Would this work?

[MJJ]

This idea just popped into my head. (1 Gallon batch)
Start a plain Mead, When primary is finished. Defrost & open a 11.5 once can of Welch's Raspberry & White Grape & pour into a fresh carboy (Secondary), Rack Mead into Secondary. Would this work & any advice will be appreciated!

Follow up question, There most likely will be some left over mead from the primary, Can I rack it into a small plastic water bottle & freeze it so I can use it to fill the head space at third racking?

Thank You for your time.

[Chevette Girl]

I've done similar things with wine kits, make 5 gal of white wine, stabilize and then add 2 cans of frozen Welch's raspberry. One of my summer favourites

The suggestion I have is precisely that, stabilize (potassium sorbate and campden tablet) before you add the Welch's, otherwise the yeast will continue on eating the sugars and it'll amount to the same as having mixed it all together initially.

And yes, you can freeze or refrigerate excess mead/wine for topping off later, or if you can find something the correct size so it's got very little headspace, just cover it with plastic wrap (rubber band to hold it in place) and let it age beside the main batch, that way it's handy when you need to top up and you don't have to plan ahead to defrost it.

[TAKeyser]

My only concern with doing this in a 1 gallon batch is that you may find it too sweet adding it in the secondary. I've always made the juice and used that to replace my water and let it ferment and than adjusting by backsweeting if necessary. That being said I've never added in secondary so not sure how much sweetness it would add.

[MJJ]

Thank You.

[Chevette Girl]

Sorry, I never took the SG of the Summerberry Wine so I don't know exactly how much sweetness was added by 2 cans of concentrate in a 5-gal batch, but it tasted off-dry to me. If I crack open a bottle of this soon I'll get out the hydrometer and let you know, pretty sure the wine was around .995 when I added it so from the current SG we could back-calculate how much of a rise in SG per can per gallon... assuming the raspberry sugar content is comparable to the raspberry-white grape sugar content.

If you just add by taste, you can control the finished product better, and if you like it really sweet, so be it. And if you only use half the can, well, then you've got some juice to drink too.

[TAKeyser]

I just know I made some Berry Blend juice a few days ago and it is delicious and I saw the Hydrometer helplessly sitting on the counter and being me I started thinking "this would be a yummy melomel" so I had to measure the gravity of the juice and it was 1.046 so depending on the juice it could add a lot of sweetness. Next time I hit the grocery store i have to remember to get more of the juice for the melomel