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Mead Lovers Digest #0444
Subject: Mead Lover's Digest #444, 18 November 1995
From: mead-request@talisman.com
Mead Lover's Digest #444 18 November 1995
Forum for Discussion of Mead Making and Consuming
Dick Dunn, Digest Janitor
Contents:
Apricot Melomel Recipe (Michael L. Hall)
request recipes for-- (DUSTHOMP@idbsu.idbsu.edu)
Re: Prickly Pear (Rebecca Sobol)
Mead Made Easy (DaveP@eworld.com)
Re: Mead Made Easy (WindRiver@bitstream.mpls.mn.us)
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Apricot Melomel Recipe
From: hall@galt.c3.lanl.gov (Michael L. Hall)
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 95 10:45:15 MST
Summer's Lease II Apricot Melomel
Brewer: Mike Hall
Ingredients for 2.77 gallons:
5.47 lb. Questa Honey
0.55 lb. Sourwood Honey
0.10 lb. Star Thistle Honey
1.47 lb. Clover Honey (at end)
- ----------------------------
7.59 lb. Total Honey
9.0 lb. Apricot juice from Phoenix Orchard (0.985 gal, SG=1.095)
2 pkts. Lalvin K1V-1116 (Montpelier) wine yeast - hydrated
2 tabs. Sodium Benzoate (at end)
0.5 tsp. Vitamin C (at end)
1 oz. Calcium Carbonate (at end)
Specifics:
Final Size: 2.77 gallons
Deduced Original SG: 1.127
Final SG: 1.023
Alcohol: 13.95 v%, 10.83 w%
Calories/bottle: 435
Temperatures: Pitch: 82 F, Ferment: 65-75 F
Yield: 2.55 gallons
Priming: None - still mead
Brewers comments:
On 9/25/94, I put together the first three honeys listed along with a gallon of
apricot juice and enough water to make 2.55 gallons. There was no reason for
the strange selection of honeys; I was just cleaning out the cupboard. The
apricot juice came from apricots from a tree in my backyard. I pureed the
apricots to get a thick paste, froze the paste for about a year, then thawed it
out and left it sitting in a gallon jug in a refrigerator for several months.
>From past experience I knew that the solids would almost never clear out of the
mead, so I waited until the juice separated and just used the clear juice. At
any rate, I pasteurized this concoction for 90 min at 150 F and pitched the
yeast. The SG was 1.115 and the must tasted rather sour, even with all that
honey. I thought that I might need to correct the sourness somehow later.
I didn't touch the mead again until 4/15/95 (my son was born on 10/20/94, so I
was very busy). At this point I racked the mead, which was still sour, but had
a nice apricot character. I measured the acid content at 1.3% as tartaric, 8.5
ppt as sulphuric. The SG was 1.001 and the clarity was good.
On 5/16/95 I removed a sample and adjusted its acidity to 6.5% tartaric with
CaCO3, decided that was too much (too chalky) and tried to adjust acidity of
whole volume to 9.25% tartaric by adding one ounce of CaCO3. I measured it to
be 9.3%. I then added sodium benzoate to kill the yeast and some extra clover
honey (20 min at 160 F with 1 pt water) to counteract the residual acidity and
give honey character. I let it sit overnight for the chalk to precipitate out
before bottling.
I entered this melomel in the 1995 NM State Fair as part of their wine
competition (8/27/95). It received a Gold Medal and a score of 6.80/10, which
was the highest rated mead, and the second highest rated wine (highest was
7.04). Judges noted excellent acidity-sweetness balance, good apricot and honey
character, some spiciness (maybe the Questa honey?), and some sediment (the
chalk), but otherwise good clarity. In the future I will try to wait until the
chalk precipitates out to bottle, but at that time I needed to free up the
carboy. You can see a chalk layer in the bottom of each bottle, but the mead
can be easily decanted off of it.
- ------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael L. Hall <hall@lanl.gov>
Los Alamos National Laboratory 505-665-4312
P.O. Box 1663, MS-B265 Research: radiation transport,
Los Alamos, NM 87545 fluid dynamics, numerical modeling.
------------------------------
Subject: request recipes for--
From: DUSTHOMP@idbsu.idbsu.edu
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 95 16:35:26 MST
I am looking for the recipes for 'Cranberry Orange Blossum Mead' and "Melon Hon
ey Mead'. Does anyone have those recipes?
Shirley Thompson User Service Center Boise State University
Dusthomp@Idbsu.Idbsu.Edu
Here's to it and to it again, if you don't do it, when you get to it,
you may never get to it to do it again. . .
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Prickly Pear
From: sobol@ofps.ucar.EDU (Rebecca Sobol)
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 1995 17:54:14 -0700 (MST)
>From MLD #441
"JOHN A. JR. CARLSON " <jcarlson@du.edu> sez:
>I recently picked a bunch of prickly pear and plan to brew some mead with it.
>I wanted to do a smaller test batch by preparing some fruit and adding it
>to already fermented sweet traditional mead.
>What I encountered when I boiled 6 lbs. of prickly pears with 2 gallons
>of water was very strange. I boiled for two hours and drained the sweet
>thick purple liquid into a small carboy. I pitched ten grams of yeast
>and the stuff fermented. The concentrated fermented fruit juice is very
>sour now. I am afraid that somehow I might have contaminated the stuff
>so I am reluctant to blend it into good sweet traditional mead.
>Does anyone have any experience with prickly pear? I am sure the quality
>of the fruit picked in the wild can vary greatly. I wanted to get some
>data points from those who have had success with this sometimes awesome
>fermentable.
We have a prickly pear mead that is almost ready to bottle. What we did
was run the fruit through a juicer, and then added the juice to the
heated honey/water mixture. Then we added some mace. We think cardamon
would also be a good spice to use with prickly pear. We tasted some at the
first racking and it was very sour. Just a week or two ago we took a
gravity reading and taste test and it was much improved. I think it will
require lots of aging, but will eventually be very good. Based on a couple
of taste tests I think the sourness will age out.
Rebecca Sobol
sobol@ofps.ucar.edu
All of Unicorn Unchained Meadery mead recipes are now available
at our web site. Visit the Unicorn Unchained Mead Page at
http://www.atd.ucar.edu/rdp/ris/ris_mead.html
------------------------------
Subject: Mead Made Easy
From: DaveP@eworld.com
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 1995 13:27:12 -0800
Just a quick announcement. The 1.5th edition of my book "Mead Made Easy"
is now available on the web. It's still under construction, but there's
enough done now that I think it's worth checking out.
<http://dts.apple.com/davep/mme/pub-page.html> is the URL.
- -DaveP
"Mr. Tick, can you destroy the Earth?"
"Egads! I hope not! That's where I keep all my stuff!"
Dave Polaschek - home:davep@eworld.com work:dpolasch@apple.com
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Mead Made Easy
From: WindRiver@bitstream.mpls.mn.us
Date: 17 Nov 1995 19:33:57 GMT
Just a quick announcement. The 1.5th edition of my book "Mead Made Easy"
is now available on the web. It's still under construction, but there's
enough done now that I think it's worth checking out.
When do you think you'll have a real life paper edition ready?
Cheers!
WH
------------------------------
End of Mead Lover's Digest #444
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