Fig melomel

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MO55

MO
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Hello all,
I am new here and am looking for help. I have 6 lbs of figs that I cut in half and froze. I would like to make some melomel but am not sure where to start. Can I get 2 gallons out of 6 lbs of figs? Looking for an ingredient list, how to proceed, any suggestions, etc. I’m a home brewer but have never made mead or melomel. Thank you in advance for any assistance.
 
OK...so not a lot of info out there on melomel I guess. One of my Dad’s sayings was “do something, even if it’s wrong...at least you tried...so...OK...here we go. I watched probably 15 YouTube videos and took bits of advice from all of them. Yesterday, I warmed up 6 lbs of honey with 2 quarts of fresh, spring water. I purchased the honey ($44.00) from a local bee keeper. I learned they call what they do “apiculture”. Anyway, as I said, I warmed up the honey and water...didn’t boil it. Just enough that it became one syrupy concoction. I filled the carboloy up to 2 1/2 gallons of water. Pitched a sachet of VR21 wine yeast and after 24 hours she’s a bubbling and is now honey Meade. I’ll report here with any triumphs or DA mistakes BUT....hopefully by May, we’ll have a product we can drink and say “Yeah Baby!!!” Stay posted!
 
OK...so not a lot of info out there on melomel I guess. One of my Dad’s sayings was “do something, even if it’s wrong...at least you tried...so...OK...here we go. I watched probably 15 YouTube videos and took bits of advice from all of them. Yesterday, I warmed up 6 lbs of honey with 2 quarts of fresh, spring water. I purchased the honey ($44.00) from a local bee keeper. I learned they call what they do “apiculture”. Anyway, as I said, I warmed up the honey and water...didn’t boil it. Just enough that it became one syrupy concoction. I filled the carboloy up to 2 1/2 gallons of water. Pitched a sachet of VR21 wine yeast and after 24 hours she’s a bubbling and is now honey Meade. I’ll report here with any triumphs or DA mistakes BUT....hopefully by May, we’ll have a product we can drink and say “Yeah Baby!!!” Stay posted!
Whoops, sorry there’s a shortage of response, perhaps because it would be better in the mead forum.
I’ve never worked with fig as a mead ingredient, but the typical way of adding fruit is to do a secondary. The amount of fruit flavor you’ll get from 6 pounds of fresh figs is likely going to be subtle. The good news is you could add dried figs later if you want more flavor.
 
Still in the freezer for now. The YouTube advice that seemed to make sense to me was from a guy that makes a lot of mead and melomel. His advice (if you are a beginner mead/melomel maker as I am) was to ferment just the honey for 2-4 weeks and then move it to a fresh fermentation bucket. That way, he explained, there is less chance of any bacteria on the fruit spoiling your batch when you add the fruit because you’re putting it into a mixture that contains alcohol. I took the advice since this is my first attempt at mead melomel because the honey was expensive and the figs were a gift from my next door neighbor. I really want my first attempt to work and not end up ruining the honey or figs. Then...I’m supposed to leave the figs in to ferment for an additional 30 days. Thank you for your interest though hottpeper13...I hope this works!
 
Whoops, sorry there’s a shortage of response, perhaps because it would be better in the mead forum.
I’ve never worked with fig as a mead ingredient, but the typical way of adding fruit is to do a secondary. The amount of fruit flavor you’ll get from 6 pounds of fresh figs is likely going to be subtle. The good news is you could add dried figs later if you want more flavor.
Thank you...I’ll remember that when I try again. I was just working with what I have.
 
First off, it sounds like you have a good start.

Couple of questions:

did you take a hydrometer reading?

Did you add any nutrients to the must?

An inexpensive (<$20) hydrometer set will help you immensely in tracking your meads progress.

Second, honey is a nutritional desert for your yeast friends. Adding nutrients (Fermaid, DAP, etc) helps keep your yeast happy, and happy yeast make clean alcohol. Good news is that for a 3 gallon batch, you don't need much.

With regards to the fruit, I am assuming that we're talking about fresh figs and not dried. Freezing them was a great first step. I've never done figs before, but you will probably want to dice them but not put them in a blender to maximize your surface area. Just be prepared to filter the finished product as the seeds are pretty small and they may add a bitter flavor.
 
Just a thought, I prep my fruit( cleaning, then slicing or dicing) then in a mesh bag with a good dunk in the sanitizer bucket,let drain then into a zip lok and in the freezer. I put my fruit in the primary because fruit has vitamins and minerals that I think benefit the yeast.
 
First off, it sounds like you have a good start.

Couple of questions:

did you take a hydrometer reading?

Did you add any nutrients to the must?

An inexpensive (<$20) hydrometer set will help you immensely in tracking your meads progress.

Second, honey is a nutritional desert for your yeast friends. Adding nutrients (Fermaid, DAP, etc) helps keep your yeast happy, and happy yeast make clean alcohol. Good news is that for a 3 gallon batch, you don't need much.

With regards to the fruit, I am assuming that we're talking about fresh figs and not dried. Freezing them was a great first step. I've never done figs before, but you will probably want to dice them but not put them in a blender to maximize your surface area. Just be prepared to filter the finished product as the seeds are pretty small and they may add a bitter flavor.
Thank you. I did take an OG reading...it was 1.00. Also, I did use 3 teaspoons of Fermax yeast nutrient...it’s a 2 1/2 gallon batch. They are fresh figs...a gift from my next door neighbor. I read somewhere that cutting them in two and freezing them helps. The article stated that freezing any fruit you use causes the cell walls to rupture and you’ll get more juice that way. It’s my first batch so I’m reading and getting as much advice as I can. Although I’m an experienced home brewer for beer, this is my first batch of mead/melomel and I really appreciate everyone’s help.
 
Just a thought, I prep my fruit( cleaning, then slicing or dicing) then in a mesh bag with a good dunk in the sanitizer bucket,let drain then into a zip lok and in the freezer. I put my fruit in the primary because fruit has vitamins and minerals that I think benefit the yeast.
Thank you...there were many videos I watched on YouTube and the reason I decided to go with adding the fruit later was simply because the guy in the video said this way was safer for beginner mead/melomel makers. I do have a big mesh bag that I bought to put the figs in...I’m glad that both you and VideoJunkie1208 referred to slicing and dicing as your method. I was going to put them in a food processor to maximize the surface area but I won’t now. I do have a couple of additional questions...
1) Should I use Camden tablets when I add the fruit or will the alcohol content in the mead be enough to be safe? The video I watched said it’s safe but I would like your opinion.
2) Do I add more yeast when I add the fruit or will it start again on it’s own?
I’m planning on draining this into a secondary fermenter before I add the fruit. Thanks a million for your help.
 
Thank you. I did take an OG reading...it was 1.00. Also, I did use 3 teaspoons of Fermax yeast nutrient...it’s a 2 1/2 gallon batch.

IF your OG is 1.0 how much honey did you add? 1.0 is the SG of plain water. Based on my favorite calculator you should be around 1.080 with just the honey, and somewhere in the 1.1 range when you add the figs. This should set you up for a nice 12% ABV mead.

https://gotmead.com/blog/the-mead-calculator/
 
1) Should I use Camden tablets when I add the fruit or will the alcohol content in the mead be enough to be safe? The video I watched said it’s safe but I would like your opinion.
2) Do I add more yeast when I add the fruit or will it start again on it’s own?
I’m planning on draining this into a secondary fermenter before I add the fruit. Thanks a million for your help.

1: you should sanitize the fruit before you add to your mead. The risk of getting some kind of infection is pretty high with fresh fruits. I would add the fruit and camden tablets to your secondary before racking, giving the camden time to outgas before racking so you don't kill your healthy yeasts from your primary.

2:You'll carry enough yeast during racking that you won't need to re-pitch (unless you want to use a different yeast strain for flavor reasons.)

The real reason to avoid the food processor is you don't really want to smash all of those seeds which will most likely negatively impact your flavor. it's ok if a few break (thus slicing and dicing) and with figs, there is no good way to de-seed them prior to adding them. It'd be one thing if you were adding them to a beer, where you have some bitter flavors that would cover/mask the seed flavors.
 
Typo...my OG was 1.090. I used 6 lbs of local honey and added 2 1/2 gallons of spring water. VR21 yeast. How do I sanitize my frozen figs with the Camden tablets in the secondary? I’ve never used them before and only purchased them because the lady that runs the local beer-wine making supply store said I needed them. I put them in the secondary with the figs in more spring water or just with the figs? There are 6 lbs of figs so how many would you recommend? The directions on the bottle say 1 tab per gallon. Glad I found this site...I obviously have no idea how to make melomel correctly. It looked so easy on YouTube
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Pictures get weird.

I would add some water with the campden tabs (crushed) in a bucket, and soak your figs for 6-12 hours. Then you have a decision. I think that I would just toss the gallon or so of water with campden (although you'd lose some of the fig flavor) and then put the figs back in the bucket and rack my mead on top of it. That way while I'll lose a bit to the sterilization process, I won't dilute my mead so badly.

Option 2 is to use the absolute minimum water to cover the figs, and crush the campden tab over it, let it sit for the full 24 hours, and then rack the mead on top,
 
Video is on target that you need a solution when using campden tabs, that's why when I use whole fresh fruit or something dry like figs I just soak in starsan for 2 min then drain. I do that with whole cone hops before dry hopping also.
 
Thank you hottpeper13...That sounds like a great idea also.
I use a lot of StarSan in my beer making and recently learned something new about it. I drug in a little bit of red Georgia clay on my boot and got it on a very light colored beige carpet. At the time, it seemed like a great idea to pre-treat it with StarSan and scrub the stain out in the morning. Nope. The small amount of acid in it actually completely dissolved the carpet all the way down to the backing. Couldn’t blame that one on the dog!
 
An update...
My fermentation slowed way down 3 days ago to almost nothing so I decided to add my figs. My neighbor‘s fig tree produced a 2nd flush so I’m now working with 8 lbs of figs. When I took them out of the freezer to thaw, I first sprayed them down with a StarSan solution to kill anything on the surface of them and then just barely covered them with filtered water and crushed 3 Camden tablets over them. Left them soaking for 12 hours covered with cheese cloth. Of course I had to sample the mead and it was really good. Seriously considered just stopping there and racking it but I decided to see this fig obsession through. After my 12 hours was up, I dumped them (Less the liquid) into a 5 gallon mesh bag and very lightly mashed them with an old fashioned potato masher that I’d soaked in StarSan. I attempted to use my new fangled potato masher but she was busy on Facebook. 🙃 I was very careful attempting to get more surface area and feel like I didn’t crush any of the 45 million seeds in the figs. I then placed the fig bag into another sterilized fermenting bucket, siphoned the mead on top of it and added 1 1/2 teaspoons of pectic acid. On the morning of day 3...nothing and I started to wonder if I should add yeast. When I went into the man cave that evening...Houston, we have liftoff. She was a bubbling again. Nothing else to report yet, I just wanted to update everyone who’s commented and been so helpful. Thank you and Montani Semper Liberi!!!
 
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