Prickly Pear Melomel

[Sharkman20]

Earlier this year I fermented out two batches of mead, one using raspberry honey and 71B-1122 which came out to 13.5% ABV, and another using orange blossom honey and D47 which came out to 11.2% ABV. The orange blossom mead D47 batch crapped out early at 1.036 and attempts to restart it have failed, even using some of the yeast cake from the 71B-1122 batch. So that one is what it is.

Anyway, I came upon a mexican market with a boatload of red prickly pear cactus fruits so I bought a bunch. I threw the whole fruits in a bucket of starsan for a good 20 minutes or so and then cut the ends off and skinned the fruit with sanitized equipment and diced into pieces small enough to fit through a carboy funnel, as I no longer have a bucket for secondaries.

I have just over 9lbs of diced up fruit that I've frozen in vacuum seal bags for a week or so which I'll dump into a carboy and I'm going to rack one of my meads on top. Now I know most everyone boils and cooks prickly pear fruits and adds pectic enzyme, but I don't really see much point in doing that. I'd much rather add fresh fruit to my mead, and I've heard that a lot of the color fades over time with batches that have used the cooking method. I kinda want to retain that glowing magenta color.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Any reasons I may not have found as to why it would be a bad idea to add the raw fruit directly to the mead, if it's not a sanitation issue. The fruit is pretty much as sanitized as it could get, and at 13.5% already, I'm not too worried about my mead. Then again, the sweeter mead that finished high may compliment the flavor a bit more.

 

[loveofrose]

I would rack the orange blossom on the cacti fruit. The nutrients from the fruit may or may not restart the fermentation. At the very least, it would dilute your very high gravity.

In parallel, I would make a bone dry mead to blend in to taste. You would need to be very sure your gravity is stable before bottling or stabilize.


Better brewing through science!

 

[Sharkman20]

That's exactly what I wound up doing. Plus the taste of the orange blossom mead compliments the fruit much more than the other one. I don't even think of bottling my meads until after a year or more since I'm in no hurry.

 

[Sharkman20]

So far so good. We'll see how this one turns out.

 

[Sharkman20]

Well, for the last 3 or 4 days I've been seeing signs of active fermentation starting up again so I'm pretty stoked. I'll take a gravity reading in a day or two to see if it has dropped at all. Hopefully the addition of all the fruit matter will let it come down at least another 10-15 points.

 

[On-target]

I am wondering how this is going because I just found some prickly pear fruit that I put in my freezer a couple of months ago and forgot about. I was thinking about thawing, chopping and racking it onto an orange blossom traditional that I have aging in secondary.

 

[Sharkman20]

It's going pretty well. The flavor of the prickly pears comes through pretty well but it's not overpowering at all. For all their color, they're actually a very mild flavored fruit. I say go for it.

 

[On-target]

I think I will give it a try as soon as my back heals up enough for me to move my carboys again.

 

[Sharkman20]

Well... adding the fruit solved the stuck fermentation issue and took it from 1.036 to 0.098. lol It smells amazing, but it is 100% dry with absolutely no residual sugars left. I'm really not sure how much sugar over 9lbs of the prickly pear fruit added to the mead, but seeing as the gravity stayed about the same when I added it, it is at least 16.1% but probably over 17% abv. Very smooth though with almost no alcohol bite, thanks to the cold ferment in my keezer. I may just wind up feeding this thing 1 pound of honey at a time to back sweeten and letting it crap out on its own. I already have some high mystery alcohol percentage now, I may as well bump it up higher if it allows me to. I have a feeling this one will end up very good when it's done.

 

[9mmruger]

It looks wonderful.

 

[phil74501]

I was in Arizona a few months ago. I remember having a prickly pear margarita and prickly pear mojito. Both were awesome. I bet your mead will taste great.

 

[dmarksbury]

I know it has been over 5 years, but it would be great if you could post a follow up to how things turned out. I am down in Texas on vacation right now and ran across a bunch of wild prickly pears I am taking home with me to experiment with... so any guidance you could provide would be much appreciated!

 

[Yeroc]

I know it has been over 5 years, but it would be great if you could post a follow up to how things turned out. I am down in Texas on vacation right now and ran across a bunch of wild prickly pears I am taking home with me to experiment with... so any guidance you could provide would be much appreciated!

I second that request for a follow up on your prickly pear mead.

I started a batch about a month ago and just racked from a bucket to a 1 gallon and a 1/2 gallon jug.

It does not taste good right now but has a pretty orange color.

 

[TandemTails]

when i was processing the prickly pears for my melomel last year i think i got the temperature too high and set the pectins in it. The resulting mead turned out pretty thick. I've still got it in bottles and really need to convince myself to try some. The thought of it oozing out of the siphon into my bottling bucket like the slime in Ghostbusters 2 is still keeping me from actually trying any, haha.

 

[Yeroc]

It's been about 4.5 months since I started my prickly pear mead and 3 months since the last racking. Last night I racked my 1 gallon jug and 1/2 gallon jug into a new 1 gallon jug and 4 x 12 oz. beer bottles. I'll use the bottles for topping off future racking or maybe sampling.

The smell was, ahh... prickly pear fruit-forward. Taste still has the young mead harshness but the taste of the fruit is on the tongue and lingers nicely in the after taste. Might need some acid blend added before bottling. Final gravity is 1.005.

I don't have a lot of experience with prickly pears either fresh or fermented. A friend at work gave me a 5 gallon bucket full of tunas last year. I burned off the needles over a gas burner, scooped out the flesh, froze and forgot until this summer.

I had trouble with this batch along the way. Early on I had a strong rotten egg smell. I think the Montrachet yeast I used was creating hydrogen sulfide reacting with whatever residual metabisulfite might have been left when I added some to kill any bad bugs before starting fermentation.

I've since read that Montrachet yeast can do that - create hydrogen sulfide. I did a splash racking to try getting rid of the smell and was only partially successful. I read that copper can help in dealing with hydrogen sulfide so I sanitized my copper wort chiller, put it in a bucket and racked the mead over it. After a few minutes of swirling the chiller around the bucket, I racked back into a jug and added a little honey to help deal with the oxygen that was now surely in the mead. That was about 3 months ago.

Last night I didn't get the rotten egg smell during racking. I think I could probably bottle this up at any time but will bulk age into the new year.

 

[dmarksbury]

Thought I would share my experience. I did finally make it and it turned out really good. Because of the yeast I used, mine is totally drinkable in less than 3 months.

https://dennismarksbury.wordpress.com/2016/09/21/prickly-pear-mead/

Despite my hopes, I am losing the beautiful color though.

 

[dmarksbury]

Sorry, I know this is very old post, but I wanted to contribute as this will likely help others.

Yeroc: I had this problem a while back with a Chianti I made. I went through a similar process to remove the hydrogen sulfide. I thought I would share for future reference.

When you do a splash rack, use a copper scour pad and rack the wine/mead directly through the scour pad. This accomplishes the splash AND the neutralizing of the H2S at the same time... I placed the scour pad inside of a funnel and just siphoned directly through the pad. At my next racking, all clear! Super easy!

Just for reference:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LX8SFA2/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

 

[jblaschke]

So, did you find that by not heating the fruit the color is preserved? I've done several prickly pear meads in the past and that deep, rich color is almost completely gone within six months. I've found that freezing the fruit releases a LOT of additional juice. Thaw it, put it in a fruit press and have at it. Hard to believe fruit that seedy can produce so much liquid.

 

[Yeroc]

So, did you find that by not heating the fruit the color is preserved? I've done several prickly pear meads in the past and that deep, rich color is almost completely gone within six months. I've found that freezing the fruit releases a LOT of additional juice. Thaw it, put it in a fruit press and have at it. Hard to believe fruit that seedy can produce so much liquid.

Not sure who the question is for. I did not heat my prickly pear fruit. I froze, thawed several times and then added 3 tsp of pectin enzyme and 1/4 tsp of metabisulfate to the 6 pounds of fruit. The variety I got wasn't the bright red flesh type. The globby fruit was bright orange after freezing, but I remember it being more yellow before freezing. The fruit mush sat in a closed fermentation bucket for about 7 days around 68 to 70 degrees letting the two chemicals do their thing (longer than planned only because life got busy).

On "brew day" I reconstituted 1/2 pack Montrachet Yeast with 3 tsp yeaster startup and 6 oz water. Step fed the yeast starter for about 40 minutes. I poured the tunas goop into a stainless steal mixing bowl and mixed w/ an immersion blender to introduce oxygen and hopefully to blow out metabisulfates (not sure the blow out idea worked since I had the hydrogen sulfide issues mentioned earlier in this thread). The fruit went into a 1 gallon paint strainer bag. Then I blended a gallon of water with 3 pounds of mesquite honey from TJ and added the yeast. The must line was so close to the top of the 2 gallon bucket that I put the lid on instead of a dish towel cover for fear that the bag of fruit would float up and touch the dish towel.

The color of the mead has stayed a very bright orange, but I won't be surprised if that fades over time.

 

[Yeroc]

2/20/17 BOTTLING DAY
14 x 12oz bottles
It's been about 11 months since starting / 34 days since last racking.

I added 1/2 teaspoon acid blend. The sample tasted pretty good after the acid was added. The aroma is really nice - full on prickly pear fruitiness - aroma was better than the taste. Hoping the rough edges round out so that it tastes as good as it smells. Added 0.698 grams metabisulfite in the bottling bucket.

After it ages a bit, I'll give 7 bottles to the guy that provided the prickly pears.