riograndejoe
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- Jan 16, 2017
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Hello!
I've made a prickly pear ale before and a few melomels, and now I'm planning a prickly pear melomel. I have about 4 liters of juice from pears and planned on using 15 lbs. of honey for 5 gallons, and initially planned to add half the juice to primary and half to secondary.
However, I've been reading about sour beers and meads and it has me making all sorts of plans, as is normal for me - I love to play around. Now I have a new scheme but would like to hear from some more experienced sour fermenters.
The new plan is this. I would start the 15 lbs of honey with a dry mead yeast in 4 gallons of water. At the same time, I would start two 1-gallon fermenters with a liter of juice each and 2-3 lbs of honey with some sour bugs. When the primary on the honey finishes, I would rack it onto the other 2 liters of juice and take it up to 5 gallons.
When the melomel is done with secondary, I would bottle 3 gallons of it and then add the contents of one of the 1-gallon fermenters. Then I would let that mixture go for as long as it needs. After that, I would bottle the 3-gallon mix and the one-gallon sour, so that I would have 15 bottles of dry melomel, 15 bottles of the mix, and 5 bottles of the sour.
Is this a plan that can work? If so, what should I use to ferment the sour stuff? While I'm at it, what yeast would you recommend for the dry melomel itself?
I've made a prickly pear ale before and a few melomels, and now I'm planning a prickly pear melomel. I have about 4 liters of juice from pears and planned on using 15 lbs. of honey for 5 gallons, and initially planned to add half the juice to primary and half to secondary.
However, I've been reading about sour beers and meads and it has me making all sorts of plans, as is normal for me - I love to play around. Now I have a new scheme but would like to hear from some more experienced sour fermenters.
The new plan is this. I would start the 15 lbs of honey with a dry mead yeast in 4 gallons of water. At the same time, I would start two 1-gallon fermenters with a liter of juice each and 2-3 lbs of honey with some sour bugs. When the primary on the honey finishes, I would rack it onto the other 2 liters of juice and take it up to 5 gallons.
When the melomel is done with secondary, I would bottle 3 gallons of it and then add the contents of one of the 1-gallon fermenters. Then I would let that mixture go for as long as it needs. After that, I would bottle the 3-gallon mix and the one-gallon sour, so that I would have 15 bottles of dry melomel, 15 bottles of the mix, and 5 bottles of the sour.
Is this a plan that can work? If so, what should I use to ferment the sour stuff? While I'm at it, what yeast would you recommend for the dry melomel itself?
