blackberry mead

[Sirs]

I need a recipe for blackberry mead in 4 gallon range anybody know of any good ones, I guess recipe for a gallon and I'd adjust from there.
Thanks
Eddie

 

[countrygirl]

finevinewines (aka winemakers toy store banner) also has a forum on their website. they have a mead recipe section. i didn't see blackberry specifically, but they did have blueberry and raspberry mead recipes. i'm sure u could tweak those to ur needs/likes!
happy fermenting!

 

[Wade E]

Depends on what you are looking for. Some people like lots of fruit flavor while others really want the honey to shine with a hint of blackberry behind it and this is the traditional Melomel. I try and strive down the middle of the road and like about 4 lbs of fruit per gallon and 3 lbs of honey per gallon. I would also recommend using 1 tsp of nutrient per gallon and 1/2 tsp of energizer per gallon but add the energizer in 3rds with 1/3rd right in the beginning, another 3rd at about an sg of 1.060 and the last third at around 1.030 to help it keep plugging along nicely.

 

[Deezil]

Wade,

Do you add all your fruit up front or do you wait until secondary to maintain most of the original fruit flavor?.. I'm coming up on a 10~ gallon batch of blackberry mead/melomel as my next experi-ment/ence. Hoping to achieve a 1:1 ratio between the blackberry honey and blackberry fruit flavors.. Having never done this before, i'm just curious as to when you personally add the fruit

 

[Wade E]

Ive always added more fruit up front then others which gave it more sugars instead of adding sugars to acheive the same thing but I do like the idea of macerating some fruit in there later to acheive more flavor.

 

[fatbloke]

Well, I tend to use about 2/3rds of the fruit in primary and then the final 1/3rd in either secondary or tertiary as that gets you a far "brighter" more fruity flavour (you'd be surprised how much of the flavour/aroma can be just blown straight out the airlock during ferment).....

Also, with blackberries, I invariably also add some steam extracted elderberry juice into the finished ferment, as it doesn't add too much to the fruit flavour but a hell of a lot of body, tannins and especially colour - blackberry can come out surprisingly light.......

regards

fatbloke

 

[Takeadoe]

Hi Wade,

Sounds like I may have found a recipe for my first attempt at a blackberry melomel. If you threw in a few more details, I would be good to go. I have a 5 g batch of blackberry wine that needs bottled (my first batch) and I would agree that it is a little light. Would it be overkill to make this melomel with 6 lbs of berries per gallon or would that not even make a difference? Perhaps there is a better way to add body.


Mike