Hello, everyone! I've been lurking for a while, quietly following recipes and experimenting with honeys, yeasts, and simple traditional meads for the most part. One of my recent batches is one of my first experiments in trying to create my own flavor profile, and it's... uh. It seems to have gone a little awry.
What I set to ferment was WPL720, 3 lbs wildflower honey, three quarts of water, and a quart of tart cherry juice. I had a thought that I'd build something like a cherry pie flavor, and when I stumbled across the cherry juice, I thought it was perfect; didn't catch until I was halfway through pouring it out that it said tart on the bottle. But I figured that was no problem - I've made cherry pies before, and you start with tart cherries and then add a ton of sugar. Honey is sugar. Should be fine.
At this point, it's finished fermentation and has been racked over to secondary. And it's... uh. Tart. Somewhere between off-brand, sugar-free cherry cough medicine and "if you keep making that face, you'll get stuck like that" tart. (It's also got a rocket fuel burn right now, which I expected because it's pretty young still, and it's kind of the color you'd get if you poured a cup of red food dye into river mud, which I'm not too worried about when it's still ridiculously murky.)
I've already done some backsweetening, because it also came out of primary too dry for us, and will likely do more (household preferences run to sweet/dessert meads, this thing came out very dry). Going back to my original thought of "cherry pie," I'm thinking I might add some vanilla into secondary, but I'm not sure where else to go from here to tone down the tartness. Even more honey? Sweet cherries to counteract the pucker factor? Opinions more than welcome...
What I set to ferment was WPL720, 3 lbs wildflower honey, three quarts of water, and a quart of tart cherry juice. I had a thought that I'd build something like a cherry pie flavor, and when I stumbled across the cherry juice, I thought it was perfect; didn't catch until I was halfway through pouring it out that it said tart on the bottle. But I figured that was no problem - I've made cherry pies before, and you start with tart cherries and then add a ton of sugar. Honey is sugar. Should be fine.
At this point, it's finished fermentation and has been racked over to secondary. And it's... uh. Tart. Somewhere between off-brand, sugar-free cherry cough medicine and "if you keep making that face, you'll get stuck like that" tart. (It's also got a rocket fuel burn right now, which I expected because it's pretty young still, and it's kind of the color you'd get if you poured a cup of red food dye into river mud, which I'm not too worried about when it's still ridiculously murky.)
I've already done some backsweetening, because it also came out of primary too dry for us, and will likely do more (household preferences run to sweet/dessert meads, this thing came out very dry). Going back to my original thought of "cherry pie," I'm thinking I might add some vanilla into secondary, but I'm not sure where else to go from here to tone down the tartness. Even more honey? Sweet cherries to counteract the pucker factor? Opinions more than welcome...
