2Q :Oak chips,raspberry honey

[Flimish-viking]

If you want to add some oak chips to your brew to add some more bouquet to your mead. At wich point do you ad them on the process?


Anyone used raspberry honey to create a mead? Atm i,m brewing a batch with 3kg off that honey and added raspberries to it. After i added melomel yeast and vita ferm f it really goes verry well. Any advice on thid?

 

[SerifSansSerif]

Have raspberry honey. And very similar blackberry blossom honey, which is brewing right now in a blackberry melomel. I used canned puree for my fruit as it's a bit hard for me to find frozen right now. It works great, and the only thing I had to do is add a bit of acid recently because for whatever reason, the fruit lacked it (and honey doesn't really have much of an acidic flavor)

Raspberry/Blackberry honey is brighter and cleaner tasting than other honeys. Well worth the investment over clover. (and, quite frankly, compared to the prices of grapes, cider, or fruit, mead isn't that expensive to brew).

Go for raw if you can.

As for yeast? I prefer wine yeasts.

If you're adding the raspberries later, make sure to add yeast nutrient.

Oak chips I've never used, but oak flavor usually comes from aging in barrels, so my guess is during the aging period if you bulk age, or, right before bottling if you plan on bottling.

 

[fuelish]

I add oak well after ferment is complete, after a racking or two..or more, depends...when it's in it's final destination before bottling and let age on the oak until you get the oak flavor you want (which, of course, involves taste tests )