Dandelion Mead

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

alurpal

Junior
Joined
Feb 16, 2023
Messages
20
Reaction score
16
Location
Asheville, NC
I made my first wine last month and decided to make a mead as well at the same time, despite doing heavy research into wine, not much into mead. It just felt like a missed opportunity to not marry the spring flavors of dandelion and honey.

3/27/23
For one gallon- Cold brew method

152g of near pure dandelion pedals (twist method ftw!)
757g of water
784g more water
1/2 Camden tablet

3/28 - 2.5L to boil. Add 2.5lb honey (1.5 lb wildflower, 1lb sourwood), scoop off foam, let cool.

Mix cold brew and honey must (filtering flowers into a mesh bag. Cold flower brew already has a nice apparent dandelion taste that’s not as bitter/vegetal as the hot brew method with some sepal remaining). 19 brix.

Add acid blend to achieve 4.0pH. 1tsp yeast nutrient. Pitch K1-v1116 starter.
Fermenting at 66-68f.

Degassing by swirling fermenter every couple of days.

Removed mesh bag of flowers after 3 days.

4/2 racked to secondary. Fit an airlock, at 1.001 (5 days). Mead was surprisingly crystal clear.

5/13 tasted the mead, surprisingly good. Doesn’t have the same “wine” taste that the dandelion wine has at same age (duh?). I didn’t really perceive the alcohol that came through when tasting the wine, but I only tasted around a 1/4 ounce.

I’m planning on aging for around a year, I think it has great potential, but what do I know.
 
It’s been 4 months since yeast was pitched. The mead was almost crystal clear right after fermentation but I’ve been bulk aging it just because. Kept it on some lees in for a few weeks before racking once more.

Tasted today and it has an insanely long dandelion finish and obvious on the nose as well, I’m pretty excited.

IMG_6443.jpeg
 

Latest posts

Back
Top