Mead and Mulberry Melomel

While making beer is easy, making mead is ten times easier. Sterilize water, chill the water, add the honey, shake until homogeneous, add a pinch of yeast nutrient, pitch the yeast, shake the must. That's it. So on the week of 2/23/2015 I did enough research to feel comfortable and I made my first mead.

The left is the must before pitching the yeast. The right is the must after 1 week of fermentation. The color difference in just 1 weeks is surprising. 

First Mead - Honey, Water, Urea, and Yeast

Ingredients
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2 Quarts of water

2.5 pound of orange blossom honey

1 Teaspoon Yeast Nutrient

1 packet of Safale US-05 yeast

1/2 Cup of water (used for yeast starter)

Procedure

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1. Add water to 1 gallon jug. Add 2.5lb honey to jug. 
2. Add ¼ yeast nutrient to jug (I’m going to add ¼ teaspoon the next 3 days to equal 1 full teaspoon, stirring in the yeast nutrient each day.) 
3. Shake vigorously until homogeneous. 
4. Add yeast packet to ½ cup of 80°F water – stir and let yeast sit in the water for 10 – 15 minutes (pitching temperature of the must shall be 70°F – 80°F).
5. Pitch the yeast
6. Shake the 1 gallon jug after yeast was pitched. 

Notes

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The 2 quarts of water was boiled the day before making this batch of mead. I was going to use this water for yeast washing, but instead using sanitized water for mead making isn’t such a bad idea. I got a 5lb bottle of this honey and just eyeballed half of it for this batch.

Original Gravity: 1.112

Target Final Gravity: 1.050

The left is the final color after all ingredients were added, and the yeast was pitched to start our first mulberry melomel.

First Melomel - Honey, Water, Urea, Yeast, and Mulberries

Ingredients

Pulp after straining

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The same ingredients as above, with the addition of Mulberries
1 gallon bag of frozen mulberries harvested in summer of 2014

Procedure - 3/6/2015
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Same procedure as above, with the addition of boiling the mulberries for about an hour and a half. In that hour we mashed the berries in the boil pot (using a plastic cup as a press). After we were happy with the amount/consistency of the juice we strained with cheese cloth. Let the juice cool until room temperature. Then add the juice to the must before adding the yeast. Shake water, honey, and juice until homogeneous. THE COLOR IS AMAZING!

Day 4 eruption

3/10/2015
Slight eruption took place on day 4 of fermentation. I cleaned this mess up as soon as I found it and replaced airlock with a blow-off tube.

3/13/2015
Took off blow-off tube and replaced with a standard S-airlock, it looked calm enough to graduate from the blow-off.

5/30/2015
Racked both meads into secondary.
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Clean Mead 
OG: 1.112
FG: 1.000
ABV: 14.7%

Mulberry Melomel 
OG: 1.100 estimated after adding berries
FG: 1.020
ABV: 9% - 11%