I have a good friend that lives in paradise…just up the road
from me. There is a wonderful aquifer on
the property that supplies them with great spring water. From that spring he raises rainbow trout in
three man made raceways he built and maintains.
The trout grow rapidly in these conditions. He also allows me to harvest a few trout
every year. They can weigh 4 pounds or
more!
He has operated an apiary for 30 years which yields some
truly fantastic honey when all things go right. I’m lucky enough to help him with the honey
extracting chores whenever he needs me.
That is really the easy part. He
works very hard at keeping those bees as it takes WAY more work than you would
think. He is a pic of a few of his
hives. He has hives in three
locations. Two spots on the property and
one off the property.
Anyway, recently after a nice bounty of liquid gold, he
asked me if I would make a batch of mead
for him. He brought me a jug’o honey and
I said that I would make it after blackberries were picked. So this will be a blackberry mead or
blackberry melomel, which just means mead with fruit. This is an easy process and shouldn’t take
too long to make.
So let’s start with the water. I am using his spring water. It is ready to go. If you use city water, pour into a jug and
allow it to sit for 24 hours to allow the chlorine to dissipate. The amount of water needed depends on your
batch size while taking into account the amount of honey you use and the liquid
from the berries…minus the lees-or stuff left in the bucket that gets tossed
out. I am doing a 3 gallon batch.
Blackberry Mead
(Melomel)
12+ pounds Honey
1 gallon Blackberries
Spring Water
Lalvin EC-1118 Champagne
Yeast
First thing I did was put the frozen berries in a stock
pot. Add just a bit of water so the
berries won’t burn and heat them so they are not frozen at all. Then I blenderized them to release all the
juices right away. This slurry was
poured into a nylon must bag and squished by hand to strain the juice out. Tie the bag with the berries in and let the
bag float in the must during primary fermentation.
Next in a pyrex measuring cup I boiled ¼ cup of spring water
in the microwave. It was then cooled
down to 105F in the freezer. At that
point, I emptied the yeast pack into the 105F water and allowed it to rehydrate
for 15 minutes, according to the directions.
The honey water, after cooling down is added to the
fermentation bucket with the berry juice in it.
Now is the time to take your initial hydrometer
reading. This will tell you how much
alcohol producing sugars are in there.
Mix up the “must” and put enough liquid into your tube to float the hydrometer. Take and record the reading on your recipe
sheet. Mine was 1.080. It’s lower than I thought because I added a
little extra water. This showed the
ABV(alcohol by volume) to be 11% if fermented to 1.000. I can always add more honey if I want to
bring it up.
At this point you are almost finished. Now you can pitch the yeast. Pour that measuring cup of alcohol producing goodness
into the bucket. Cover it tightly,
attach your airlock and wait for the bubbles to begin. It should take off within the next few
hours. Mead will bubble like crazy for
the next month or so. Leave it in the
primary as long as you get bubbles within a minute apart or so. It may take a month or more for the
fermentation to subside.
After fermentation has slowed you can now rack it to a
secondary. Mine will go into a 3 gallon
glass carboy, with any extra going into a 1 gallon jug. Secondary can be 2-5 months depending on any fermentation
that might happen. This is also the time
for the mead to clear. Any particulate
matter should settle out of suspension in secondary.
6 months is a good time, IMHO, to bottle it up. Give it a taste. Mine usually goes into gallon jugs or Grolsch
type bottles for easy bottling.
Patience is needed with mead. The longer it sits the better it gets!
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