Raspberry Mead

[cathlabrob]

Hi all, I’m new to mead but have been brewing beer for years. In the past I made a sweet mead which I enjoyed. Currently, I am making a raspberry mead kit from midwest. It is in secondary fermentation at the moment. It will be in secondary for about another 2.5 months. However, I tasted it yesterday and it tastes like a dry wine and I didn’t care for the taste. I am sure that it is not spoiled, just not what I was expecting. I guess I prefer the sweet meads.
My question to all you experienced mead makers: Is there any way I can alter the dry mead to resemble more of a sweet mead? Or possibly use it to make something else (beer or other type of beverage? Or do I need to just scrap it? All ideas are welcome!
Rob Williams

 

[cmac62]

Rob, I'm not an expert mead maker by any means, but the last one I did went all the way dry, so I stabilized with Kmeta and Ksorbate and back sweetened it wiith more honey. This worked perfectly. I have also heard of heat pasteurization then back sweetening. Either way works. Good luck

 

[Dan O]

Hi all, I’m new to mead but have been brewing beer for years. In the past I made a sweet mead which I enjoyed. Currently, I am making a raspberry mead kit from midwest. It is in secondary fermentation at the moment. It will be in secondary for about another 2.5 months. However, I tasted it yesterday and it tastes like a dry wine and I didn’t care for the taste. I am sure that it is not spoiled, just not what I was expecting. I guess I prefer the sweet meads.
My question to all you experienced mead makers: Is there any way I can alter the dry mead to resemble more of a sweet mead? Or possibly use it to make something else (beer or other type of beverage? Or do I need to just scrap it? All ideas are welcome!
Rob Williams

Hello & welcome to the forum @cathlabrob. A few quick questions.

What was the batch size?
Have you taken a gravity reading?
Is there any fruit in secondary?
Is there enough fruit flavor or do you want more?
Or if there is enough fruit flavor, do you just want to add sweetness?

If you want to add more berry flavor AND sweetness, you can add berries to secondary & you will pick up color, sweetness, & berry flavor. You will also get tannic values from the seeds of the berries. After 1 week in the must & tannic values start to get noticeably
stronger by the day so taste it daily for your preferred mouthfeel. After 2 weeks, your must will have pulled whatever it can for color & flavor, but it will still pull tannic values, so, beware.
Too tannic is never a good thing.

If you DO have enough fruit flavor & mouthfeel & just want it sweeter, @cmac62 offered some solid advice . Stabilize & then back sweeten with honey.

I hope this helps you.

Happy meading

 

[cathlabrob]

Hello & welcome to the forum @cathlabrob. A few quick questions.

What was the batch size?
Have you taken a gravity reading?
Is there any fruit in secondary?
Is there enough fruit flavor or do you want more?
Or if there is enough fruit flavor, do you just want to add sweetness?

If you want to add more berry flavor AND sweetness, you can add berries to secondary & you will pick up color, sweetness, & berry flavor. You will also get tannic values from the seeds of the berries. After 1 week in the must & tannic values start to get noticeably
stronger by the day so taste it daily for your preferred mouthfeel. After 2 weeks, your must will have pulled whatever it can for color & flavor, but it will still pull tannic values, so, beware.
Too tannic is never a good thing.

If you DO have enough fruit flavor & mouthfeel & just want it sweeter, @cmac62 offered some solid advice . Stabilize & then back sweeten with honey.

I hope this helps you.

Happy meading

Hi Dan,
OG = 1.094
After Primary was 1.00 equalling 12.6%
Then there was a raspberry puree added for a secondary. It was a 5 gal batch (Curt & Kathy’s Melomel kit). The instructions said to leave puree in secondary for two months. It definitely tastes the raspberry but reminds me of a cheap dry old red wine. I guess I’d like to sweeten it up a bit. I was hoping for a raspberry hinted sweet mead but totally understand that it is a different type of mead. I’m contemplating pulling it out of secondary, leaving as much purée sediment behind and letting it age against the instructions, and adding more honey and letting it ferment again with some yeast. Another idea was to try a light beer like a wheat and adding a bit of the mead to possibly add some raspberry flavor to the wheat beer….but this is all new territory to me. I only made 1 mead prior which was definitely a sweet mead.

 

[cathlabrob]

Rob, I'm not an expert mead maker by any means, but the last one I did went all the way dry, so I stabilized with Kmeta and Ksorbate and back sweetened it wiith more honey. This worked perfectly. I have also heard of heat pasteurization then back sweetening. Either way works. Good luck

Thanks, do you think I should remove the mead from the secondary with puree, add more honey and add more yeast? Or just add the honey and let it sit?

 

[cmac62]

So, right now your mead is in secondary on the fruit. Since you expect it to be on the fruit for 2.5 months you could add the additional honey directly (i'd thin it with some warm water) and gently stir it in, but if there is still yeast the fermentation will kick back up and eat the new honey. @Dan O makes way more mead than I do and had some good points about the tannins from the seeds so you may want to consider getting the mead off the fruit earlier, but you don't add the back sweetening honey until it is stabilized and ready for packaging.

 

[Dan O]

Thanks, do you think I should remove the mead from the secondary with puree, add more honey and add more yeast? Or just add the honey and let it sit?

Did you happen to notice if the puree had seeds in it? If it has seeds, it may take 2 1/2 months for the tannins to get drawn out. I have yet to work with purees so I can't say for sure. If it were me, I would take out a juice glass worth & backsweeten that to see where the mouthfeel is on it so you can decide where to go from there. If enough has been extracted, I would rack & stabilize.

Also remember, when stirring in your honey, be very gentle and deliberate
with your stirring motions. No sloshing or splashing because you don't want to oxidize your Mead. Backsweetening (stirring in honey) will take a while so get comfortable & stir, stir, stir.

I hope this helps you.
Happy meading

 

[cathlabrob]

Did you happen to notice if the puree had seeds in it? If it has seeds, it may take 2 1/2 months for the tannins to get drawn out. I have yet to work with purees so I can't say for sure. If it were me, I would take out a juice glass worth & backsweeten that to see where the mouthfeel is on it so you can decide where to go from there. If enough has been extracted, I would rack & stabilize.

Also remember, when stirring in your honey, be very gentle and deliberate
with your stirring motions. No sloshing or splashing because you don't want to oxidize your Mead. Backsweetening (stirring in honey) will take a while so get comfortable & stir, stir, stir.

I hope this helps you.
Happy meading

I am not sure if the puree had seeds but I appreciate all the good input so far. In my opinion, it tastes like cough syrup flavored dry wine….lol. Tomorrow, I plan to rack it off the purée sediment into a clean glass carboy and add 6 pounds of honey and water to bring it back to 5 gals and let it sit for the 2 months. I also tried a sample with Stevia added which made it tolerable so I think the racking off the puree and adding the extra honey will work….hopefully. Thank you again to everyone who helped me with the ideas.
Rob

 

[bushpilot]

I am not sure if the puree had seeds but I appreciate all the good input so far. In my opinion, it tastes like cough syrup flavored dry wine….lol. Tomorrow, I plan to rack it off the purée sediment into a clean glass carboy and add 6 pounds of honey and water to bring it back to 5 gals and let it sit for the 2 months. I also tried a sample with Stevia added which made it tolerable so I think the racking off the puree and adding the extra honey will work….hopefully. Thank you again to everyone who helped me with the ideas.
Rob

That will restart fermentation, and you will likely end up with just a higher ABV mead, but not sweeter. If you want sweeter, you will need to stabilize and add honey. Or if you use Stevia instead of honey, you don't need to stabilize.

 

[bwible]

That will restart fermentation, and you will likely end up with just a higher ABV mead, but not sweeter. If you want sweeter, you will need to stabilize and add honey. Or if you use Stevia instead of honey, you don't need to stabilize.

There are 2 ways to get sweet mead. 1. Use more honey than the yeast can ferment, i.e exceed the alcohol tolerance of the yeast or 2. Stabilize and backsweeten.

Most mead yeasts or wine yeasts used for mead can exceed 14% and some people use champagne yeast that can exceed 18%. Depending on your yeast, 6 more pounds might be enough to push the yeast past its tolerance.

If you want to backsweeten, add potassium sorbate in the recommended dose (don’t know it off the top of my head) after you transfer. Let that sit for a couple days then add your additional honey. Potassium sorbate does not kill yeast, it just stops it from reproducing. So you can still have some additional fermentation after adding that.

If you are supposed to leave it on the fruit longer, you can do that. Or you won’t get the extra flavor and any extra alcohol from fermenting that. You can add more honey or backsweeten at any time, so no rush.

 

[cathlabrob]

I removed the yeast two weeks ago and it has been in secondary with the puree. When in secondary I did not see any signs of additional fermentation or bubbling. What is the consensus about adding the additional 6 pounds of honey without the potassium sorbate (as I don’t have it) and leaving the puree?

 

[T Murph]

I removed the yeast two weeks ago and it has been in secondary with the puree. When in secondary I did not see any signs of additional fermentation or bubbling. What is the consensus about adding the additional 6 pounds of honey without the potassium sorbate (as I don’t have it) and leaving the puree?

IMO 6 lbs of honey to back sweeten is about 6 times too much. I make melomels regularly and most always stabilize and back sweeten. However, once my mead has been in the primary for a month in a carboy primary I transfer to corny keg secondary on top of pureed fruit and kept sealed to absorb CO2. After a month on the fruit it is now a melomel and it gets transferred off the fruit, still sealed under pressure to a third corny for aging. After another 4 months I sample it and make adjustments to sweetness. I basically kill off any remaining yeast by adding 1 Camden tablet, approximately 1/4 tsp of potassium metabisulphite and 2 1/2 tsps of potassium sorbate per 5 gals. Let that work for 48 hrs, (direction state 24 hrs) but I always give it 48 hrs to be sure. Then I pull about 4 oz to sample. I add raw orange blossom honey till it taste how I want the finished melomel to taste. I then calculate the amount of honey needed to bring the batch up to that sweetness. I thin the desired amount on honey, (never more than a cup) with warm water to make it more pourable and gently remove the corny cap and pour it in. I do not stir it as I don't want to introduce any micro organisms nor do I want to disturb the CO2 that is absorbed into solution. Once I get the cap back on I gently swirl the keg to give it a little mix. Bear in mind I make semi sweet sparkling melomels hence the self priming I do. Then I give them a month for the honey to mix well at room temperature before going into a fridge to cold crash and age for an additional 4 to 5 months before serving. Maybe crazy and a lengthy process but everyone loves my melomels including myself. Relax have a homebrew and respect the mead.

 

[bernardsmith]

I removed the yeast two weeks ago and it has been in secondary with the puree. When in secondary I did not see any signs of additional fermentation or bubbling. What is the consensus about adding the additional 6 pounds of honey without the potassium sorbate (as I don’t have it) and leaving the puree?

When you state that you "removed" the yeast two weeks ago, are you saying that you used sterile filters to filter the wine and so any cell or particle that was larger than about .45 micron has been removed? If so you did likely remove most of the yeast cells. If by "removal" you meant you racked your mead then there is probably not less than 50% of the yeast culture you pitched still quite viable in the mead waiting to find some more fermentables to work on. If this were me the last thing I would do is add more fermentables to your wine , unless, that is you want the ABV to increase.