Lemon Verbena mead

[AzOr]

Hello All,
My neighbor makes a blackberry and lemon verbena jam and it's delicious. She wants me to make a session mead modeled after the jam.

So I was thinking of making a session mead with about 2lb of blackberry/blueberry per gallon to a gravity of maybe 1.050-60. Then back sweetening to about 1.006-8. Kegging then bottle pasteurizing.

I want to add the lemon verbena after fermentation is dying down, along with the crushed/pureed fruit. I'm old school and like to have my ingredients hang out together as long as possible. In the meantime, I'll make a verbena tincture to adjust at bottling time.

Since I have never worked with lemon verbena, any ballpark recommendations as to how much to add (weight per gallon)? I think I'll be making a 3 gallon batch since it's a bit experimental.

Also, I may not have a chance to make this for a month or so. Can I freeze the leaves, or should I dehydrate them? My preference would be to freeze the fresh leaves, because I'm lazy.

 

[jtratcliff]

I've never used lemon verbena for mead. But it does make a great tea. We typically just let the leaves air dry for few days then store them in a metal tin....

I would try making both a vodka tincture with fresh leaves and a strong tea with dried leaves to see which gives you the most pronounced flavor and aroma.

Maybe a quarter cup loosely packed fresh leaves to a cup of vodka? Macerated for a week or two?

For the tea perhaps a couple tablespoons of crushed dried leaves steeped in a couple cups of boiled water for 5-10 minutes?

It's more aromatic than flavorful, in my opinion... So it might take more if you're looking to get pronounced flavor... How much does she use in her jam?

 

[AzOr]

I've never used lemon verbena for mead. But it does make a great tea. We typically just let the leaves air dry for few days then store them in a metal tin....

I would try making both a vodka tincture with fresh leaves and a strong tea with dried leaves to see which gives you the most pronounced flavor and aroma.

Maybe a quarter cup loosely packed fresh leaves to a cup of vodka? Macerated for a week or two?

For the tea perhaps a couple tablespoons of crushed dried leaves steeped in a couple cups of boiled water for 5-10 minutes?

It's more aromatic than flavorful, in my opinion... So it might take more if you're looking to get pronounced flavor... How much does she use in her jam?

Thanks Jtratcliff
Yes I may end up doing a tea like you described and using that as my water. I came across a recipe for a cold verbena tea drink and they mentioned using mint leaves to punch up the flavor of the lemon verbena. I may try fooling around with that as well since we have an abundance of mint in our garden.

It'll be a bit until I get around to this mead but I will report back.