Cranberry orange christmas mead

[npipich]

This is a recipe I came up with when trying to create the perfect Christmas mead. If it works it should finish semi-sweet with a light cranberry tartness and lots of spice notes. I plan on bottling in February and cracking the first one open on Christmas Day 2015.

Christmas mead
One gallon batch

1/2 cup sliced ginger root
2 cinnamon sticks
1/2 tsp. whole allspice berries
2 whole cloves
2 whole orange zest
Juice of one orange
6 oz. Fresh organic cranberries

Make a tea with 1/3 gallon of water using above ingredients. Steep on low heat for 1 hour.

3 pounds honey
1 quart pure unsweetened cranberry juice
Lalvin 71B-1122
Yeast nutrient

Cool tea to 85 degrees. Add honey and yeast nutrient. Stir until dissolved. Transfer to fermentor and top up with spring water. Pitch yeast at 70 degrees.


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[sheepcat]

Interesting. Do you cook the cranberries, or just put them in raw?

 

[npipich]

Sorry for the time it took to reply. I rinsed and froze the cranberries first to kill off any wild yeast or bacteria. They were added to the tea and simmered for an hour. The mead is in tertiary now and it's tart and very sweet. Almost exactly what I was looking for

 

[Chris_The_Rogue]

2 whole orange zest?

 

[npipich]

The zest from two oranges. You only need the juice from one. I wanted to get the flavor of orange without adding too much acid to the must

 

[Vengeance]

So after simmering the tea, did you just add the tea to the honey or dump the whole thing in, fruit and spices? Also, it's Nov 2016. How did it turn out?

 

[npipich]

Thanks for the reply I nearly forgot I posted this. I strained the tea before mixing it with the honey and then poured that into a sanitized fermenter and topped with spring water to make a gallon. I should tell you that the fermentation stalled while the mead was extremely sweet. The OG was at 1.130 according to my notes, which is extremely high. The mead stopped fermenting at 1.065 which was too sweet. I think that the cranberry juice added too much acid for the yeast to really take off. After trying to restart fermentation several times I finally just ended up making a second gallon of dry mead that I fermented completely before blending with the stalled mead. After tasting however I think that I used entirely too much spice to begin with. The blended mead was very spicy even with the gallon of unspiced dry mead added later. After over 3 years this mead has matured into something delightful. The cranberry is very pronounced and tart while the spice has really deminished into a lingering bitterness on the pallate. The mead finished at 1.018 which gave it a slight sweetness at bottling. Now the sweetness is more pronounced and clashes wonderfully with the sour cranberry. I think that if I were to make this again, I would either cut the spices, fruit, and cranberry juice in half. Or I would keep that all the same, double the honey and make a 2 gallon batch. I would also probably stagger the yeast nutrient additions to keep fermentation going and add some wine tanin to give it a better mouthfeel.