Making A Blueberry Mead (Melomel)

[Waldo]

With a trip to the River Market In Little Rock early Saturday morning

Where they have a Farmers Market every Saturday,

I acquired 12 lbs. of Honey and 6 lbs of Blueberries. When I got home, my first task was to get the blueberries cleaned.

This is the residue from cleaning thatyou do not want ending up in your wines or meads. Stems, leaves, unripened fruit and fruit that has already over ripened.

I now have my Blueberries cleaned and ready to get started

Following is my recipe I used for this batch of Mead.


Waldo's Blueberry Mead ......5 Gallon
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12 lbs. Honey


6 lbs. Blueberries


5 Campden Tablets


1/4tsp. Liquid Pectic Enzyme


5 teaspoon yeast nutrient


2 tsp. yeast energizer


2 tsp. acid blend


1tsp. Tannin


Red Star Pasteur Red Yeast

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I Dissolved Campden Tablets, Yeast Nutrient, Energizer, Tannin and Acid Blend in 1 qt. warm water. Added to primary fermenter. Placed Blueberries in strainer bag, added to primary fermenter and mashed berries well, extracting as much juice as possible. Don't get excited, them hands were well sanitized !!

I Dissolved thehoney in warm water and added to primary fermenter, stirring well. Added water to make 5 gallon, checked and SGwas at1.100 .

I then stirred the mustwell and let sit for 12 hours and added the Pectic Enzyme. Gave it another good stirring and drew a sample for :

I keep doing this, hoping that one day I will get a grasp on just what the hell I am doing and why I am doing it. How to make corrections to my must if needed. The whole time I am performing this test I am tasting a sample of my must and thingking that the acidity is a little weak and I may add more acid blend but will wait until someone who understands this process looks at my pictures and offers up some advice. I followed the instructions in the kit by adding enough must in the tester to bring it up to "0" then I began adding the solution in drops of 5 at a time. It changed from red to a brownish bronze then to a light green and with the last 5 drops I added it changed to a darker blue color. I place a drop on a piece of the litmus paper and it turned it a real light blue color. SO, PH, Acidity experts....Where am I and where doI need to be?


I have a yeast starter going right and my plans are, unless advised otherwise is to add another 2 tsp. of acid blend this evening and pitch the yeast to it.








Edited by: Waldo

 

[paubin]

Waldo, I ain't no expert but it looks to me like you have a TA of .38%.
As far as the PH goes, I have no idea as my PH paper is blue to start
with. Normally, you want most fruit wines to be about .60%. A tsp of
acid blend will raise 1 gal .15%. so I would and 6-7 tsp of acid blend
to get in the neighborhood. Also did you drop fresh must on the litmus
or from the titration solution??? Like I said I'm no expert but I have
tested a couple of my own recipes just to be sure. From what I
understand from Masta, TA is the amount of acid and PH is the strength
of acid. Hope this helps and hope I'm not wrong on anything. Hopefully
Masta will chime in to verify me or correct me before tonight. Keep me
posted on your melomel's progress as blueberry is a future project that
I have planned.



Good Luck

Pete

 

[paubin]

By the way Waldo, my son said your blueberries looked great and he
thinks you look like Santa except you need a longer beard, LMAO.



Pete

 

[Waldo]

Thanks for the info and help Paul and tell your son that,


I AM SANTA

 

[PolishWineP]

Looking good with those blueberrries! I sure hope Santa finds his way to my house with a bottle of that mead!

 

[paubin]

Thanks Santa, my son got a big kick out of that pic!

 

[pkcook]

Ho Ho Ho, Blueberry Mead!

 

[Waldo]

Dang PWP..Santa can't seem to find your address. If he got it in a PM he might just be obliging

I added more acid blend to my must yesterday, one tsp at a time until it tasted about right to me. It ended up being 6 more tsp so Paul was pretty right on about how much more I needed to add. I pitched the starter to it when we got home from my Daughters yesterday evening and this morning I had a really strong fermentation going

 

[masta]

Looksawesome Waldo and I have to say you have come a long way on developing your wine/mead making skills!


Congrats my friend!

Acid testing can be tough on dark musts since you are looking for the color change. I have found using another container such as a 50 ml beaker helps getting the solution stirred well while adding the indicator solution but of course you have to measure out the starting amount and ending volume with the supplied graduated cylinder.


Great job Paul crunching the numbers with the acid amounts and as Waldo indicatedyour calculations were correct!

 

[paubin]

Hey, Something must be sinking into this rock I call my head! I'm glad everything worked out for ya Waldo.



The young grasshoppa has moderately pleased da Masta. Perhaps he will avoid beatings for yet another day.



By the way, it's Pete</span>...LOL

 

[Waldo]

Thanks Masta I murmur as I am slowly extracting my foot from my mouth to apologize to Pete for calling him Paul.

 

[masta]

Sorry Pete...Waldo please boot me in the butt when you get your foot removed since I followed your lead!

 

[paubin]

Pete



No biggy dudes

 

[Waldo]

Don't know where the heck Paul came from, Probably just made it up hehehe Anyway, the fermentation on the Blueberry Mead is going very well, the aroma is just awesome and I have great hopes that this is going to be a good one

 

[grapeman]

Now that's a good fement going. It should be great. Waldo, I keep thinking Pete should be Paul too- screen name of paubin- to my fuzzy old eyes it looks like paulbin....yeah that's it!

 

[paubin]

That was my guess on the confusion with my name. The melomel is looking
great Waldo. The color is awesome! What yeast are you using, by the way?



Pete

 

[paubin]

Oh, never mind on the yeast question...I just saw that you already
posted that it is champagne...Talk about old tired eyes....LMAO



paubin...aka...paul...aka...pete

 

[Waldo]

One of the characteristics I liked about the Pasteur Red yeast Petewas its ability to pull out the flavors and aroma of the fruit being fermented. I am starting a 5 gallon batch of Blackberry and think I may try the same yeast with it.

 

[paubin]

HHHMMMMM, If Hippie was here he probably would have spotted this out
right away. You posted champagne yeast but your pic shows pasteur red.
So I take it that you did use red. I've used it before and like the
results, although it does foam a lot like Montrachet. I'll be racking
my apple cider( Will be sparkling if I can get it to continue with a
abv of 13%), rasberry and strawberry/rhubarb tonight. I will also be
bottling my blackberry in the next few days and I'll be sure to post
some pics! Maybe I'll restart a "What's in your carboy" string.



The blue is looking great!

Pete

 

[pkcook]

Waldo,


Lookin' good. I didn't realize Pasteur Red foamed like that! I can almost smell it from here

.