Wife wants mead

[brewmedic43]

My wife bought me a beer kit for Christmas and I have brewed one batch of beer but now she wants me to make blueberry mead. I am in need of some help since I am so new to all of this. I want to start small with a 1 gallon batch since local honey is so expensive right now. Anyway, I am not sure of the basic recipe and what is the best yeast, (liquid or dry) if using liquid how exactly is a starter made. When to add blueberries and what kind (frozen, fresh) and how often to rack. And any other info a noob needs would be greatly appreciated. I have looked around on here but its still rocket surgery to me. Thank you all

 

[OpenContainer]

Typical mead takes roughly 1 year from start to finish to obtain great results, but is well worth the wait. Has your wife ever had mead before? If not, you can try a simple JAOM, but replace the oranges with Blueberries. It will be ready in approx 30 days and you will know if she likes it enough to make a bigger batch. While the JAOM is fermenting, you can study up on mead making by reading the stickies at the top of the mead forum. I recommend the reading because JAOM is a sort of "set it and forget it" type of mead, and typical mead (or blueberry melomel as you're wanting) requires a bit more interaction at the beginning and a long aging period.

Good luck. You'll have a lot of fun with mead.

Check the recipes section for both recipes.

 

[TheBrewingMedic]

Besides all the great info here in the forums this website actually has some good info, recipe and instructions etc...

http://www.stormthecastle.com/mead/index.htm

Also check at your local homebrew shop if you have one, usually someone around that makes mead

I started with a very basic trditional mead as my first about a month ago, one gallon of water, 3 pounds of honey, tsp of nutrient and yeast. its almost newspaper clear in its secondary (meaning I can almost read a newspaper through the jug) and will be bottled probably next week.

 

[gratus fermentatio]

1st off you'll need to make the choice of using actual fruit, or juice. With blueberry, you have some options, there's even concentrate you can use. Actual fruit is great, but it takes up space & you'll need to fill that space with something; more mead is the perfect thing to top up with, so you might want to start another gallon batch for just this purpose.

There's also the juice option. Juice eliminates the space problem, but it's tough to know just how much juice is equal to how many pounds of actual fruit, this is the same problem with juice concentrates. That being said, you can make some fine mead/melomel either way.

As for yeast, I'd stick with dry for the time being. The reason being that it's cheap, easy & works well, it also stores well in the fridge. You can also make a starter if you feel the need, but honestly, for a 1 gallon batch you won't need one; just follow the rehydration instructions on the yeast packet.

When to add fruit/juice? that's entirely up to you. Some like to add it in secondary for more fruit flavour, some like to add it to primary to get a more wine-like flavour; I like to do both for great flavour on both sides & added depth of flavour. It's a little more work that way, but IMHO, it's worth the effort.

Here's a link to the mead recipe section, there are a couple of blueberry recipes there:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f80/

Also, You might want to pick up a copy of The Compleat Meadmaker by Ken Schramm
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003C31OI4/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20
It really is helpful & will explain a lot of things about meadmaking, even things you haven't thought to ask yet; I have a copy on my shelf & I use it quite a bit.

Hope this info helps.
Regards, GF.

 

[USMCMatt]

How do you handle the blueberries? With such a thick covering skin, should you cut them all in half then freeze them to get the juices out?

 

[GilaMinumBeer]

Sounds like a reasonable Honey do.

 

[fatbloke]

How do you handle the blueberries? With such a thick covering skin, should you cut them all in half then freeze them to get the juices out?

With most fruit, you can just freeze them for a week or so, then defrost them and add them directly to the batch.

You could, as some like to do, squidge the fruit with a potato masher, but that can be messy and not really help, even if you put the pulp into a muslin/cheesecloth mesh/net etc. Hence just the freeze thaw method is usually plenty.......

 

[Matrix4b]

I have made 2 blueberries and plan on starting my next one. I do 6 gal batches so my amounts for you may be off.

I use 8 pounds of frozen blueberries from Costco (2 bags).

8 pounds of blueberries
12 pounds honey, 2 pounds if needed for back sweetening
1 tablespoon yeast energizer
1 tablespoon yeast nutrient
1 table spoon (aprox) of Pectic enzyme
water 4 gal in primary
2 packets of Lavin D-47 yeast (or Lavin 71b depending on season, hotter area for the 71b)

Blueberries are added in the secondary as juice that I rendered with the blender and a screen. More on that later.

Combine honey and 2 gal of water, warm up water (not boil) to disolve the honey, stirring it in also aereates it well. Mix in the yeast energizer and yeast nutrient, mix in the room temp 2 gal of water or chill water prior to make cooling quicker-let cool to about 90 degrees or lower before tossing the yeast in. While it's cooling put the yeast, 1 packet per cup, I use disposible cups for this. I put 1/2 must, 1/2 cold water about 1/2 up a standard plastic cup. This lowers the temp so you don't kill the yeast. Then take your sanitized spoon and stir in the yeast. Then wait til it's foamy and your honey water is cool. Then I toss in they yeast and mix well, aeating a bit on this. Then I rack to my fermentation carboy and put in the airlock.

Let sit for about a month, when the bubbling slows to one bubble about a minute then rack onto the juice, rendered earlier. I recomend that you add a 2 cups lemon juice for a 6 gal batch to "brighten" the blueberry flavor. Also, some have put in 2-3 vanilla beans to smooth out the flavor and make a blueberry vanilla. If you use 2-3 tablespoons of vanilla extract it should be about equilivent. Oaking with 1 oz of light toast oak chips for 1 month is good too but not neccessary. Then let it sit for a month or two and rack as needed, that is when sediment gets to about 1/8-1/4 inch, for me that is about 2-3 months. You can also sparkloid it and help the settling. Stablize with potasium sorbate, wait a day then backsweeten if neccessary. It usually is as Blueberry usually ferments dry. After backsweetening you will need to let settle and rack again a couple of times off of the sediment. It should end up a beautiful purple blue (deep color) that in the sun you can see through it well. Then bottle and wait about 8 months for the aging process to take place.

Rendering the blueberries to juice: I blenderize the blueberries with a bit of water and a bit of pectic enzyme. Once blended, let sit about 1/2 hr to an hour, then blend again and run the puree through a metal screen with a rubber spatuala to sift it through. You can do this a few times and blend the pulp too for a little longer and even render about 1-2 more cups of juice out of it. The pulp you can freeze and use for making great purple, lightly bluebery pancakes or something. The pulp is not as flavorful as the juice is but still good. Once you have the juice when you rack the mead onto it, I suggest you put in the blueberry juice first, that way it blends well with the mead.

So that is what I do. If you were to only do 1 gal, you would only need 1/2 teaspoon of energizer and nutrient and only 1 yeast packet. Also, you would only need about 3-4 pounds of honey and only about 2 1/2 in the primary, the rest I would backsweeten with, don't forget to stabalize with potasium sorbate or something similar to stop the yeast. Also, I would use 2-3 pounds of blueberries to render to juice.

That's my recomendations. For more details, just ask.

Thought I would just throw that out there.

Matrix

 

[DrVertebrae]

Ok, so when you blend the fruit and then mix it with the mead, so you do anything to sterilize it before mixing such as heating or boiling it?

 

[Matrix4b]

Ok, so when you blend the fruit and then mix it with the mead, so you do anything to sterilize it before mixing such as heating or boiling it?

Not really neccessary. If you are putting it in the secondary, keep in mind that your must is about 10% ABV at that point, or so, some are a bit less and some are a bit more on the alcohol. This is usally enough to kill anything that would grow in the fruit. Some here do drop in a campden tablet or two just to be sure. I would recomend that if you add fruit that you do put in some pectic enzyme to help disolve the plant cell walls better and get a better juice extraction from the must, it will also help it clear better. This is why I usually treat my fruit to the blender and actually blend in some pectic enzyme with it and then let it sit about an hour, re-blend a little and then toss it in, usally in a mesh bag. But actual steralization of the fruit is not neccessary.

Matrix

 

[brewmedic43]

Awesome, thanks Matrix, thats awesome info. I will be incorporating some of this into my batch.

 

[CRZ]

Yes, thanks matrix for that very detailed post. I might just try this one. (my first mead)

 

[Matrix4b]

No problem. Remember that it will go dry, that is why I back sweetened this. Also, the astringency of a just made mead will mask it's sweetness a little so don't be disapointed that when bottleing/bulk aging time comes it tastes terrible and don't sweeten too much. Blueberry is good dry and sweet. I am going to do a variation of the recipie that I listed by adding some vanilla and as I mentioned a bit of lemon juice.

As I said, I like freezing or keeping the pulp for baking or flavoring other things or even adding a simple syrup and having it on pancakes and the like. You just feel better when you get more out of it than the intended goal, a yummy mead.

Matrix