blueberry melomel help

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andrew101

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im am wanting to do 1 gal blueberry mead, i have 1.5 lbs of blueberries and 2 lbs of honey. Im thinking of boiling the blueberries and pressing and add the juice to the honey in the primary and trashing the remaining blueberry.
 
i wouldn't boil the blueberries. you'll set the pectin, resulting in a hazy and slightly thickened mead. will also make the fruit flavor more like blueberry jam instead of the fresh fruit (but maybe you want that?)

personally - just my opinion - YMMV - etc. - i would do one of the following:

A. cold-press: freeze berries. press the berries and use the juice to dilute honey. pro: maximizes yield, as almost everything in the 1-gallon jug will be final product (just some yeast you'll wanna leave behind). cons: won't be getting benefits of soaking whole fruit in the mead (ex: tannins, more complex flavors, etc).

B. whole fruit: freeze berries. start fermenting honey by itself (along with nutrients, etc.) leaving enough space to add berries later. once honey-only primary fermentation starts slowing down, add thawed berries to fermenter. swirl fermenter at least once a day to re-wet/re-submerge floating fruit (equivalent of "punching down the cap"). wait for berries to be fully fermented, then cold-crash to sink them. rack mead off top, leaving berries behind. pros & cons: opposite of cold-press approach.

if you are concerned about the fruit causing infection, you could always soak/spray them with star san, or blanch them (drop into 180*F water for just a few seconds - be quick, don't leave them long enough to cook!). i wouldn't worry about it, never caused any issues for me, but different strokes...

i use the whole fruit approach as i believe it yields the best flavors, gets the most fruit into the mead, etc.
 
thank for the input, im leaning towards option 'A' for simplicity this time around.
other question, regarding secondary. what exactly is it? still fermenting? do i add more sugar (fruits, honey)?
any other things you think a beginner needs to know.
Thank you
 
Secondary is when your mead (Melomel) in this case is almost finished.

You rack from primary when you are pretty near complete (I rack off the lees and fruit at about 1.010 SG) and let it finish in secondary.

Secondary is where I add additional fruit, tannins or acid to round out the favor.
 
thank for the input, im leaning towards option 'A' for simplicity this time around.
cool! seems to me like option A is more complicated due to the need to press the fruit, as opposed to just adding it as-is, but whatever works for you :)

other question, regarding secondary. what exactly is it? still fermenting? do i add more sugar (fruits, honey)?
so this gets a bit muddled, since folks can talk about two different but related things when they say "secondary": secondary fermentation vs. secondary fermentor.

secondary fermentation is when you have a second round of fermentation after the initial - or primary - round. for example, if after you've fermented a beer with a standard ale yeast, you then add brettanomyces and let that age out, the brett will be responsible for your secondary fermentation. adding fruit to a completed fermentation will also kick off a secondary fermentation.

a secondary fermentor is simply another fermentation vessel (jug, carboy, conical, etc.) that you transfer your beverage into. for example, after fermentation of wine is complete, you can clarify the wine by letting the lees drop to the bottom then racking the wine to a secondary vessel. wait a few weeks or months, more stuff will drop out, and you rack to a tertiary vessel, etc, until you have a cleared wine (there are also clearing additive you can use to speed up clarification). some folks do this with mead, too: ferment in a 6.5 gallon carboy, once it's done and some lees has dropped out you rack to a 5 gallon secondary carboy and let it bulk-age in there.

secondary fermentation can be done in a secondary fermentor, but it doesn't have to. also, you can move your beverage to a secondary vessel without having a secondary fermentation (see example at end of previous paragraph - the mead will not re-ferment in the 5 gal carboy). complications arise when people use "secondary" without being clear what they mean by it: fermentation, vessel, or both?

any other things you think a beginner needs to know.
nutrients: you need them. honey and a little fruit juice will not contain enough nutrients for the yeast to complete the job (at least not well). as a starting point, look up "TOSNA" (tailored organic staggered nutrient addition). adding nutrients is the difference between having something drinkable in weeks, vs. months or a year+.
 
thank you all for your advice, one more question, when should i refridgerate my mead?
 
It all depends on your personal preference. Some of the meads i produce i believe are better refrigerated others not.

Had some friends over last night had a cherry kegged and carbonated and of course refrigerated and a still lemon i like on ice but both my friends prefered it room temp.

I would refrigerate for storage only if i had some residual sugar and didnt, remove or pasteurize. (I dont add the chemicals to inhibit..) Slows down the remaining yeast but believe it or not in 3 to 6 months they still will very slowly eat a bit of the sugar. Lalvin D47 and Red Stars Cotes Des Blanc tend to do that. Omegas Hot Head ale yeast doesnt.
 
when should i refridgerate my mead?
not until all fermentation is done. once your air lock produces no more bubbles, wait another 2-3 days, then you can cold-crash your mead: by putting in the fridge, or anywhere colder than it was for fermentation, the yeast will flocculate and other gunk (collectively known as lees) will drop to the bottom of your fermentor. the colder the mead and/or the longer you wait = the clearer the mead. when you're ready to package, carefully rack the mead off the top and leave the lees behind.

once you're ready to serve your mead, refrigerated or not is a personal call. i like my meads lightly chilled but not as cold as beer. YMMV.
 
Question on nutrients, can i use the lees or yeast tcake as an added nutrient, is it helpful? if so how would i do it?
 
Question on nutrients, can i use the lees or yeast tcake as an added nutrient, is it helpful? if so how would i do it?
Using dead yeast as a nutrient is pretty easy, add it to some water (a cup or so) and then bring to a boil for a minute or so. Let it cool completely

Commercial nutrients are way easier to add in calibrated amounts.
 
what videojunkie said: add a little water, boil it up to sanitize and kill the old yeast, cold-crash to let stuff settle out (i.e. store in the fridge for a few days), decant the liquid on top and add the solids as nutrient. be advised that lees isn't just yeast: there are fibers, proteins and other detritus from the previous fermentation. the yeast is beneficial, this other gunk not so much. if lees is the only thing you've got then do it, but using some commercial yeast nutrient will ensure that you only add the good stuff.
 
ok, so i have LD Carlson DAP (assuming DAP is diammonium phosphate). What would you recommend i add to the primary with it?
sorry to be annoying but if you could give me specific namebrands, prefferably available on amazon too.
thank you. on a side note i just racked mead to seconday and added vanilla bean (not the melomel i asked about previously)
 
^ yup - Fermaid O + Go-Ferm = success. if you're going to get into mead making, you're going to need those two for every batch - might be worth investing in the above-linked bulk amounts.
 
With the DAP just go by the package instructions, LD carlson also has an Energizer that works well with DAP, use a 3rds or 4ths addition schedule and you will be fine. Just be sure to calculate you sugar breaks and additions so all the DAP goes in before the 10% abv point, usually around the 1/3 sugar break.
 
what is the desired end gravity?
depends on the recipe and your personal preferences :D

a mead will ferment down below 1.000 if the yeast is healthy and hasn't reached its alcohol tolerance (which may be higher or lower than what is the yeast manufacturer states). if you want something other than a bone-dry mead, you'll want to either 1) make the OG high enough that yeast will crap out due to high alcohol before all sugars are consumed (risky since you don't know for sure when the yeast will crap out), or, preferred: 2) let the mead ferment out to 1.000 or less, stabilize using sorbate and metabisulfite, then back-sweeten (typically with honey).
 
Primarily you have an ideal abv that you want to hit like 10.5 for example, you calculate what your starting gravity should be through a brew calculator you can source online. It will then tell you if your starting gravity is 1.080 and it ferments all the way dry, down to 1.000 then your abv will be 10.5%. water is 1.000 gravity as a standard because it has no sugars in it to raise density of the liquid, which is what causes the hydrometer to float higher or lower. If your mead ferments all the way down to 1.000 and stays there for a week or two it's done, or you can stabilize and back sweeten (add honey back in until it's sweet enough for your liking.) Ideally let everything ferment out then finish, trying to stop fermentation midway can be a bit random where it ends up.
 
it looked like fermenatation had stopped or severly slowed so i checked and am at .993. OG was 1.08 which should put me at around 11%, so i went ahead and added my blueberries
 
More beginner questions.
1. First mead had a hot alcohol taste. Is that from lack of aging (i racked and refridgerated, and drank) or nutrients or something else?
2. I have bentonite for clearing if needed. Read somewhere that you can add bentonite at the same time as pitching the yeast. True?
 
More beginner questions.
1. First mead had a hot alcohol taste. Is that from lack of aging (i racked and refridgerated, and drank) or nutrients or something else?
2. I have bentonite for clearing if needed. Read somewhere that you can add bentonite at the same time as pitching the yeast. True?
1. fermenting too hot and lack of nutrients can both lead to hot alcohol flavor. aging helps. before the adoption of nutrients and temp control by homebrewers, it was common to ferment a mead then wait a year or more for it to "age out", i.e. lose all the off-flavors caused by those poor fermentation practices... but thanks to temp control and nutes, we're now ready to drink it in weeks :)
2. never used bentonite so can't help you there, but i've read that you can indeed add it at yeast pitch. i believe you need to use more when adding early. personally, i've never fined my mead. it always clears on its own with cold and a little time.
 
More beginner questions.
1. First mead had a hot alcohol taste. Is that from lack of aging (i racked and refridgerated, and drank) or nutrients or something else?
2. I have bentonite for clearing if needed. Read somewhere that you can add bentonite at the same time as pitching the yeast. True?
1. Hot alcohol taste is normal in a young mead. Age will cure this. What you are looking for is the absence of bad or off flavors.

2. I add bentonite at the beginning of aging. It will noticeably clear your mead in about a week or so. Although it depends greatly on what is clouding the mead. Protein haze is the result of fruit pectin protein and requires the addition of enzymes to eat the protein that can then be cleared with bentonite or other clarification methods.
 
All the kit wines come with a small package of bentonite. They have you mix it in at the very beginning, when you mix the kit up before you even pitch yeast
 
im going to start a 2 gal batch tomorrow so ill ad bentonite to primary on that one. I got 2 1gal carboys now (vanilla and a blueberry) still slowly fermenting in secondary. i curious if i should add bentonite and then refridgerate and then rack. what is yalls preferred way?
 
- update -
i added the bentonite and cold crashed and rack it today. looks great, nice and clear but not very tasty.
going to try to let it rest for a couple months if i can.
My other 2 gal starter i did 1 gal cinnamon apple in secondary and 1 gal traditional.
 
- update -
i added the bentonite and cold crashed and rack it today. looks great, nice and clear but not very tasty.
going to try to let it rest for a couple months if i can.
My other 2 gal starter i did 1 gal cinnamon apple in secondary and 1 gal traditional.
Probably take a bit to age. You might add some additional Blueberry concentrate to bump the flavor
 
but not very tasty.
that is a downside of pressing and only using the juice, vs. soaking the whole fruit: you're essentially throwing away a lot of the berry flavor by only using the juice. and on the whole, blueberries aren't the strongest flavored berry to start with... but definitely give it some time, some other flavors might subside creating more space for the berries to shine through.

thanks for the update!
 
that is a downside of pressing and only using the juice, vs. soaking the whole fruit: you're essentially throwing away a lot of the berry flavor by only using the juice. and on the whole, blueberries aren't the strongest flavored berry to start with... but definitely give it some time, some other flavors might subside creating more space for the berries to shine through.

thanks for the update!
i have a little over 5 lbs of frozen blueberries i was thinking about a wine or something. any ideas or anyone have a recipe they would like to share?
 
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