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Vintner's Harvest Fruit

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scottlind

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I am very confused at the volume of the Vintner's Harvest 96oz cans of fruit.

Are the ounces in liquid ounces, or are they in weight ounces?

Would one can of this be sufficient to flavor 5 gallons of mead?

Thank you,
Scott
 

Pewter_of_Deodar

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I believe that it is 96 ounces by weight. The following is a link to the Leener's fruit puree page...

http://www.leeners.com/fruits.html

I use it because they list the Oregon Fruit Products purees above the one you asked about and specifically state that the 49 ounces is by WEIGHT. I pulled out a can to validate that as well... The can they come in is about a half gallon (32 fluid ounces) in size.

I would assume the 96 ounce cans of Vintner's Harvest are also by WEIGHT. I would also assume that the can they come in is roughly one gallon by volume....

Good luck,
Pewter
 

pain

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...And in reply to your question as to whether one can is enough to do a 5-gal batch, your answer is yes, generally. I used one of these cans to make my blueberry mead. However, using their plum did not give me as much flavor as I would have liked. 'Course, I probably should have used a less aggressive yeast......

Vicky - *still* buried under a massive Yahoo shopping cart site
 

scottlind

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good deal, thank you!

i have two cans and i was thinking about using 8 lbs for the melomel and the last four for a three gal batch of wine. looks like it will work.

i didn't even see the smaller cans of oregon friut!

thanks
 

Pewter_of_Deodar

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Vicky,

You might want to put the fruit into a second fermentation to help retain more of the flavor in the final product. I am doing this with my Blueberry Wine where the first ferment is reaching about 1.020 right now and I am ready to add the fruit and additional honey so the yeast can ferment to completion with some residual sugar. I hope that the end result will be more blueberry flavor than if I had added it first.

I believe, though Oskaar and the other experts may correct me, that if you are not using juice but using puree, the contribution of sugars to the ferment by the puree is small. Therefor, the purees are contributing flavor more than alcohol anyway and are not necessary for the primary ferment....

Good luck,
Pewter
 

scottlind

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pewter, do you use a glass carboy for the second ferment and if so do you just dump the fruit puree in or do you use a straining bag?

thanks!
 

Pewter_of_Deodar

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I am new to this but I use glass for everything based on the recommendations of my mentors. For my brews (wines and meads) involving fruit, I pitch the yeast initially in a 5 gallon glass carboy then rack onto the fruit and additional honey in a larger carboy (currently 6 or 6.5) for secondary ferment unless the recipe calls for fruit in the primary.

So far, with my previous batches, I find that if I clean the old glass as soon as I rack out of it (ie. I rinse several times with hot water and scrub with carboy brush if there is residue within 15 minutes), then I have not had trouble. It worked with my cyser, my metheglin, and Joe's Ancient Orange so far. The blackberry may be a bit harder but I plan on tackling it immediately as well. I will try to remember to post my results in a few weeks when I rack the Blackberry Wine....

The only negative that the carboys have had so far is getting the orange slices out after the Ancient Orange was racked off of them....
 

pain

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Pewter_of_Deodar said:
Vicky,

You might want to put the fruit into a second fermentation to help retain more of the flavor in the final product. I am doing this with my Blueberry Wine where the first ferment is reaching about 1.020 right now and I am ready to add the fruit and additional honey so the yeast can ferment to completion with some residual sugar. I hope that the end result will be more blueberry flavor than if I had added it first.

I've always (since the first time not doing it) put the fruit into the secondary. The bummer thing is, some fruits just don't give a lot of flavor for the same amount as others. The blueberry worked great, and I got a mead that was one of my best ever. With the plum I was going for a sort of plum wine type flavor, and it finished out a lot dryer and a lot less 'plummy' than I wanted. Adding back honey is no worries, but I'm going to have to run it 'round again with another can of plum to get the flavor I'm looking for. Too bad I can't get Japanese plums!

Strawberry is another that you lose much of the character, even in a mild yeast ferment. I tend to use about triple the strawberries to what I use in an equivalent blueberry mel. I *have* found that freezing strawberries helps, but they are pretty fragile.

On a side note, they don't last long in aging (or at least mine didn't). My strawberry mel was pretty good at about a year. I opened the last bottle about a week ago, it was (I think) 5 years old. Not good. Of course, I've since moved from corks to capping, because I just can't seem to find corks that don't oxidize too much. And I'm also bottling in champagne bottles with the plastic champagne stoppers (corks?), since a meadery gave me 12 cases of bottles he couldn't use.

I'm *really* wanting to make a strawberry-rhubarb mead. My gramma used to make awesome strawberry-rhubarb pies, always my favorites along with her cherry pie. So I'm thinking I'll do a sweet strawberry, and a semi-sweet rhubarb and then blend them. I have a hard time finding the rhubarb tho, here in the south it doesn't grow well, and folks don't really use it as much as they did back in MI, where I grew up.

Think I'll do up a batch of Joes Ancient Orange too. I owe a buddy a batch of mead, and I think he'll like that one.......and it would be ready for our week-long performance in Manteo this spring, around May, if I get it started now.

Vicky
 

jab

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Just had a strawberry/rhubarb pie last week with the last of mom's rhubarb from last year. *Did I just manage to use the word 'last' 3 times in one sentence?* I am planning on planting some myself this year. Get back to me Vicky in mid-late summer if you would like me to pack some up fresh for you.
 
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