Pomegranate mead recipe - critique? advice?

I've got my first mead - a medium traditional - in secondary right now, and I'm ready to make my second. I'd like to do a pomegranate melomel.

Although I've been tweaking my beer kits for a long time, this is my first stab at making my own mead recipe. So I really appreciate any feedback anyone can give.

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8 lbs Greek honey
6 lbs wildflower honey
2 gal pomegranate juice (100% juice from concentrate, maybe POM brand?)
water to make 5 gallons

10 g Lalvin 71B-1122

Fermaid-K & DAP (staggered per hightest's nutrient schedule)

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A note about the Greek honey - I'm not sure what it's made from. I have 8 lbs of the stuff that I got from a family friend, and it came from Greece ... not marked for sale in the USA so it doesn't say what it's made from. I figure I'll just open it up, taste it, and use it if it tastes good. The rest of the honey I will get from local sources.

As for my expectations of the finished product ... I'd like it to come out medium sweet, with a noticeable pomegranate flavor and aroma, but not so much to make it too dry or mouth-puckering tart. I don't care as much about the color, but I'd rather it look mostly yellow or mostly rose rather than bright orange, LOL.

As for the yeast, I'm planning on going with the 71B-1122 because Ken Schramm recommends it for "dark fruit" melomels. From what I've read, it also leaves some residual sweetness and ages quickly. Can anyone confirm if this would be a good yeast for this recipe?

Also, if anyone thinks I'm way off (like if I need a lot more honey to get it sweeter, or a lot more juice to get any noticeable pom flavor) please let me know. Like I said, first time and I'm just makin' this up as I go ...

That sounds great. I was thinking of making a pomegranate melomel myself, so I'll be interested to know how it turns out.

If I were giving out free advice, I would retain 2 lbs of whichever honey tastes and smells better (especially if it's the Greek honey).

Once you've added your 12 lbs of honey (reserving 2 lbs for later) and your 2 gallons of juice, take a pH measurement to make sure that the POM juice is not adding a bunch of acidity. Speaking from experience this bit me when using lemon juice to make a lemon/ginger mead. The pH was too low to allow the fermentation to complete. I used baking soda (sodium bicarbonate) to raise the pH, but I don't recommend that method, it foams everywhere and adds too much Sodium. Calcium Carbonate (Chalk) might be a good substitute, but I would be concerned about getting it into solution. I've never tried that outside of my mash tun.

Ferment as you suggested but control the temperature to keep it from going above 78 F and keep it above 65 to prevent stalling.

Once the gravity is as low as it will go, throw in some campden tablets and let it sit for a couple days. Give a taste and you will likely want to dissolve your reserved honey into 1 cup (8 oz ) warm distilled water to 1 lb honey and once cool throw in a campden tablet for safety and stir gently into your mead. This will give back some of the honey sweetness and aroma that tends to ferment out.

Like I said, this advice is free and it is valued at the price you aid for it. These are just my opinions. I've never had a mead take a medal home but I have high hopes for my fig mead this year and my lemon/ginger mead next year.

I am also interested to know how this comes along. I have wanted to do something similar but due to lack of funds I have not yet had the chance.

It sounds like a good plan.

I would use enough honey to get to a gravity of about 1.115. The yeast will reliably go to about 14% ABV (though sometimes with fruit it will go a bit more), so that should leave you with a gravity around 1.010 when finished. As suggested by 3-Dog, I think it would be wise to keep a little honey in reserve in case it does go too dry.

Fermenting Pom sometimes creates some odors similar to what you get with apple fermentations so don't be shocked.

I would keep the fermentation cool (below 70F to help keep the fruity character). If it needs to have the pH adjusted, I would suggest potassium bicarbonate. It is easy to get, and dissolves in easily, and the potassium is needed by the yeast to cope with a low pH.

I've made a 1 gallon batch and the ratio of ingrediants were in the same ball park as your recipe. I added some lime zest and it and was happy with the results.

Great feedback, thanks! Good to know I'm in the right ballpark, and saving some honey for sweetening later if necessary sounds like a great idea.

As for the pH, I have some calcium carbonate on hand already, but it looks like AHS is currently running a sale on potassium carbonate. If they don't run out, I'll pick some of that up when I get the rest of my supplies.

So, just so I'm perfectly clear, if I do add 1-2 lbs of honey later on to back-sweeten the mead, I would do so in the primary but after fermentation is complete, right? Add campden tablets to prevent re-awakening the yeast, rest for a couple of days, then stir in dissolved honey and then rack to carboy for aging?

shawnbou said:

So, just so I'm perfectly clear, if I do add 1-2 lbs of honey later on to back-sweeten the mead, I would do so in the primary but after fermentation is complete, right? Add campden tablets to prevent re-awakening the yeast, rest for a couple of days, then stir in dissolved honey and then rack to carboy for aging?

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If the fermentation goes dry, you will probably want to stabilize before adding the additional honey or some of it may get chewed up as well. To stabilize, you want to allow the mead to clear as much as possible (the stabilizing agents don't work as well in a cloudy mead) so racking it to secondary and letting it clear is a good idea. Then you need to add the combination of potassium metabisulfite (Campden tablets) and potassium sorbate; neither one alone does the job adequately. Then you sweeten to taste and let it sit under airlock for a few more weeks to make sure the yeast don't kick in again.

If you start at a high enough gravity and have the fermentation go to 14% ABV and still have some sugar left (a gravity above 1.000), you man not need to use the stabilizing agents as the yeast will have been inhibited by the alcohol.

Got it. So the stabilizing and sweetening (if necessary) should be done after the mead has cleared as much as possible, but a few weeks before bottling just to make sure the yeast don't wake up.

Thanks again for all the feedback. I will post back here once I have some initial results. Cheers!

I brewed 3 gallons of POM mead about a year ago and tried the first bottle a few months ago. The POM juice is expensive so I ended up doing 1 gallon POM juice in the 3 gallon carboy I had.

The POM flavor is very slight and the slightness in flavor makes the natural flavor taste a bit odd but it is decent over ice. If I were to do it again I would use more POM juice or add a good blending juice to it like blueberry.

I did 6 lbs of honey with 1 gallon POM juice and topped off the 3 gallon carboy with water and then added yeast nutrient. I forget which yeast I used, probably lavlin 1116 or 1118.

My Pom mead used only 1 gal in a 6 gal batch...interestingly I had intended to add the whole gallon to the primary after the fermentation on the first 5 gallons had been going for a while...when I added the juice I was only able to put about 2/3 gallon in (must have overshot my initial volume slightly). As it turns out, I'm glad this happened, b/c almost every last bit of color was lost in the primary, but the last 32 oz added to secondary gave a really nice reddish tint that carried over fully to the final product (and probably a lot more flavor/aroma than the first addition...)
I think your 2 gals in 5 gal batch will be nice...I think I would increase the amount of juice I use on any future batches, and would reserve 1 or 2 quarts though to add in secondary. I did use the POM brand juice, and it is indeed rather expensive, as someone noted....
I let mine go dry (I really prefer dry meads in general...) and it came out really nice that way... I did add tannin and a small amount of acid blend for taste/mouthfeel, and also some ascorbic acid (antioxidant...seems to have helped retain the color nicely). It's about a year and a half old now, and aging well...

+1 on the saving some for secondary. Good advice for sure.

MedsenFey said:

Then you need to add the combination of potassium metabisulfite (Campden tablets) and potassium sorbate; neither one alone does the job adequately.

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Huh, din't know that. I learned something new, thanks Medsen!

3 Dog Brew said:

Huh, din't know that. I learned something new, thanks Medsen!

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Likewise - and thanks to everyone else for their thoughts and ideas.

Update on this recipe: I haven't made it yet. I went to Costco today and whereas before they briefly had POM juice for $6.99 for 60 oz, now it is $9.99 for the same bottle. That basically shot my potential costs for this mead up by about $13. So I picked up a bottle of Langers 100% pomegranate juice at $6.55 for 64 oz.

The Langers is still 100% juice from concentrate, it just has one added ingredient: "natural flavors". And it doesn't seem to be as thick and sedimenty as the POM.

I'm gonna taste it and compare it to the POM today. I still don't have the rest of my honey yet so I've got a little time to figure out which juice will be good enough to use without breaking the bank.

I have been debating on making one of these for a while, and was wondering how it turned out.