Peach mead

[dmbarrera]

Hi. I'm fairly new to making mead. I have made a couple show meads but that is about all. I am looking to make a 5 gallon batch of a peach melomel this time. I was wondering if anyone had any tried and true recipes that I could try. I want to make a medium sweet mead and am planning to use D47 yeast. Any suggestions?

 

[Arpolis]

You can go with fruit or concentrate and either works well. With strait fruit it usually helps to have another fruit to add in for body. If using lalvin D47 then make sure to ferment on the cool side. Even if you have to strap ice packs and a towel around a carboy, it will help. Otherwise you get fusel alcohols that take a while to age out but never do completely. Here are a couple recipes you can try out if you like:

5 gallon strait fruit peach mead

12lb honey
15lb peaches
2 1/2 mashed ripe bananas or 1 lb raisins
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energizer
Water to 5 gallons
Yeast

5 gallon white grape peach concentrate mead

10 cans of Welche's frozen white grape peach
8lb of honey (or just enough to reach a starting gravity of 1.080)
5 TBS of favorite loose leaf black tea just thrown in primary (I like earl grey)
5 tsp yeast nutrient
2.5 tsp yeast energizer
Water to 5 gallon
Yeast.

Also look up SNA or staggered nutrient additions. That helps a lot with meads. These recipes will usually run dry so instead of just adding more honey till you hit the 14% - 16% ABV limit of your yeast just add crushed Camden tablets and sorbate to stabilize and back sweeten with honey as desired after fermentation ends. Good luck and happy brewing.

 

[dmbarrera]

I think I will go with the straight fruit mead. Now my question is should I add the fruit in primary or secondary? I have read that some people say to add the fruit in secondary as a lot of the flavor will ferment out if added In primary.

 

[SatiricalPuma]

I strongly recommend adding fruit in the primary. Having tried the two methods, I simply don't find that you lose much intensity of flavor. The fruit just isn't as much at the forefront, but instead tastes more integrated with the honey flavor, which is a very good thing. The only thing you lose is some aroma, but I'd say only about 10%.

 

[RegarRenill]

I did a BOMM with 13# of peaches in the primary and 13# canned peaches in secondary....tastes amazing at only 7 weeks, just waiting for the peach sediment to drop out and it'll be ready to bottle...