Need Help With Blueberry Melomel

[jeffkatra]

I'm in process of formulating a 5 gallon sweet blueberry melomel recipe and I'm having a difficult time calculating what my ratio of water, to honey and fruit should be. My target gravity is about 1.148 (34 brix) and my FG target is between 1.030-1.040 with 71B yeast.

With that in mind I want my flavor profile to be primarily focused on the blueberries with the honey as the back bone. From podcasts I’ve watched and literature I’ve read I’ve seen different approaches with ratios up to 75% fruit by volume.

I was initially thinking roughly 10lbs of blueberries per gallon and then getting the remainder of my volume and sugar content from water to honey. However a second opinion recommended that I should drop it down to around 4-5 per gallon along with 4lbs of honey per gallon.

I was also considering pressing blueberries to use juice instead of water then adding whole fruit to the primary fermentation. Biggest concern with additional fruit is compensating the initial gravity to balance out the dilution from the added whole berries. A sample recipe is listed below. I would love some tips on how I can tweak this or if I should make an major adjustments.

Ingredients
2.0 Gallons of fresh pressed Blueberry Juice (possibly more needed?)
20lbs Orange Blossom Honey (assuming 1.6 gallon fluid volume)
20lbs Fresh Whole Blueberries (assuming will yield about 2 gallons of extra liquid after breakdown)

 

[JDWebb]

Consider 3-4 pounds of fruit per gallon. Use frozen fruit, its usually picked ripper than say the small Driscoll's packages of fresh fruit. The use of juice is good. You should be fine with 20 lbs of honey. Use 2 packs 71B and make sure you use nutrients, ferment in the upper 60's to low 70's and degassed for the first 7 days.

 

[IDN]

I recently made a small batch (blueberry juice is expensive!) of blueberry vanilla mead. I used no actual fruit, though in hindsight the tannins would have probably helped the body.

It was just one gallon of juice and enough honey to get it to 1.12 SG. After fermentation, I racked it and used 3 tsps of vanilla extract. This is easily my most popular and best mead. Haven't had a single person not like it.