Questions on Melomel Process

Hey gang,

So, I've got a dry mead & a braggot under my belt. I'm looking at making a cherry vanilla melomel. I've looked through various threads here and on gotmead.com and have a couple of questions.

1. Why is it everyone uses cherry juice in their recipes? Is it ease, convenience, cost, etc? I can easily find a melomel recipe without actual fruit (using juice), but can't seem to find any that use fruit but don't use juice/concentrate. Why? In other words, I want to make a melomel using only fruit but it seems like no one does that with cherries - I want to know what the reason is.

2. It also seems that everyone puts juice/fruit in primary, and I even read on here that it's better to do so because it provides yeast with nutrient and helps with the pH. However, in Schramm's book, he states specifically: "My favorite method of adding fruit is secondary or post-secondary addition... The biggest advantage of this method is the retention of the true fruit character in the flavor and aroma." (pp 116-17)

He also says to tinker around so I'm thinking now I might just make a regular medium show mead, let it ferment out for 2 weeks, then rack it onto the fruit, let it ferment further, add vanilla extract (real, not artificial), then bottle it. Thoughts?

I tell you what..Shramms method works..id stick with that myself..

ruger12pk said:

I tell you what..Shramms method works..id stick with that myself..

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especially 'cuz Schramm's method is to do whatever you want

fruit in primary, secondary, or both...

he talks about leaving fruit in the primary for up to a year!

Schramm's method is to do whatever you want.
Hey, I can work with that.
The few times I have used fruit, I either add them late in primary so the Co2 does not drive off most of the flavour. Or in secondary and then I rack again after it starts to clear.
Though I don't do much real fruit stuff any more just due to time limitations.

KCWortHog said:

Hey gang,

So, I've got a dry mead & a braggot under my belt. I'm looking at making a cherry vanilla melomel. I've looked through various threads here and on gotmead.com and have a couple of questions.

1. Why is it everyone uses cherry juice in their recipes? Is it ease, convenience, cost, etc? I can easily find a melomel recipe without actual fruit (using juice), but can't seem to find any that use fruit but don't use juice/concentrate. Why? In other words, I want to make a melomel using only fruit but it seems like no one does that with cherries - I want to know what the reason is.

2. It also seems that everyone puts juice/fruit in primary, and I even read on here that it's better to do so because it provides yeast with nutrient and helps with the pH. However, in Schramm's book, he states specifically: "My favorite method of adding fruit is secondary or post-secondary addition... The biggest advantage of this method is the retention of the true fruit character in the flavor and aroma." (pp 116-17)

Click to expand...

Did you look here in the recipe section? About 9 recipes down from the top you'll see a recipe that uses only cherries, water and honey. The cherries are used in both the primary and the secondary.

Thank you! I saw a picture of that in a different thread and did a search for "cherry bomb mead" but don't recall that specific thread coming up. That said, I spent so much time searching around yesterday that it all became a blur after a while.

As for the "do what you want" comments - I get that in reading Schramm's book, I was just looking for some reasons why it seemed there weren't very many variations here. I wondered if there was something specific to cherries that really led people toward using juice, but it doesn't seem like it.

Thanks summersolstice.

I personally like using juice for the ease of it. Much easier to process it. I usually just blenderize, dose with pectin enzyme, either blend again or freeze/thaw, then run through a screen a couple of times to de-pulp. Then just use the resulting juice in the secondary. But then again, I start with a show mead that has nutrients added into it from the start. I usually rack onto the juice to the secondary so that I get a good blend of it. The juice also "tops off" the mix to bring it back up to volume from the loss of volume from the racking process. A little more work but it ends up a much cleaner product for me. And I don't have to work overtime cleaning my carboy out from stuck on fruit and I wait less time for it to clear.

All wins for me. Just for using a little blender action and screening. Much easier to sanitize too.

Thanks Matrix.

So I decided to just make a show mead then add cherry stuff in secondary.
14.5 lbs honey (12# wildflower, 2.5# leftover orange blossom)
4 gallons water
nutrient, energizer, D47
OG 1.086

I'll let it ferment out then rack it on fruit & top off the volume lost from racking with cherry juice (Schramm convinced me...). I'll just pick up some frozen pie cherries at the store along with the juice. Should be good to go. Then I'll add in some Nielsen-Massey vanilla to taste. mmm.

Wildflower wasn't my first pick, but I wanted to get something local and that was it (shouldn't have been surprised this time of year). It wasn't any cheaper than what I can get online, though, and I was really happy with Draper Bee, so I think I'll probably stick with them from now on.

KCWortHog said:

It wasn't any cheaper than what I can get online, though, and I was really happy with Draper Bee, so I think I'll probably stick with them from now on.

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I'm probably gonna get a tub of orange blossom from them.

My plan is to make a 3 gallon batch with about 7 lbs of cherries in the primary - racked later on to another 7 lbs of cherries; and I'll have a 1-gallon batch of show mead to top off once I rack off the secondaried (is that a word?) cherries.

Keep us updated on the progress and I'll start a thread when I finally get mine going.

Yeah, their prices are reasonable. I was recommended them by a beekeeper, so I figured they were worth a shot. I was really happy with the quality of the honey and the packaging it came in (no damage to the shipping box, etc).

She's a beaut right now, churning away. Checked my pH yesterday, just at 3.99 so I left it alone (started at 5.38!). Today it was down to 3.33 so I added 1/2 tsp of calcium carbonate, which got it back up to 3.79 (big jump, I was kind of surprised).

Are you using fresh cherries or otherwise-preserved?

Next month: juniper metheglin (we have a juniper tree right by our side door). I'm going to try to build my own recipe

Not to criticize your choice of vendors but Draper's is considerably more expensive than Miller's out of California and for AZ IPA - shipping a five gallon pails should be quite a bit cheaper from California than Pennsylvania. I've had very good luck with Miller's and I've been using them for 5-6 years.

Wow, no kidding! I take it by your mention of them that their honey quality is pretty good? It doesn't look like they have the variety of Draper's, but for Orange blossom that's quite a difference.

Thanks summersoltice! I hadn't looked a whole lot - just did some internet searching and a couple posts on here.

I'll look into them!

FWIW, I wasn't looking at a 5 gallon pail, but about a gallon....

Thanks again for the input, and good luck with everyone's fall/winter mead projects!

Yes, Miller's provides a very good quality honey. As I said, I've used them for years. If you're looking for a certain varietal or size that isn't listed, give them a call. In addition to 5-gallon pails of OB honey, I get my gallons of buckwheat here as well.

A melomel is ANY fruit juice and honey fermented. I do not know why you always find recipes with cherries other then maybe its the easiest juice to get.

I have made Pyments (that is a melomel with grape juice) from muscatel grapes.
I have made Melomels from Prickly Pears (the fruit of the napolitas cacti).
I have made Cyser from apple cider and honey (got it straight from the press).
I have used Blackberry juice, Blueberry juice and boysenberry juice.

The main issue is juicing the fruit. For example it takes about 15 gallons of prickly pears to make 4 gallons of juice. The other problem with making juice is you do not want to cook it, not even heat it up, unless you want to activate the natural pectins in it.

But the resice is pretty much:
Juice what you got, putting it in a nylon bag and putting that into the primary (use a 6 gallon bucket)
Take 1 gallon of honey (or 2 5 lbs containers, really a gallon is 12.5lbs) and heat that with some water to about 150F(65C), skim off the foam as much as possible (its mostly wax), add that to the bucket.
Fill what you did not juice to 5.5 gallons and pitch some yeast. Champagne or white wine yeasts work well. Expect a SG of 1.090 or higher (its like syrup).

Two weeks in the primary, dunk that bag and squeeze it on a regular basis. Rack to seconday, ferment for 2 weeks. Rack again (you can skip this if you like) for clarity, let finish for 2 more weeks (6 weeks total). Bottle and let let for 6-18 months.

Thanks Torg. I don't ever heat/cook my meads (melomels, metheglins, etc) so that's not a concern. I just put my tub of honey in a sink of hot water to warm it up a bit to improve mixing with some warmed-up spring water, and that's about it. I used D-47 for this batch but also bought some EC-1118 for future batches. I'm thinking about just sticking with making base meads for a while and doing 1-gallon test batches, adding spices & fruit in secondary to the base.

So, update on my mead I have going... the pH has been fantastic, staying between 3.5-3.7 for the past several days. My last nutrient addition was Wednesday. I checked pH last night and noticed a small 1/4" long black thing floating at the top. I used my (sanitized) thief to pick it out of the mead, and looked at it - a tiny moth!! I hope it hasn't contaminated the mead; the husband doesn't seem to think it will, which is reassuring (he makes beer & is very good with sanitation practices).

I just have no idea how that thing got in there... I had a blow-off tube coming out of a carboy cap into a jar filled halfway with star-san...


Maybe I should add spices instead and name it.... motheglin. /rimshot

No responses to motheglin? Oh come on! That was good!

So, update. 12 days into fermentation & it's been at a stand-still so I took a gravity reading today - 1.010, which is right where my FG was supposed to be. Since my OG was a little low (21.6 P instead of 22.4), I'll keep an eye on the gravity readings over the next couple of days - but I suspect it's done. pH of 3.83 as well. That was fast...

With an OG of 1.086 an D-47 I seriously doubt fermentation is complete. The active primary stage is complete an it's time to rack it off the lees to a secondary and top it up. Leave it for 2-4 weeks an then it'll likely be finished at .996. Rack again an allow it to bulk age in a cool dark corner for the winter.

Yes, sorry, primary is complete. Time to rack it onto fruit, perhaps this weekend.

Question though - for a medium-sweet mead, do I want it to finish at .996? Wouldn't that be more appropriate for a dry mead?