flavour with the pulp.....

Equally, you might want to get some more of the strongest tasting melon and add the flesh to secondary. That way you should get the greatest flavour level with out losing all the taste/aroma straight out the airlock during the fastest, most aggressive period of ferment.

Hmm, yeah, maybe ill put 3 in primary and the 4th in secondary. or maybe 2 and 2... Guess I'll have to see how much fits on the day! My plan is to have found a fridge to ferment it in by then too so I can hopefully keep the ferment speed down a bit, though finding a cheap fridge of the right size is tricky!

Puree the melon flesh in a food processor. I'm not sure about honeydew specifically, but most melons will turn to a slightly pulpy liquid quite quickly in a blender/food processor. Maybe strain through cheesecloth?

Melonomel... Sounds good, let us know how it turns out.

Cheers for the input! Am tempted by the blender, should ensure at the very least that it will mix well with everything and settle at the end, I guess wether the cheese cloth is worth trying depends in whether I will get more flavour out leaving all the pulp in. I recon I might leave it all in this time as I would really like to get it as mellony as possible!

Hi all! Having managed to get my temp controller working yesterday I started on this just now.

Ended up blending (a bit at least) with a hand blender.
1 Honey dew - blended and put in with pulp.
1 Galia and 1 Piel de Sapo - blended and sqeezed though a muslin cloth to remove pulp.

Had another Honey dew and Galia left that I have de-pulped, put in a bottle and stuck in the freezer to use for topping up thoughout the brew process.

OG @ 19.6 c was ~1.132 (off the end of my hydrometer so hard to be exact).

Quick question, topping up will clearly affect my SG, do people just measure before and after topping up and add up the result of each range?

Insomniac said:

Hi all! Having managed to get my temp controller working yesterday I started on this just now.

Ended up blending (a bit at least) with a hand blender.
1 Honey dew - blended and put in with pulp.
1 Galia and 1 Piel de Sapo - blended and sqeezed though a muslin cloth to remove pulp.

Had another Honey dew and Galia left that I have de-pulped, put in a bottle and stuck in the freezer to use for topping up thoughout the brew process.

OG @ 19.6 c was ~1.132 (off the end of my hydrometer so hard to be exact).

Quick question, topping up will clearly affect my SG, do people just measure before and after topping up and add up the result of each range?

Click to expand...

Ha ha! yes, I also had an OG of 1.130 with my most recent batch of "clearing out the cupboard" mead (basically it was 1kg of mexican clear honey and about 6 small cans of broken mandarin segments in light syrup). All I actually did, was mix the honey, fruit, water and a couple of teaspoons of nutrient up to 6 litres and then sprinkled a pack of D21 on top. Once it showed signs of fermentation, I aerated it once a day until it hit the 1/3rd sugar break (approximately), then left it to finish. D21 has a tolerance of 16%, so I figured it would finish at about 1.020, but when I racked it to get the fruit out, it was at 1.008.

Oh and I usually do fruit meads (whatever kind, so I won't use a specific name) in a bucket to start with, as it's easier to contain pulp in a cloth, or just to get it out of the batch. It also gives space for any possible "mead explosions/eruptions", if adding more nutrient in an "SNA" sort of method. You don't have that luxury in a DJ.

As for adding further fermentables ? Well I just take a gravity reading before and after the addition, then you can add the numbers up and get the total amount of drop, to work out the % ABV.

With a gravity that high at starting, you're gonna want a yeast with some bollocks anyway. So the K1V recommend is valid. Then you can always just use the excess juice after the ferment has finished.

Of course, that will drop the % ABV some but it will give it a more "melony" sort of flavour, especially if you've already stabilised the main batch. Then none of the further fruit sugars should ferment. Just add to the taste/flavour.

I've gone with S-04 this time as I had half a pack left after using it on my cyser a while back. It was producing some bubbles during rehydration which is always a good sign.

Its now sitting at about 16.5 c (temp range of S-04 being 15 - 20), hoping to reduce the chances of producing paint thinner this time, but If it hasn't started up by tommorw after work I can up the temp a bit, and if the yeast fails completely theres enough headspace in the DJ to re-pitch with D47... though I hope that won't be needed!

My watermelon melomel was awful last time I checked, and by awful I mean a year in it made me gag at the smell and taste.

Gl

Eek! Hope mine doesn't end up taking that long to be nice.
For anyone planning on trying it, this morning it is fermenting fine, however, the pulp I put in has formed a layer at the top which is trapping the co2 a bit so I may have to rack from underneath it after work I guess and top up with my frozen juice...

Picture of all the goop sat at top...

Well I racked from under it, re aerated and topped up a little, seems much happier now.
Would deffinatly recommend removing pulp for anyone trying this!
(Currently tastes awesome!)

Insomniac said:

Well I racked from under it, re aerated and topped up a little, seems much happier now.
Would definitely recommend removing pulp for anyone trying this!
(Currently tastes awesome!)

Click to expand...

What's "awesome" now, might not be so when it's finished it's ferment.

The problem is, with ferments that contain pulp, is exactly what you've mentioned. Hence people invariably aerate daily, to de-gas but also to oxygenate the must.

You've racked it off the pulp, that's probably the best thing to happen, I just hope you've topped it up with something to reduce the head space......

Yeah, I know the sweetness will reduce (or go completely), just have to see how it goes.
I topped up with more melon juice to get head space back to where it was but krausen is currently filling the rest so can't get it up the the neck. I'm checking it when ever I can and will top up to the neck once all the foam goes down!

Insomniac said:

Yeah, I know the sweetness will reduce (or go completely), just have to see how it goes.
I topped up with more melon juice to get head space back to where it was but krausen is currently filling the rest so can't get it up the the neck. I'm checking it when ever I can and will top up to the neck once all the foam goes down!

Click to expand...

Top it up with the DJ in the sink and add the top up liquid gently, which flushes all the foam down the side of the DJ, which can then be rinsed and dried.....

Would it then not just make more foam that will go up the air lock?