Prickly Pear Mead - How much Barney blood do I need?

[tauschung]

Hi,

I'm in the process of making 1 gallon of a prickly pear mead. I had about 2#, and have it juiced to 4 Cups of barney blood. I think I can get more out of it..but I have class tonight.

I'm looking to make a medium sweet wine. Here's my recipe.

4-5# local varietal honey
2# prickly pear (blended, boiled for 15minutes, and strained ~4C juice)
bottled spring water to top
1 tsp pectic enzyme added to juice
lalvin k1v-1116
staggered yeast nutrients

Will I have enough Barney blood? Or, do I need to go out and pick more? Also, is there a specific og, I should look for on a medium sweet mead? Feel free to make comments on the recipe, or ask questions. I'm new to this

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

Hi,

I'm in the process of making 1 gallon of a prickly pear mead. I had about 2#, and have it juiced to 4 Cups of barney blood. I think I can get more out of it..but I have class tonight.

I'm looking to make a medium sweet wine. Here's my recipe.

4-5# local varietal honey
2# prickly pear (blended, boiled for 15minutes, and strained ~4C juice)
bottled spring water to top
1 tsp pectic enzyme added to juice
lalvin k1v-1116
staggered yeast nutrients

Will I have enough Barney blood? Or, do I need to go out and pick more? Also, is there a specific og, I should look for on a medium sweet mead? Feel free to make comments on the recipe, or ask questions. I'm new to this

The recipe looks decent, K1V-1116 is a pretty aggresive yeast, just a suggestion, save your juice, maybe hit it with the pectic enzyme and maybe a campden tablet then freeze it until your primary fermentation is done. The purpose of that is to help get the most flavor and aroma into your melomel (and not lose it to blowoff during primary).

 

[tauschung]

@TheBrewingMedic: I like the way you think. I was originally thinking that I would add some juice in both primary and secondary. But, I'm not sure that I have enough. Well, at least, I have not seen any recipes that have posted the amount of juice they used.

I already have the juice in the freezer with 1tsp pectic enzyme in it and a campden tablet. I am waiting to go to the brew shop and pick up some yeast. I am also getting several pounds of peaches from a friend..so I will be getting some supplies for them as well..

Since I am looking for a medium-sweet mead, should I be looking for an OG of ~1.030?

And, do I have enough Barney blood to rack into secondary and impart the characteristics of the prickly pear?

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

@TheBrewingMedic: I like the way you think. I was originally thinking that I would add some juice in both primary and secondary. But, I'm not sure that I have enough. Well, at least, I have not seen any recipes that have posted the amount of juice they used.

I already have the juice in the freezer with 1tsp pectic enzyme in it and a campden tablet. I am waiting to go to the brew shop and pick up some yeast. I am also getting several pounds of peaches from a friend..so I will be getting some supplies for them as well..

Since I am looking for a medium-sweet mead, should I be looking for an OG of ~1.030?

And, do I have enough Barney blood to rack into secondary and impart the characteristics of the prickly pear?

think you mean final gravity of 1.03? that will give you a sweet, near dessert mead, if you want medium sweet shoot for 1.01-1.015.

I've never worked with prickly pear juice myself but if you have 4 cups, in a 1 gallon batch that will give you 25% of your volume in the secondary, I'd imagine that would give you a good amount of flavor, color and aroma.

I'd put the juice into secondary then rack your mead onto it, that way you use 100% of your juice, it mixes it in well for you, and you will probably end up with a small amount of your base mead that doesn't fit, put that in a small container like a sanitized soda bottle, put it in the fridge, essentially cold crashing it. It leaves you with something to top your melomel off with if you rack it into teriatry for clearing/aging and need to get rid of some headspace or if you get some more ferment in secondary and it goes a little dryer than you want, you get to backsweeten with your base mead and keep all the flavors consistent.

 

[tauschung]

@TheBrewingMedic: Great idea! I can definitely do that.

I guess I was not clear. I'm trying to figure out what starting gravity I should be shooting for. Or even, how to calculate out the starting gravity. I know that for sweet meads you can use a ratio of honey to water. But, I'm not exactly sure how that plays out with juice.

I'm thinking that in this case, I could go with a 4:1 ratio, and then add the juice to secondary and be safe. However, if I added the juice in primary (which I am not going to do) it would be easiest for me to calculate about where it will end up by the starting gravity and the potential of the yeast, right?

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

it would be easiest for me to calculate about where it will end up by the starting gravity and the potential of the yeast, right?

Exactly, the yeast is going to be the real determining factor of where you want your OG to be, with K1V-1116 for semi-sweet, you'll want an OG of around 1.145, so your right with the 4 pounds per gallon. The juice is going to add a little sweetness but not enough to make it overly sweet and some of that might burn off with a bit of residual ferment (which is where that residual base mead will come in hand later to adjust to exactly the sweetness level you want).

You're also going to be set for around an 18%abv, so you'll want to give this some aging time to mellow it out.

 

[bobbrews]

I juice prickly pears all the time and combine with water for thinning, lime juice for acidity, and some agave nectar for a nice balance. A case of prickly pears usually yields about 3-4 quarts. Everything is then strained through dual mesh sieves for a silky clean consistency. You could make a lightly carbonated mead by bottling it with only the strained juice to taste.

I would never heat the juice itself (or at least not add it beyond 100 F). It's extremely fragrant and heat will strip much of that raspberry-watermelon-tomato character from the fruit. Professional juicers will also tell you that whipping too much air into it will also detract from the quality of the juice, so heat is definitely a concern in that it's a worse offender.

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

I juice prickly pears all the time and combine with water for thinning, lime juice for acidity, and some agave nectar for a nice balance. A case of prickly pears usually yields about 3-4 quarts. Everything is then strained through dual mesh sieves for a silky clean consistency. You could make a lightly carbonated mead by bottling it with only the strained juice to taste.

I would never heat the juice itself (or at least not add it beyond 100 F). It's extremely fragrant and heat will strip much of that raspberry-watermelon-tomato character from the fruit. Professional juicers will also tell you that whipping too much air into it will also detract from the quality of the juice, so heat is definitely a concern in that it's a worse offender.

Cool bob, thanks for the info on prickly pear juice, you may be able to answer the question that the op currently has, and i think by mentioning that you dilute it some you already did to some extent. He is planning to add the 4 cups of juice that he already extracted as 1/4 of the volume of his mead (1 gallon total volume), will this give him a decent amount of prickly pear flavor and aroma? sounds like it is pretty strong (one of the benefits of juicing it seems to concentrate flavors).

 

[bobbrews]

There's so much flavor, color, and overall character from pure prickly pear juice. It's super-concentrated and quite thick on it's own, so adding it to water, mead, beer, etc. would be wise. The one thing I don't like about the fruit is that it has very little acidity. It needs a boost in that regard, but once you give it that, you have the most amazing flavor ever. Like I said, a little bit goes a long way and the general flavor is very reminiscent of a mixture of raspberry-watermelon-tomato, if you can picture that. I would say add it to taste before bottling... 1/2 to 1 oz. per every 12 oz. mead should do it.

 

[tauschung]

@TheBrewingMedic: How did you calculate out that? I'd like to know so I can work this out in the future..

@bobbrews: Cool. The only reason why I heated it was because I had read that it gets thick and has an awful consistency when the pulp hasn't been cooked and the protein hasn't been skimmed off the surface. I can definitely pick some more and juice them without the heat. Also, thanks for the tip on the acidity. I'll be sure to check up on that after I rack to secondary.

About how much do you use for a gallon?

 

[bobbrews]

It is quite pulpy on it's own. I used to blend the whole fruits on their own at low speed, which would quickly turn to liquid... but a very thick liquid. I then passed it through two layers of sieves at the same time (one medium, one fine) ~ in pro kitchens, we use China Cap + Chinois. The pulp and seeds would get backed up so water was needed to thin things out and extract as much of the prickly pear juice as possible... sort of like a batch sparge I guess. The thinned out juice, stripped of some sugars from dilution, then needed to be corrected with agave nectar or sugar. Once done, lime juice brought it to the proper acidity... not as strong as a limeade, but just to have a nice balance.

When we got this new Omega 350HD Vert juicer, making this above referenced juice was wayyyy easier. It still pumps out thick juice that requires water for dilution, but it's obviously not pulpy or full of seeds. If you're adding a bit to mead or beer however, which is already thin, then I wouldn't worry about diluting it. I would just be concerned about correcting the flavor (not the consistency) so it is something you enjoy tasting, not outright gulping down. I don't think heating it would provide any benefits that water could not provide. Especially, when used at such a low rate in this application.

-128 fluid oz. in 1 gallon
-I figure 1 oz. of pure, undiluted cactus pear juice per every 12 fluid oz.
-So 10.7 oz. juice per 1 gallon (and this is on the upper end of what I would personally do). You may get away with 5.3 oz. per gallon.

There's also an online company that makes a concentrated cactus pear syrup. It's quite pure and legit. You would need even less of this stuff. See below.

http://www.pricklypearfruit.com/buy-now/prickly-pear-syrup/

If you end up ever using the fruits again, peel them like this... It saves so much time:

 

[tauschung]

@bobbrews: I plan on purchasing a masticating juicer in the near future. I've been saving up for a while.

The potato scrubber was a fantastic idea. After failing miserably at trying to burn the glochids off, I ended up just wearing heavy gloves and rubbing the pears against them to get the glochids off. I then processed them essentially what is shown in the video except I also pulled the seeds out. I also had some in the freezer, and I was unable to process those because they had no rigidity to them after they were thawed. I used a china cap with a micro filter to strain the juice out after I blended them.

It seems like you are saying that a little goes a long way. I think what I will do is make it how I like it in a glass, and then scale it up in the carboy.

Prickly pears sure are tasty. In a short while this years crop will start turning pink. So, I'll probably cut off a few more pounds of prickly pears. They taste so great straight up, I wanted to put them in a mead.