Blending Mead?

[Damian]

Hi, I have brewed a mead. It is for the extended family's consumption. Unfortunately, they find it too sweet and too high in alcohol and the main person is not overly keen on honey. I would like to lower the alcohol content and introduce some berry flavour. Just an easy drinker.
My mead is a 5 gallons batch of orange blossom honey. I used D-47 yeast. I cant remember if the OG was 1.10 or 1.11 my fg is 1.014. It has been sitting in a keg for 9 months, aging. I lost my notes but from what I can remember I used fermaid A, racked once and swirled the fermenter for the first four days. I'm not sure about how much honey I used and what volumes (doh). After fermentation finished I racked to a keg and sealed. Been there for 9 months.

I was thinking, if I fermented some blueberries or strawberries in another 5 gallon batch and than I could combined that with the mead. Fermentation may kick off again in the mead but I'm okay with that. I would like it to be between 5% to 7% alcohol, when blended. Even if it was a bit lower I wouldn't mind. I'm more worried about a healthy ferment and blending without getting any off flavours. My main concerns are....

When to add the mead to the berry ferment?

Will the yeast take off with 10lbs of berry in a 5 gallon batch?

And should I go Blueberry, Strawberry or a mix?

Thanks

 

[bernardsmith]

Two pounds of fruit /gallon will make for a very watery wine. Just thinking out loud here but what you may want to do is blend the mead with apple juice. Good quality juice from pressed apples will be flavor rich and will have a natural sweetness from fruit sugars that will be around , say 1.045. If we say that your mead has an ABV of about 11% and the potential ABV of the cider is about 5 or 6% then adding the same volume of cider to the mead will reduce the total gravity to about 8%.
I would, I think, ferment the cider as a standalone (using perhaps 71B) and when clear and fermented dry I would stabilize the mead to prevent further fermentation and then add the cider to the mead.

Now, one further option you have is to blend the two volume for volume or to use more cider than mead in the blend (further reducing the ABV and increasing the apple flavor vs orange blossom flavor - and reducing the sweetness - assuming the cider fermented dry).

If you really want to go the berry route, I would suggest that you aim for about 6-10 lbs of berries /gallon - the idea being that you are not fermenting water with a hint of fruit but are fermenting the juice extracted from the fruit (you don't dilute grape juice with water to make a grape wine ... but you dilute strawberries (a very thin flavored fruit even at the peak of ripeness) to make a strawberry wine ? )Your call... of course...

 

[Damian]

Thanks for the post bernardsmith. I sort of have my heart set on berries. I think Ill add the mead to 5 gallons of water add some berries and ferment it out. The mead has a slight carbination in the keg. I thought id get some transfer hose and pour it out through the kegerator into the fermentor. Do I have to worry about oxidization with mead?