Prickly Pear Mead - Freeze or Boil?

Greetings, all. I'm getting all geared to brew up my first prickly pear mead. Harvested the fruit yesterday and plan on brewing this weekend. From what I've read, including (The Complete Meadmaker and Charlie Papazian's recipe), there are a few different methods; particularly pertaining to fruit additions, methods of sanitizing the fruit/juice, amounts added to primary and secondary.

I ended up with about 6 lbs of seedless Prickly Pear puree - hope its enough, I don't want to pick any more! Passed the whole fruit through a food mill which separated the seeds from the pulp/juice nicely.

Here are some pics of me picking a peck of prickly pears:

http://imgur.com/a/7MPb5

Questions:

How do I sanitize the puree? Is freezing sufficient? I read heating destroys some of its flavor.

Do I need to strain the juice further or will the puree settle out in the fermentors?

EDIT: Here's some pics of me picking a peck of prickly pears.

How much should I add in primary? Puree or Juice?

How mich should I add in the secondary? Puree or juice?

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Here's the recipe for 5 gallons: Anything look out of whack??

22lbs. Mesquite Honey

6lbs. Prickly Pear Puree - Seedless

2-5 Juiced Lemons

Yeast On Hand: 5 x 5oz. Packs of Lalvin 71B-1122 - I.N.R.A - Narbonne
Yeast On Hand: 3 x 5oz. Packs of Lalvin EC118 - Champagne (France)

2.5 tsp Pectine Enzyme

5 tsp. Yeast Nutrient (food grade urea and diammonium phosphate)
2.5 tsp Yeast Energizer (diammonium phosphate, springcell,magnesium sulphate)
1 capsule White Labs Servomyces

Are all these nutrient additions necessary? Recommendations?

I'll aerate must with drill attachment/wand 3x's a day during primary fermentation.

This will be my first mead, so any input is appreciated.

 

I have a 5 gallon batch going right now. I usually freeze the tunas but this time my son took my bucket to work and 'motorboated' them with a big hand held machine ( puree -er ? ) about a gallon of juice was made. half into primary and half into secondary. he triple filtered the juice.
All your ingredients sound good. I don't think you can screw it up , I 've done boiling, freezing and this year just purée. It always comes out good. I believe that boiling them, the color tends to go away over time. I also find using that much honey makes it taste like cough syrup but it mellows with age. I only used 18 lbs of honey this year in a 5 gallon batch. Don't fret, it is all good.

 

Good advice, thanks. I have a couple questions though. Did you triple filter the juice through a grain bag or something else?

I was thinking of lowering the honey to about 20 lbs. and trying for a FG of 1.015 or so. What FG did your mead finish at? Do you cold crash or just let it ferment out all the way?

Cheers!

 

My son told me it went thru a strainer, then cheese cloth then thru some kind of filter, I believe some kind of fine mesh. He is a sous chef at a local resort and they use equipment that I never even heard of.
I have read that if you strain the purée then stick it in a refrigerator the small pieces will float on top, so you can skim them off.
F.G. of 1.015 is very good. I have never cold crashed, just let them go. Unfortunately it takes forever.

 

Good stuff. Thanks, man. I recently read that adding puree is ok and will precipitate eventually. I'd love to know how your latest batch came out. Keep in touch.

 

Cheffing isn't winemaking. While commercial kitchens will have the kind of kit we can only dream of. The whole point of the exercise is not to break the seeds/pips, as that can lead to a bitterness being imparted by the ferment.

It does seem that the easiest way to handle fruit that has seeds/pips too small to remove by hand is to just freeze (about a week usually sorts out breaking down the cell walls so the yeast can get to the juice), then thaw.

If you are of a nature to be a little OCD and insist on getting as accurate a gravity reading as possible at all stages of the making process, then just press the thawed out fruit.

As to how much fruit ? Just search the net for recipes that use the fruit you've chosen - a lot of recipes seem to suggest about 3 to 3.5lb of fruit to the gallon, or up to 5lb for more delicately flavoured fruit. That's a good guide to follow for quantity, as for the primary Vs secondary debate, if it's the kind of fruit where the original flavour of the fruit is preferred, then secondary is the way to go, or at least 1/3rd to 1/2 the fruit in primary and then the rest in secondary. Fruit in primary can often taste completely different once fermentation has taken place, not forgetting "cap management" being needed, especially if the fermenter vessel is likely to have issues with head space - fruit in primary batches usually need some room to rise as the fruit cap can hold a fair bit of gaseous CO2 and you don't want it (the fruit pulp/debris) from blowing out the airlock - which is why it's often suggested to start fruit batches in buckets as there's less problems with "mead eruptions"......

Oh yes, aeration. Only needed during the early stages of primary, until your gravity drops down to the 1/3rd sugar break (yes you will need a hydrometer to make the tests, along with either a wine thief or a test jar - and yes I just make sure that I sanitise my test jar and put the samples back into the batch - it's not caused me any problems doing this).

Sanitising puree/pulp/fruit can be done by using a little of the water that you're gonna brew with, then adding a campden tablet (1 crushed tablet per gallon of liquid/pulp/puree/fruit) a couple of days ahead of when you're gonna use it, which allows it to do it's thing as for the sulphites to dissipate.

Obviously I haven't worked with prickly pear, it's hard/almost impossible to obtain it here and most of us don't have enough heated glass space to try and grow some.....

 

Hey, thanks for taking the time to give me some really thorough answers to questions I had.

I'm going to grab some campden tabs today at the LHBS and brew the mead tomorrow.

I actually didn't break any seeds using this food mill. They are very hard to crack and the sieve was the perfect size. Easy peasy.

Per your advice, I'm switching out the 5 gallon carboy for a bucket. I have a 20 gallon fermenting bucket with lid. The increased surface area will expose more of the must to oxygen - and make my 3x/day aerations (1/3 sugar break) more effective.

Cheers!

 

Brilliant. Just remember that when you hit the 1/3rd mark, it's probably best to stir it up/aerate one last time, add any nutrients you need and then move it over to a carboy or similar.

Of course, you could probably get away with the large fermenter until it's finished, as it's protected by the blanket of CO2, but either way you find it the best. Secondary would have to be moved into carboy etc, because with a fruit element to the brew, the increase in possiblity of oxidation with time etc etc....

 

I just finished my brew day. There's a pictorial here:

http://imgur.com/a/7MPb5

I used 22lbs of honey. Did not heat or boil. Hope I didn't screw up. Time will tell.

fatbloke: Thanks again for your sage advice, ol'chap!

 

SO not fair! Mine have man-(and woman-) eating thorns on them!!!! Thought I was goingto die last year before I got all te thorns out of my hands. Which went THROUGH heavy leather gloves. I may stick to my Texas persimmon. They at least don't bite back.

 

Persimmon mead sounds fantastic. They grow a lot of em around these parts. When do they come into season in your area?

Those thorny prickly pears sound heinous! I was relieved and surprised that I only had one tiny hairlike thorn to pull out of my ankle. Got lucky this time.

 

You were very lucky!! I swear I will never go prickly pear pickin again! Stickers in the soles of our shoes and leather gloves. Had to throw out both of them in the trash. I simmered my pear juice for about 15 to 20 minutes.

Kudos to the frame by frame show. I enjoyed it. By the way, great set of knives you got there in the back ground.

 

I read once that someone boiled the puree for an hour, so on my first try I did. It was rank! Boiled down like brown yuck. Tasted bitter so I threw it out and started over, doing it my way. No amount of aging was gonna make that crap taste good. Maybe I should have listed that on my list of mistakes. LOL

 

Wow, I dunno how I escaped those micro-thorns. Lucky. I wore shorts that day (dumb), and should've been wearing pants. I'm glad you enjoyed the pictorial. Hopefully other brewers who haven't made mead before will see just how easy it is. I was hoping it will be helpful to other "visual" learners out there, too. Cheers, Meadwitch!

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Anyone know if it's legal to ship whole prickly pears across state lines (pest quarantines, etc)? I have a buddy in NY who wants a few.

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In hindsight, I may have used too much honey - 22 lbs. But, when I took my OG readings, it says the must is 1.118 - which seems REALLY low for 22lbs of honey in 5 gallons of water. Does anyone know if the water content of the honey could be to blame for the low gravity reading? Is it possible I'm getting an inaccurate reading from all the PP juice/pulp?

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Also, the airlock on my bucket is not bubbling despite lots of activity in the bucket. The lid doesn't make a perfect seal, so I think the CO2 might just be leading out between the lid and the bucket lip. I guess it's nothing to worry about so long as I rack to secondary when primary fermentation slows to a crawl.

 

I doubt its the water content of the honey. If you actually used 5 gallons of water, and your fruit puree, and the water from yeast hydration, and the volume of honey, the total volume of your batch is probably much closer to 7 gallons (most 5 gal batches call for honey plus 4 gallons of water). If this is the case, your gravity is where it should be.

I would try to tape or seal the bucket if possible. If not, definitely rack to secondary containers when fermentation slows.

Sounds delicious, i want to try a similar mead soon!

 

Here's a quick update on this Prickly Pear Mead - Just had a small sample of it tonight.

So I realized that I messed up on my recipe. I added 5 gals of water to the honey ... instead of adding water enough to make 5 gallons. So, I decided to add another 8 MORE lbs +/- of mesquite honey to the fermenting must and another 8# of prickly pear puree. Stepped nutrient additions and punchdowns on cap for first 40% of fermentation.

Fermented in primary for 30 days. I ended up with about a gallon of lees. Racked to secondary on Nov. 25. Final yield = 6.5 gallons. FG = 1.034.





In the past month the color has changed from a brilliant maroon to clear gold. Strange because it's dark red in the carboy, but in the glass there's no hint of red.









I was worried about the flavor a couple weeks ago. Tasted boozy and sweet. I'm pleasantly surprised with the sample I drank this evening. The flavors are melding and mellowing considerably. It went from cough syrup to totally drinkable cough syrup in about a month. This will be aging for a while If it ages well I'll probably bottle it next Xmas for gifts. Maybe some oak chips on a gallon or two ...

Stoked with the results. Can't wait 'til it's ready. Thanks for the tips, cats!

 

Nicely done and the pix are great. Tell my why your using a cake pan to rehydrate the yeast? Is it what you have on hand or is it something more technical like a larger surface area thing?

 

Thanks, man. I think the cake pan was just handy.

Noticed you did a triple berry mead. I just brewed a 5 gal batch w 21lbs honey, 12 lbs rasp, black and blueberry mix, 96oz black currant juice and 8 lbs of strawberries. Just finished fermenting and smells awesome! Do you add fruit to your secondary fermenter, too? Cheers!

 

the puree looks beautiful. I've wanted to make a prickly pear mead for awhile now and you're giving me that itch again.

 

I did not add fruit during the subsequent rackings after fermentation on the blueberry or the triple berry. The blueberry turned out fantastic. Good color and great taste. And I'm expecting that it will get better with some age. We will see if the color holds up. I'm doing the triple berry the same way so I'm hoping to duplicate the results.

The blueberry and triple berry were with the fruit just floating in the primary bucket. The secondary racking was a royal pain. The strawberry and the second blueberry batch were both done with the fruit in a nylon bag during primary and the racking was a breeze. Part of my trepidation of using fruit in secondary (carboy) would be problems with the autosiphon during any subsequent rackings or bottling. I have tried using a small nylon bag over the end of the autosiphon with mixed results.

I see you are using carboys for secondary and wonder what you are doing to facilitate your siphoning?

 

Since we were already talking about when to add fruit, during the monthly racking/step feeding, my Strawberry mead tasted fine, but was missing the aroma and flavor I was hoping for. So it seemed like a perfect time to apply some of the knowledge I have been acquiring from the mead "animals" here at HBT. I racked it onto another 10lbs of frozen/thawed strawberries, 1lb strawberry preserves and 1.5 lbs of honey. SG = .995. I will check again in a month.

 

I used a big ass muslin bag for all the fruit in my Triple Berry mead. The Prickly Pear puree obviously went right into primary w/out a bag. Racking was a little frustrating on the PP mead. Like you, I wrapped the tip of my racking cane with a muslin bag, with mixed results - took a while and I probably left about a half gallon in the primary.


Racking the Triple Berry to secondary was easy because all the big fruit matter was trapped in the bag.


I recently moved and haven't seen my batches of mead for about 3 months. I have a friend filling the airlocks while I'm away. The last time I tasted the Tripleberry it tasted pretty dry and not too sweet. The aroma and flavor of the berries were present but not as pronounced as I'd like it to be. Have you had a chance to taste your Triple Berry with the added fruit yet? Interested to know how much flavor/aroma you got out of it in the end.


Sorry it took so long to respond, I haven't checked this site in a while. Cheers!


Edit: I found some pics of my Triple Berry brew day with the bag I used for the fruit. http://imgur.com/a/cT3VC