Fruit for Brewing Mead
By Lord Ateno of Annun Ridge
The first thing you are going to want to know is how much fruit to add
and how to add it. These are a somewhat difficult question, it differs
with each fruit.
On the average, up to 2 lbs of fruit per gallon of mead will do just fine.
Be careful if you are working with fruits like grapes or cranberries,
they will form a plug atop your fermenting mead. Be sure to leave head
space for this and stir your carboy (by handling the outside and shaking,
do not introduce anything in the fermenting wort) as needed to keep the
plug from forming. Also be sure to wash and remove all leaves, stems
and such before crushing your fruit. Be sure to also remove all pits
and internal seeds before starting the next step. They add extra tannin
and off flavors (espically if broken).
There are 3 ways to prepare your fruit for introduction into the must:
- Boil it in water to reduce it to a gelatianous paste. If you do this you
will lose some of the flavor and aroma of the fruit. You might also
cause pectins to form which will impart a haze to your mead which requires
either over 2 years of settling in a carboy or introduction of chemicals.
- Crush and all your fruit directly add to your must. This is the most
'natural' way to add fruit to your mead. A couple problems include wild
yeast that comes with your fruit, also you will lose more volume when you
rack, since the fruit is not as broken down.
- Pasturise it, add a bit of water and heat it up to about 160 degrees and
keep it there for 15 minutes. This will kill any wild yeasts and break
down the fruit so the aroma and flalor is easily transfered to the mead.
Be sure to cool it down before adding to your must.
Once you add your fruits to your must and fermentation begins, it should be
different from what you have ever seen before. It will be a little more
active and the foam produced will be a bit thicker. Also don't worry if
the aroma produced stinks, that is natural, espically with apples. It
will subside after a few days. Now unless you are a very experienced
mead brewer and have used fruit quite a few times before, you dont want
to leave your fruit in more than 10-14 days, maybe less depending on the
amount of fruit and what you want as a final product. Expect to lose up
to 10% of your volume after racking off the spent pulp.
Something to be aware of, if you want to use store bought juices, read
the ingredients, some of them add other juices besides what it is advertised
as.
Last modified:
Sun Jun 4 11:43:58 EDT 2000
Stephen Bloch / webmaster@ostgardr.org
