OK, so that opens me up 
I am more than a novice and way less than a pro. So after a bit of an outline I will ask for the opinions.
I travel EXTENSIVELY for work and cannot babysit my must as I should. I raise many varieties of fruits and have made some pretty good wine out of them over the past several years. I also have bees, and make some pretty decent meads/melomels etc from the honey. Well due to my travel schedule I dont get to sell the honey, and I dont let people come to the house and pick the fruits and berries when I'm not home anymore. So I have decided to make melomel out of just about everything I have (I also have started making weaker melomels and converting them to vinegar). The vinegars are pretty easy to make, and the time involved also lets me know that those are working. My potential problems will be with the melomels. Since I am not home to stir/punch down or really do anything else with the fruit pulp I have started just using extra fruit and juicing it and using only juice. So I have no pulp or skins in my primary. I have done my best at determining what the skins would add to the profile and tried to use tea/tannin to help. Am I likely to get fruity melomels using only fruit juice? I have several going now, and they are going to be a year or two before they will get their chance to wow or depress me. I have not been spicing anything yet, just get to where I am happy with the SG and letting the yeast have at it. Since I plan to have a few days at home in a week I am planning to get some gooseberry, currant, autumn olive and possibly cornus mas melomels going. Aside from all the work that will be involved, this will be a ton of fruit and honey if I am going down the wrong road.
Stronger fruits have seemed to worked doing this (aronia and black raspberry) but they are still only a few months old so I dont know what a year in bulk and another in the bottle will do.
Long saga, but lets hear it, 2-3 gallons of juice in a 5 gallon batch of melomel, keeping my ABV aspirations in the 12-15 percent range gonna make a decent drink?
I am more than a novice and way less than a pro. So after a bit of an outline I will ask for the opinions.I travel EXTENSIVELY for work and cannot babysit my must as I should. I raise many varieties of fruits and have made some pretty good wine out of them over the past several years. I also have bees, and make some pretty decent meads/melomels etc from the honey. Well due to my travel schedule I dont get to sell the honey, and I dont let people come to the house and pick the fruits and berries when I'm not home anymore. So I have decided to make melomel out of just about everything I have (I also have started making weaker melomels and converting them to vinegar). The vinegars are pretty easy to make, and the time involved also lets me know that those are working. My potential problems will be with the melomels. Since I am not home to stir/punch down or really do anything else with the fruit pulp I have started just using extra fruit and juicing it and using only juice. So I have no pulp or skins in my primary. I have done my best at determining what the skins would add to the profile and tried to use tea/tannin to help. Am I likely to get fruity melomels using only fruit juice? I have several going now, and they are going to be a year or two before they will get their chance to wow or depress me. I have not been spicing anything yet, just get to where I am happy with the SG and letting the yeast have at it. Since I plan to have a few days at home in a week I am planning to get some gooseberry, currant, autumn olive and possibly cornus mas melomels going. Aside from all the work that will be involved, this will be a ton of fruit and honey if I am going down the wrong road.
Stronger fruits have seemed to worked doing this (aronia and black raspberry) but they are still only a few months old so I dont know what a year in bulk and another in the bottle will do.
Long saga, but lets hear it, 2-3 gallons of juice in a 5 gallon batch of melomel, keeping my ABV aspirations in the 12-15 percent range gonna make a decent drink?
