I am looking for a recipe that uses 15 or so pounds of clover honey to produce a slightly-sweet sparkling melomel. I have not tried much mead but I am guessing from beermaking that meads with FG's around 1.015-1.02 could still be carbonated and would have a sweet taste, is that right?
I would prefer the fruit be added in the form of Oregon puree's or Alexander's concentrates. Ideally, it would just be a modified version of
Making a basic mead referred to in the sticky. I like the incorporation of newer techniques like no boils etc...
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
First read the stickies at the top of the page about yeast nutrients.
For best results use GoFerm to rehydrate the yeast, Fermaid-K and DAP as yeast nutrient in the must. The sticky describes when, and how much of these to add.
Next unless you have a keg it is not easy to get a sweet sparkling mead. Honey and fruit sugars are completely fermentable by the yeast unlike malt sugars. This means either the sugars are completely consumed and you have a dry beverage or the yeast is not active.
You can make a sparkling mead by fermenting the mead dry then bottling with some priming sugar or honey like you would beer. However the mead will be dry.
You can make a sweet mead two ways. One is to make a must such that the yeast will exceed its alcohol tolerance before consuming all the sugar. Or you can ferment a mead dry then stabilize using Sorbate and sulfite before adding additional sugars. The stabilization prevents the yeast from restarting fermentation. Both methods result in still mead.
Using Vinters Harvest wine bases, Oregon fruit puree or Alexander's grape concentrates are all easy ways to make fruit or grape based meads. The fruits can be added with the honey in the primary ferment, or added in the secondary after the primary ferment has slowed, or even both.
One possible sweet pymet would be to take a can of Alexander's white grape concentrate, about 13# of honey and D-47 yeast. This should make a nice sweet pymet with subtle wine like flavors.
Another option would be to use 2 cans and 10# of honey.
Less honey will result in a dryer mead while more will be sweeter. 1 can with 15# should result in a sweet desert mead.
In all cases read the stickies by hightest first. There is alot of really good information.
Craig