My First Fruit Mead

Well, your best bet is to use the search tool and search the RECIPE section. I did a search using *berry as the search keyword and pulled up 4 pages worth of hits.

Use the search tool, be the search tool, live the search tool.

Cheers,

Oskaar

Look,

I understand what you're saying, but take some time and read the recipes. Contrary to what you think you will get some very good insight as to what works and what doesn't. Follow that up with some reading in the Brewlog to get an idea of how berry melomels progress. Research is what this site is all about, and you'll find that if you have done a bit of reading you'll have a better idea of what to ask.

Also read the newbees guide to meadmaking if you have not already. There are plenty of entries in the recipes and brewlog that will help you get a better idea of what you want. Do your diligence and we'll be more than happy to take a recipe you've come across and help you tweak it so it will give you what you want.

Oskaar

Hello s@g.c,

What you are asking is extremely vague and the answers could fill hundreds of pages of responses and tons of things to consider.

The very first thing you have to pick is what fruit you want to use. Oranges, pineapples, and other citrus fruits will add acids. Blackberries, currants and other dark frutis will add tannins. Raspberries will add tartness but not necessarily acid (I think its from non acid). Plus each fruit has different levels of sweetness that will increase the SG. We could suggest fruit recipes for fruits you dont even like the taste of and it would be wasting our time with something you dont want.

Adding fruit into the primary before fermentation will give a different flavor then adding into the secondary.

There is also the debate of fresh fruit, frozen, peeling, deseeding, and on and on.

One of the benefits to reading a recipe on a fruit you want to use is the responses on people talking and debating the recipe. We like to help but we need something to work with to then be able to guide and help you in the right direction.

I read from time to time that people are put off by Oskaar and some of the other posters here but I dont see the negativity attributed to them. Please keep in mind that we get a lot of the same questions over and over again. The people here are honestly very helpful in answering questions but we need to know what the question is. Its like a person walking into a hardware store and says "I want to build a piece of furniture got any ideas?" Or "I am building a bookshelf and it isnt matching the blueprints can you help?" They would need more information to help you. They would point people to the how to book section.

In fact I think Oskaar's second post was very fair. Pick something out and we would help alter it for your specifics. All he was asking is more information to help you get to what you want. I dont think its too much to ask to put some effort into narrowing down what you want then ask for fine tuning and tweaking later.

I can appreciate learning mead that way and like to learn that way too. Here was my first fruid mead
7 lbs honey
water up to 3 gallons. heated to 140 to disolve the honey. Not going to the point of scum forming.
fermentend with WLP-720 yeast
when activity stops, rack into secondary on top of
5 lbs cherries. cherries were sliced in half and de-seeded. since its mid winter cherries are gonna be hard but grab the frozen ones in the grocery store. Try to find some without any funky chemicals added. Frozen fruit is actually good for mead as the freezing breaks up the cells in the fruit and they release their fruitiness more.
1/2 a vanilla bean.

I put the cherries in the secondary cause I wanted a close cherry flavor. If fruit is added to the primary fermentation changes it. Thats why raspberry beers dont taste like raspberry very much at all. I had to rack multiple times as there was lots of bits of cherries. I racked it after 1 month from secondary to tetriary as the vanilla flavor was about right. Its needing to age a bit more then my other meads and I assume its due to the cherries. It turned out pretty nice. A bit sweeter then I wanted but that was due to my inexperiance with fruit and how much the cherries would sweeten.

s@g.c said:

...snip You'll forgive me, Oskaar has put me a bit off on gotmead at the moment. I wasn't expecting that rude of a reply by a moderator, or in the "newbee" forum non the less. :sad1:

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Well, if you found that rude you may be a bit thin skinned to hang around here. I direct you to the FAQ here and here which is where you were directed when you signed up for Gotmead.com.

Your choice, play by the rules or go away. If you have any other beefs PM me and we'll work through them.

Oskaar

s@g.c said:

I do everything in 1 gallon batches, I run sometimes 8 at a time. It gives me a lot of leeway to test flavors and changes. My last batch was 4, 1 gallon containers of the exact same recipe with only the yeast changed. It was amazing to see, and taste, the difference in the mead.

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See, now this is a great way to learn and is also a great way to get your technique down. I do this frequently with different types of honey and yeast, fruit, spice etc. This is a great way to learn about the differences in fermentation kinetics of each type of yeast in different environments (raw fruit, frozen fruit, juice, pulp, etc.) as well as in different combinations of fruit and juice, spices and herbs. The more experimentation you do like this the better. It really helps to give you a broad experience base with different yeasts, and to help you in predicting how your yeast will react in a given recipe, even if you haven't made it before.

Cheers,

Oskaar

Now that I have a carboy and an airlock, what am I supposed to do with them? :icon_scratch:



*runs and ducks under cover*

Are we there yet? :blob7:

Huh? Huh? :blob6:

Are we there yet? :blob5:

Huh? :blob3:

:binkybaby:

:laughing7: