Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Alcoholic beverages which are not classified as spirits.

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tombombadil
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Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by tombombadil »

One of my favorite mead recipes.

Ingredients:
2 gallons honey
24# mixed berries
Water to 1.12
25g go ferm
32g fermaid o
1 vanilla bean
4 lemons juiced and zested

Notes:
I use equal portions of blackberries, raspberries and blueberries. I buy them throughout the year when they're on sale, make my mead once I've got enough fruit. I use raw orange blossom honey.

Process:
1. Freeze the fruit
2. Thaw and puree half of the fruit
3. Add the honey to the pureed fruit
4. Add 3 gallons of water, stir until homogenous and check the gravity
6. Add a quart of water and check the gravity, repeat until gravity reading is 1.12
7. Heat 500ml water to 115f and add the go ferm, wait until temp is 105f, sprinkle in the yeast, wait 15 minutes
8. Add a few hundred mls of the must to the yeast every 15 minutes until the total volume is 1500ml
9. Add the yeast to the main must, stir vigorously for a few minutes
10. Keep at ambient temp between 60 and 70f.
11. Degas and add 8g fermaid o daily for 4 days
12. On day 5, thaw and puree the rest of the fruit, let it get to room temp before adding it
13. Punch the cap down daily, check gravity every few days until gravity stops dropping, should be at 1.015 to 1.02
14. Separate wine from fruit pulp, press out fruit pulp
15. Cold crash for a week or so, rack off of lees, add lemon juice and zest and vanilla bean, oak cubes?

Bulk age until ready to bottle. I try to age it a year or two, then bottle it, keep some and and give the rest away.
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Yonder
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by Yonder »

Very nice sounding recipe. What’s the main flavor that comes thru? Do you use a pectic acid to aid in the fruit breakdown?
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tombombadil
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by tombombadil »

Yonder wrote: Sun Dec 06, 2020 10:17 pm Very nice sounding recipe. What’s the main flavor that comes thru? Do you use a pectic acid to aid in the fruit breakdown?
Raspberry comes through the most, it seems to survive fermentation more than other fruits do for some reason.

I don't worry about pectin enzymes, probably not a bad idea though. I used to but it didn't seem to make much difference.

Also, the lemon juice could probably be done by taste instead of blindly tossing it all in there.
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by greggn »

tombombadil wrote: Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:33 pm
13. Punch the cap down daily, check gravity every few days until gravity stops dropping, should be at 1.015 to 1.02

Are you using a yeast with a specific attenuation profile ?
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by tombombadil »

greggn wrote: Sat May 08, 2021 5:04 pm
tombombadil wrote: Sun Dec 06, 2020 8:33 pm
13. Punch the cap down daily, check gravity every few days until gravity stops dropping, should be at 1.015 to 1.02

Are you using a yeast with a specific attenuation profile ?
I'm just noticing that I did not put the yeast in the recipe. I'll go through my notebook and update it later. Sorry about that. I probably used 71b, I usually use that one in fruit meads.

Thoughts on attenuation ratings of yeast in wine and beer:
When you're fermenting something that's 100% ferment able then you don't consider attenuation, just alcohol tolerance.

I prefer meads to be sweet so I plan my recipes like this:
1. what yeast am I going to use? What's the alcohol tolerance?
2. how sweet to I want it to be when it's done fermenting?
3. because the yeast has an alcohol tolerance of x%, and it takes a gravity of 1.xx to have a potential alcohol by volume of x%, and I want the mead to finish at 1.02, then I only need to dilute my must to 1.xx + .02.

ex. If I'm using the 71b yeast that has a 14% abv tolerance, and I want the mead to finish at 1.02, I can start at 1.12, it should ferment down to 1.01-1.02, about 14% abv, and then die off or go dormant or whatever.

Sometimes the yeast will ferment to a higher abv than expected so I have to stabilize with sulfite/sorbate before adding some honey back to sweeten it back up.

Making the same recipe over and over with the same process helps a lot. You can get an idea of how a certain yeast performs given a certain must, nutrient, temperature and aeration protocol so you'll know if you need to start with a higher or lower gravity.

D47 for example tends to hit 15-16% abv before giving up when I use it in cyser (apple mead where you use apple juice and honey instead of water and honey). I have no idea why, but when I'm making cyser with d47 I make sure to factor that in to my starting gravity calculation.

Attenuation is more important in beer where you have a range of different carbohydrates. Some yeast will ferment more of the complex carbohydrates than others so you get an apparent attenuation rating. But even that can be manipulated by making a more or less ferment able wort.

Windsor does not ferment maltotriose very well. So when you use that yeast with a lot of crystal malt and a high mash temp you get more maltotriose and a higher final gravity.

But if you use a belgian yeast in the same wort you might get a lower final gravity because the belgian yeast does a better job on maltotriose.

Or if you use windsor in a wort with little to no crystal malt and you mash at like 145 then you can still get a low final gravity.
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by greggn »

tombombadil wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 6:31 pm
D47 for example tends to hit 15-16% abv before giving up when I use it in cyser (apple mead where you use apple juice and honey instead of water and honey). I have no idea why, but when I'm making cyser with d47 I make sure to factor that in to my starting gravity calculation.
Thanks for the detailed reply.

I've been using D47 for melomels and have been surprised at how consistently it hits 16%. That's fine for me, as I prefer mine dry, but I'm starting a blueberry-blackberry today and would like to finish with just a hint of sweetness ... but I'm resigned to back-sweetening to get there.
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Re: Unicorn Blood - Mixed Berry Mead

Post by tombombadil »

greggn wrote: Sun May 23, 2021 4:25 am
tombombadil wrote: Mon May 17, 2021 6:31 pm
D47 for example tends to hit 15-16% abv before giving up when I use it in cyser (apple mead where you use apple juice and honey instead of water and honey). I have no idea why, but when I'm making cyser with d47 I make sure to factor that in to my starting gravity calculation.
Thanks for the detailed reply.

I've been using D47 for melomels and have been surprised at how consistently it hits 16%. That's fine for me, as I prefer mine dry, but I'm starting a blueberry-blackberry today and would like to finish with just a hint of sweetness ... but I'm resigned to back-sweetening to get there.
That sounds good! Good luck!
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