Cyser/Mead/Melomel #8 - Daril's Brambleberry Mead

Category	: Mead - Traditional
Method	: Mix
Starting Gravity	: 1.120
Ending Gravity	: 1.030
Alcohol content	: 11.6%
Recipe Makes	: 5.0 gallons
Total Sugars	: 28.00 lbs.
Color (srm)	: 52.0
Efficiency	: 100%
Hop IBUs	: 0

Malts/Sugars:
8.00 lb. Mixed Berries (Blueberry, Blackberry & Raspberry)
20.00 lb. Honey

Hops: None

Notes:

The above recipe is loosely based on the following recipe suggested for "Mead Day 2002"
in which the American Homebrewers Association asked:

"Join us in celebrating one of the world’s oldest fermented beverages, Mead (honey wine).
Situated midway between the AHA’s Big Brew and Teach A Friend To Homebrew Day
events, Mead Day is a chance for homebrewers and meadmakers to gather on a
summer Saturday to share camaraderie and to make the “Beverage of
Kings.

The official Mead Day recipe, "Twin Peaks Titillation," a dry, sparkling raspberry ginger mead,
was provided by Dick Dunn, the moderator of the Mead Lovers Digest. Feel free to
modify this recipe or use your own if you prefer.

Please register your site on the form provided. After Mead Day come back to this site and
fill out the remittance form on Saturday, August 3, 2002. This will help us track the
progress of the event and help us to better promote it in the future.
REGISTER YOUR SITE
REMITTANCE FORM

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OFFICIAL MEAD DAY RECIPE

"Twin Peaks Titillation"
Dry Sparkling Raspberry Ginger Mead
Ingredients for 5 US gallons (19 l)
12 lb medium honey (about 1 gallon), minimally processed
5 lb raspberries
3 oz fresh ginger root
1 pkg champagne or dry-mead yeast
4 oz dextrose (for priming)

If your yeast requires smacking, whacking, or re-hydrating,
prepare it according to package directions.

If starting with fresh berries, freeze them for a day.
This helps break down the fruit and release the juice.
Slightly thaw the berries and dump them into a clean
plastic-pail primary fermentor (a food-grade bucket).
Slice the ginger very thinly.

Bring 4 gallons of water just to a boil in your brew-pot.
Remove from heat for a few minutes. Pour in the honey and
stir thoroughly to mix. Add the ginger slices. Let this
cool until it's below 160 F, then pour it over the berries
in the primary. Stir well to break up any still-frozen fruit
and to aerate a bit. Cool to the proper pitching temperature
for the yeast (usually 75 F or below) and pitch. Fermentation
should be visible within a day. Keep the fermentor covered,
either with a lid and fermentation lock or a plastic sheet
tied over the top.

Ferment for a few days, checking daily and pushing down the
"cap" of berries with a clean spoon. When the berries have
lost a lot of color, or no more than five days after fermentation
started, skim out as much of the fruit as you can get easily.

Let fermentation continue in the primary until it slows
noticeably and isn't producing a large head, probably 7-10 days.
Gravity will be 1.050 or below by this time. Then rack into a
glass carboy and fit with a fermentation lock.

Now is the time to be patient! Put the mead in a quiet spot and
let it ferment. Bubbles through the lock will tell you how fast
it's fermenting. When it's near done, the blorp-rate will slow
way down and the mead will start to fall clear. Check with a
hydrometer. It's not done until the gravity is below 1.000.
Depending on yeast and temperature, this can take from under
two weeks to over two months.

For bottling, take 4 ounces (about 2/3 cup) corn sugar for
priming and about a cup of water, bring to a boil, cool, and
put it in your bottling bucket (or your primary pail). Rack
the mead into the bottling bucket and mix thoroughly. Bottle
in glass with crown caps or keg the mead.

Give it two weeks to carbonate and try a bottle. It's likely
to taste harsh at first but this will age out before long. You
can expect it to keep improving for the first year or two. If
you've been careful and you can resist drinking it all, it can
last for a good ten years.

Adjust the quantity of berries according to how much fruit
character you want. Anywhere from half to double the recipe
amount is reasonable.

Any of the bramble berries--blackberries, loganberries,
boysenberries, etc.--can be used instead. Blackberries tend to
make a more astringent (tannic) mead, so either don't use a lot
or don't leave them in the fermentation for very long.
Blueberries and strawberries will also work, but these are
better without the ginger. If using strawberries, cut them
into chunks or thick slices.

Cherries are good too. They must be pitted. Use sour (pie-type)
cherries.

Tips, Tricks, and Notes

Use good honey, minimally processed. Ask at your local brew shop
or natural-foods store, or find a local beekeeper who sells raw
honey. Avoid grocery-store major brands, which are heavily filtered
and over-processed. A light (clover) or medium (alfalfa) honey
will work best. Avoid very dark or strongly-flavored honeys until
you've made a couple meads with regular honeys and know the
territory.

Do not puree the fruit! You'll end up with a horrible mess at
racking time. If you have a large mesh bag, you can put the fruit
and ginger in it, tie it off and put it in the fermentor. Then,
removing the fruit is as simple as lifting the bag out and
letting it drain.

Keep the fermentation around "room temperature". It's OK to have
it a bit warm at first until the yeast gets going, but try to keep
it under 75F long-term. Higher temperatures will produce unpleasant
esters that take a long time to age out.

Mead is not nearly as susceptible to contamination as beer.
"Don't worry..." (you knew that, didn't you?). But be patient!
Mead fermentations are not as fast nor as vigorous as with beer.

Little bags of frozen fruit can be expensive. Look for bulk
packages or restaurant-supply sizes, but be sure they're not
sweetened or preserved. If there are fruit growers in your area,
see if they have "seconds" or "culls" available.

Don't use fruit that has been cooked. Cooking changes the taste
and will cause a pectin haze that's almost impossible to remove.
If you can't heat all 4 gallons of water, do what you can and
just be sure that the honey is mixed well.

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Due to the fact that local raspberries were not cheaply available, nor
in abundance at this time, we decided to just use a "Triple Berry" mix
of blueberries, blackberries, & raspberries purchased in 3 lb. bags at
our local CostCo warehouse store. We used 8 lbs. instead of the suggested
5 lbs.; and we also kicked up the amount of honey to 20 lbs. from the
suggested 12 lbs. to make a stronger mead. We used Clover Honey from
Virginia - also purchased at CostCo. However, regarding the suggestion
about leaving OUT the ginger if using blueberries - we decided to be
cautious and do so. Given the "tannic" nature of the blackberries, and
the mild nature of the blueberries, I believe this'll be better without
the ginger. We used the process detailed above to assemble the mead,
but this is the actual recipe used:

Actual Recipe (modified by Daril-Bill):
======================================
Malts/Sugars:
8.00 lb. Mixed Berries
20.00 lb. Honey
4.00 gal. Water

Hops: NONE

We put the berries in a large nylon mesh bag and poured the honey-water
mix right over it. When it naturally cooled to pitching temperature later in
the day, we pitched an XL "smack-pack" of Wyeast 3632 Dry Mead Yeast.
About 8 hours later ... the "blorp-rate" in the gas lock was right up there.

	MIN	YOURS	MAX
OG	1.070	1.120	1.120
Alc %	7.5	11.6	15.0
IBUs	0	0	0
Color (srm)	1.0	52.0	6.0