Peach Melomel First Time Recipe

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Mr Azoteman

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Hello All,

I wanted to share this peach melomel/recipe process. It is my first attempt at making a melomel (my experience has been in brewing and at winemaking). So, after much reading, I decided to not heat my honey. However, coming from a wine making background and the fact that I added peaches, I could not bring myself to not sanitize the must, which is why I used campden tablets. Now for a melomel I should have used more peaches, but 3lbs is what I had available and, in all frankness, what drove this brew was not letting the peaches go to waste. Please see recipe below:

Local AZ Honey + Peach Mead (5 gallons)
12lbs. Local AZ Honey (cat claw)
7.5 tsp of acid blend
2.5 tsp of pectic enzyme
1.25tsp of wine tanning
5 crushed Campdem tablets
5 tsp of yeast nutrient
2 packets of Lalvin D-47

Quatered 3 lbs of peaches. Spooned 12 lbs of honey out of jar. Aded water in bucket up to 5 gallons, added other ingredients. Next day I plan is to stir with sanitized spoon and pitche Lalvin D 47 yeast at 15C, let rise to 17C. From here I plan on keeping the same temperature and just racking after three weeks into secondary and rack again in three to six months.

I hope it is OK to contribute a recipe that has not yet fully gone through completion. My intention is to let someone out there that is super freaked about sanitizing the fruit prior to adding to the mead (I know I was) to have a reference. I am all for experimenting on raw honey and water, but when it came to adding the peaches, I could not bring myself to add it untreated (maybe some day on a sour, such as a Beliner Weissen, but that is another topic...). Cheers!
 
3 lbs of peaches in a 5 gallon batch isn't enough. I'd be surprised if you noticed any peach character at all.
I also would have frozen the peaches before using them.
Never heard of "cat claw" honey, had to look it up, how much did you have to pay for that?
 
3 lbs of peaches in a 5 gallon batch isn't enough. I'd be surprised if you noticed any peach character at all.
I also would have frozen the peaches before using them.
Never heard of "cat claw" honey, had to look it up, how much did you have to pay for that?
Hello Madscientist,

Thank you for the input. Yeap, probably not enough peaches. Hopefully it will still give it a bit of color. I paid $85 for it form a local supplier. To be honesy, I am not sure if it was cat claw or clover since I bought it a while back and all it had was a C on top of the jar.
 
Looks like you have a very solid process. I would imagine that you're doing a staggered nutrient addition.
Personally I really enjoy dry meads with subtle additions of fruit, spices, ect. 3 lbs won't be distinctly peach. I doubt that anyone would be able it identify peach at that rate. However, If you tasted your mead and the same recipe only without the peaches they would be two fairly different meads. I'm sure it will still taste good. You could always add more peaches to the secondary.
 
I put 10 pounds of peaches in the secondary of a 3 gallon batch, and there is hardly any peach flavor there. I went high gravity to stall out the yeast, and still have some residual sweetness.
I gave my fresh peaches a starsan bath, then sliced them and put them in the freezer for a couple weeks. When I was ready to rack into the secondary, I brought the peaches out to thaw and used a stick blender to puree them. I then racked the mead onto the peach puree. The additional sugar and water content threw my calculations way off. It finished a little sweet, but the D47 was a monster this time around.
 
Looks like you have a very solid process. I would imagine that you're doing a staggered nutrient addition.
Personally I really enjoy dry meads with subtle additions of fruit, spices, ect. 3 lbs won't be distinctly peach. I doubt that anyone would be able it identify peach at that rate. However, If you tasted your mead and the same recipe only without the peaches they would be two fairly different meads. I'm sure it will still taste good. You could always add more peaches to the secondary.

Thank you for the suggestion KT. Additional peaches in the secondary does sound like a good idea. Hopefully my coworker has additional peaches by then. If not, the supermarket is right around the corner. I added all the nutrients at once, as I do with my wines, but is sounds like with meads I should stagger them. This mead thing is a learning experience. I thought that I would give it a try since I already had most of the equipment. Thanks again. Cheers!
 
Thank you Bombo80 for sharing your peach sanitization method. I read in a few places about freezing the peaches to release the juices. I may have to try that if throwing more in the secondary. I'm sure that if that D47 could tackle all that then it won't have any trouble chewing through this recipe.
 
I freeze all my fruits then thaw, it ruptures the cell walls and make the juice readily available. Just make sure the peaches are well ripe not firm but not rotten either.

I would add another 8-10 lbs in the secondary, I did that with my blueberry melomel and it's a true flavor bomb.

Good luck and enjoy
 
Thank you for the suggestion KT. Additional peaches in the secondary does sound like a good idea. Hopefully my coworker has additional peaches by then. If not, the supermarket is right around the corner. I added all the nutrients at once, as I do with my wines, but is sounds like with meads I should stagger them. This mead thing is a learning experience. I thought that I would give it a try since I already had most of the equipment. Thanks again. Cheers!



This mead maker adds all of the nutrient in the beginning and is highly awarded. There isn't only one right way to do it. Just keep experimenting and learning. I think you will find the mead fermentation's have much greater nutrient needs than wine though.
 
I saw the video of the mead maker. Very interesting and information, in particular the information and links available in the description of the video.
As for the recipe, I recieved additional peaches from my coworker (perfect timing!). I went ahead and added about three additional pounds to the primary. This time, after cutting and pitting them, I put the peaches in a bowl with about a quart of water and half a Campden tablet to sanitize them overnight, then added to the primary after stirring. Part of the reason that I started the forum was to give a bit more detail on the fruit sanitization step and I appreciate the advice shared by the other posters in that regard. I still have about three more pounds of peaches which I'll let ripen and later decide how best to employ them (maybe freeze for later). Here is how the mead looks so far:
If not peachy in the end at least it will have a nice peach color :)
 

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As with most fruit we eat at home, my wife will slice the fruit to serving size and sprinkle sugar on it to bring out the juice and flavor while making it sweeter.

I'm getting ready to make a Peach Melomel as soon as the weather drops into the 70s (currently still in the 90s).

I did this to these peaches before freezing them
 
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