Blueberry Melomel

[Andy]

..and my real passion is beer, while I enjoy meads, ciders, and wines I mostly am making them to keep the wife happy so I can make beer

Same here!

[UcfLumberjack]

I've made a decent amount of mead under the instruction of the guys over on the GM forum. They do tend to overstate things a little. Its not they they are trying to scare you, its just that to them its really that big of a deal. They are trying to make the best mead possible, so they follow the best methods possible. There are always different way to do things, they just suggest what works best for them. That being said, Everything they have told me has always improved my mead making. I can tell from batch to batch so I tend to just follow their methods as closely as possible.

For a blueberry mead I would go semi-dry and add all the fruit upfront, say 20# blueberries. I'd use 71b for yeast and start at like 1.12ish which should finish up semi sweet or sweet. Semi-sweet if you take care of it.

I'm actually going to start a sweet mead soon but it'll be all honey, half buckwheat and half wildflower, then it'll get oak for a while and i'll drink it in three years.....

[Andy]

I've made a decent amount of mead under the instruction of the guys over on the GM forum. They do tend to overstate things a little. Its not they they are trying to scare you, its just that to them its really that big of a deal. They are trying to make the best mead possible, so they follow the best methods possible. There are always different way to do things, they just suggest what works best for them. That being said, Everything they have told me has always improved my mead making. I can tell from batch to batch so I tend to just follow their methods as closely as possible.

Well, I have three 5 gallon batches and one 8 gallon made from my original 60lbs of raspberry blossom honey. Of the four batches only one of them was done using gotmead-type protocols with Go-Ferm and Fermaid K. Now that I am a couple of weeks into the process I can tell you that Go-Ferm/Fermaid K use indeed makes a real and quite noticeable difference both in side-by-side 64F fermentation rate and taste. The Go-Ferm/Fermaid K batch is bubbling along at a constant and even speed while my other three batches fermented in a different manner, quieter and more slowly. Part of that may have been because I damaged the yeast with energizer during rehydration by listening to my LHBS. I have been tasting them as I take hydrometer readings and there is a noticeable difference there as well...noted by a preference for the Go-Ferm/Fermaid K batch at each tasting by myself, my brewing partner, my wife, and my daughter who are not aware of any difference in yeast rehydration and nutrient addtition procedure. While they are all pretty tasty, the Go-Ferm batch is noticeably smoother and tastier.

Anyway, I think the others will turn out okay but now I wish I had used Go-Ferm and Fermaid K in all of them. Whether you go with the correct ingredients or whatever you have on hand at hour LHBS you will be doing the same amount of work with virtually the same base must and with a $2 bag of Go-Ferm and a $2 bag of Fermaid K from morebeer.com you can easily make a significant difference in many, many batches of mead.

[triple-oh-six]

Alright, this thing has been in the secondary for 18 mos., I guess I should do something with it

I made blueberry extract using a steam press and I want to back-sweeten to add some more blueberry flavor.

I plan on racking over to a keg and bottleing from there, maybe leaving some in it.

So, the yeast is probably dead but to insure no more fermentation I was going to add Potassium Sorbate.
Question is, should I add it to the secondary, or add it to the keg after I rack, and should I wait to add the extract?
Does it even matter?

Thanks,
0006

[rhino777]

If it's going to be kept cold after your keg it I wouldn't really worry about it.

[boobookittyfuk]

this stuff looks good to add blueberry flavor.

http://www.brownwoodacres.com/blueberry_juice_concentrate.php?gclid=CJvH-NfujaICFZJg2godhQHdTQ


I'm going to try it out in a lambic. I bet it'd add a lot of blueberry flavor back to your mead. Its not cheap but currently on sale.

[triple-oh-six]

If it's going to be kept cold after your keg it I wouldn't really worry about it.

Thanks Rhino, I was just worried about if I would bottle some from the keg and let it warm up.
Don't want any bottle bombs.

[triple-oh-six]

Thanks BBKF, I might try that for my next one.
I used a steam juicer to juice 3lbs of frozen blueberries into an extract.
I was going to use the extract to backsweeten but I like it the way it is now.