Blackberry Mead (Melomel)

[WarrantedFED]

I just made a batch of this using a half flat (about 3-4 lbs) of great big black berries and about 4.5 lbs of huckleberries. All were mashed up pretty well and added to the boil for about 5 minutes.

I followed another recipe for mead that calls for 1 tsp of citric acid and 1 tsp of pectic enzyme. I figured the former would be okay to add and the latter would only help the yeast.

I plan on leaving the brew in the primary for about a month then transferring to a secondary onto an additional half flat of pasteurized and mashed black berries.

I also want it to be extra spritzy so I will be adding a little more than a cup of honey for priming when I decide to bottle.

Overkill? I don't know, but it should be quite good.

How long is too long for the brew to sit on the fruit in primary and secondary?

Thanks all,

-Will

I just transferred the huckleberry / blackberry mead to the secondary.

I was able to get my hands on a few more pounds of huckleberries. After letting them hit 160 degrees for a few minutes and mashing them, I then carefully poured into the carboy and racked the mead on top of it.

I'll probably let it sit for a month in there and then do a tertiary transfer.

 

[WarrantedFED]

This stuff is awesome!!! It didn't carb up at all in the bottles, but no worries, it knocked my socks off!!

 

[MarsColonist]

I finally did a 6 gallon batch with 9# frozen blackberries in a nylon bag, crushed; poured boiling water over them, waited a day, added pectinase, waited another 24 hrs and pulled the bag and squeezed. Added 6# wild blackberry honey (SG 1049). Pitched D254 @ 63-65°F. Finished at 1.000. Stabilized and backsweetened to 1010 with more blackberry honey. 6.5% ABV. Kegged and crashed, then coarse filtered to another keg. Force carbonated to 3 volumes. Delicious in 6 weeks.

 

[YeastieBoys]

I can attest, this is a good mead. I did this recipe, but added an additional 1 lb. of blackberries. I killed the yeast at month 5. I also back-sweetened with 2 lbs of clover-1 lb at fifth month, another lb. at the sixth month. It turned out awesome. It is semi-sweet.

My homebrew buddy knocked down a 12 ounce bottle of it in 5 mins.

 

[chriselgui]

I was going to wait to post this, but judging from the success at a recent NYE party I thought it would be better sooner than later.

Yeast: Lalvin K1-V1116 Yeast Starter: no Batch Size (Gallons): 5 Original Gravity: 1.098 Final Gravity: 0.998

5 gallon batch

First, freeze 8 pounds blackberries (fresh preferrable). More is okay too I would think.

12 lbs Clover honey
water to 5 gallons

I pasteurized at near-boil temps while skimming foam off the top, about 15 minutes.

9/7/08: Added 4.5 teaspoon yeast nutrient, pitched yeast (Lalvin K1-V1116). OG=1.098
week 1: 1.064, added 1 tspn nutrient
week 2: 1.026
week 3: 1.008. Racked to secondary onto 7 pounds of thawed & crushed blackberries, plus 1.5 tspn nutrient. Topped off to 5 gallons with water.
week 4: 0.998, racked off blackberries to secondary.
week 8: racked to tertiary for clearing.

Bottled on 12/6/2008. I added another pound of crushed blackberries at bottling (soaked in the bottling bucket for .5 hours in a bag).

For still: Add stabilizer, wait one week, add 1 cup honey, bottle.
For sparkling: Add 2/3 cup honey, bottle immediately (beer or champagne bottles).

I just tried the sparkling mead (melomel) after 1 month in the bottle, and it's very, very good. Light carbonation, good blackberry and honey aroma. Color is light pink. Highly recommended. This went over really, really well at a NYE party!

Are you adding the blackberries to the must at week 3 or have they been in the whole time?

 

[rhogg]

Blackberries taste terrible when picked too soon. The birds and bees seem to know all too well exactly when they are ripe. Turning black is not the tell-tale sign. They need to site for 24-48 hours (on the bush) after they turn black. When harvested at the correct time they are sweet and mellow with only a slight acidic taste. This is of course hard to do because they all ripen at different times over the course of a couple months. What I do is check the bush daily and lightly feel the blackened berries. The ones that are ready feel like they are about to burst. They also detach with the slightest effort.

 

[sgraham602]

Gonna make this in the next day or so. I'm planning on adding the 8lbs of berries to the primary, then maybe another 2 or 3 lbs in the secondary. The store didn't have 8lbs of blackberries, so i got 5lbs of blackberris and 3 lbs of cherry berry blend (dark cherries, blackberries, blueberries, black raspberries).

 

[lpsumo]

I have a ghetto version of this on the go right now. It's my second mead so I basically made JAOM with 4 cups of blackberries and no orange (1 gallon batch).

I started it on Sept 29th, then racked it onto thawed berries on Nov 8th. It's still bubbling a little so I guess it's still fermenting.

My question is: Do I need to push the berries down into the liquid? they are quite buoyant and some are near the neck sitting out of the liquid on a bed of berries. They shouldn't get mouldy should they?

 

[RebelliousVanilla]

I want to try this out but wondering if it is very volatile when first starting it out?

 

[WarrantedFED]

This stuff is awesome!!! It didn't carb up at all in the bottles, but no worries, it knocked my socks off!!

Just finished my last bottle, it had mellowed out and tasted awesome. In the beginning it had almost a merlot taste, but that was gone by the time I got down to the last bottle...

 

[WarrantedFED]

I just made a batch of this using a half flat (about 3-4 lbs) of great big black berries and about 4.5 lbs of huckleberries. All were mashed up pretty well and added to the boil for about 5 minutes.

I followed another recipe for mead that calls for 1 tsp of citric acid and 1 tsp of pectic enzyme. I figured the former would be okay to add and the latter would only help the yeast.

I plan on leaving the brew in the primary for about a month then transferring to a secondary onto an additional half flat of pasteurized and mashed black berries.

I also want it to be extra spritzy so I will be adding a little more than a cup of honey for priming when I decide to bottle.

Overkill? I don't know, but it should be quite good.

How long is too long for the brew to sit on the fruit in primary and secondary?

Thanks all,

-Will

I just ended up with 5.5 lbs of huckleberries from this year's venture through the high elevations of NE Washington. I will make this again, adding 2.5 lbs of big bountiful blackberries. I will only use 9 lbs of fireweed honey this time. When I add the berries this time I will purée with Woodinville Whiskey brand Peabody Vodka via the Vitamix.

And lesson learned, didn't want to make it too sweet so that it wouldn't carb up at bottling.

 

[Harguf]

Curious. Has anyone used blackberry honey in making a blackberry melomel?

One of my local sources has 15 lbs of blackberry honey. I'd like to put it to use making a melomel.

 

[JMizak]

Trying out this recipe. Make sure you have headroom in your secondary when transferring the mead onto the crushed berries otherwise you will have a volcano of berries. I would recommend using a bucket as your secondary rather than a carboy for ease of getting the berries into it rather than through a 1" hole. PRO tips haha.