riograndejoe
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- Joined
- Feb 8, 2017
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Hello!
I'm mainly a beer brewer but I've made a few meads and melomels over the years. I have about 4 liters of prickly pear juice in the freezer from a recent trip to NM, and I've been planning a melomel from that. However, after reading up on sour beers, and being slightly crazy, I've been thinking of experimenting and would like some advice. Here's what I'm thinking of doing.
I would use about half of the juice with 15 lbs of honey to make a 5 gallon batch of melomel. I've always gone dry before, but this time would like to have a semi-dry finish, on the dry side but with some sweetness left.
At the same time, I would like to start two 1-gallon batches. Each would have a couple lbs of honey with 1 liter of juice, but these would each be sour. After the 5 gallon batch is done, I would bottle 3 gallons of it, then add one of the 1-gallon batches to it and let it go for as long as needed. I would then bottle it when done and bottle the other 1-gallon batch as well. The idea is to finish with three styles: the semi-dry, the pure sour, and a combination of the three.
The question I have for more experienced folks is this - what yeast would you use for the semi-dry? And what bugs or blend of bugs would you use for the sour part? And how long will the 1-gallon sour and the combination batch need to ferment?
Thanks in advance.
I'm mainly a beer brewer but I've made a few meads and melomels over the years. I have about 4 liters of prickly pear juice in the freezer from a recent trip to NM, and I've been planning a melomel from that. However, after reading up on sour beers, and being slightly crazy, I've been thinking of experimenting and would like some advice. Here's what I'm thinking of doing.
I would use about half of the juice with 15 lbs of honey to make a 5 gallon batch of melomel. I've always gone dry before, but this time would like to have a semi-dry finish, on the dry side but with some sweetness left.
At the same time, I would like to start two 1-gallon batches. Each would have a couple lbs of honey with 1 liter of juice, but these would each be sour. After the 5 gallon batch is done, I would bottle 3 gallons of it, then add one of the 1-gallon batches to it and let it go for as long as needed. I would then bottle it when done and bottle the other 1-gallon batch as well. The idea is to finish with three styles: the semi-dry, the pure sour, and a combination of the three.
The question I have for more experienced folks is this - what yeast would you use for the semi-dry? And what bugs or blend of bugs would you use for the sour part? And how long will the 1-gallon sour and the combination batch need to ferment?
Thanks in advance.