Boysenberry melomel

[Shine0n]

I went to my LHBS Thursday and they had this new Super concentrate fruit flavorings called Amoretti Artisen natural flavors, I was pulled in by not having to loose so much of my meads to racking so I bought one and going to make it some point next weekend.
It's an 8oz tub and it states to use 4oz per 5 gal batch so me being me I have to stretch the limits a little. I'll use 4 oz in primary and 2oz in secondary just to get a complete fruit bomb without the loss of mead (hopefully)

Ingredients list and protocols
5 gal batch at 12% semi dry
14.2 lb clover honey
3 packages of 71-B dry yeast
4oz boysenberry concentrate (primary)
Water up to 5 gal
12.5g go-ferm
8.4g fermaid o
12.4g fermaid k
10.5g dap

All nutes will be divided by 4 and step fed.

Rehydrate go-ferm in 1qt of 108f water and wait to cool to 104f before adding yeast, add yeast and give a gentle stir.
Mix honey and water to 1 qt shy of 5 gal and mix the boysenberry concentrate in as well. Using a wine whip on a drill, aerate well to introduce 02.
Once yeast is properly hydrated add 1st set of nutes to the must, add yeast and give a gentle stir and cover or airlock.

24 hours-next step of nutes
48 hours next step of nutes
Before 1/3 sugar depletion add final step of nutes, no later that 7 days.
Degas twice daily for the first 10 days and rack when you have the same sg reading for 7 days, you should have a nice trub layer on the bottom by now and starting to clear.

I'm still at the caveman stage and rack with an auto syphon or 1/2"ID tube. Whichever I have clean or close to me

I'm going to taste at this point and see if I do indeed want the extra flavor from another 2oz of concentrate.

Let sit in secondary for 2 months, stabilize with sorbate and sulfites and bottle.

I'll let yall know the outcome and play by play action.

And once in the secondary, make sure you do not leave much at all of head space. I use sterilized marbles to make sure the mead is within 1" of bung.

I know the yeast will take this to very dry but that's fine as I'll backsweeten with honey when or if needed.

Still a very strong possibility I'll use the bourbon barrel when I rack this one for the secondary vessel.

Good luck to me!)
Shine0n

[Yonder]

Seems darned interestin, ShineOn. I didn't use a concentrate but a puree, so much more juice involved. Used 2.75 lb of honey per gallon and estimated 12.5 Abv. Pretty much the same deal with fractioning additives but split days between energizer and DAP. Always had good results with that combo.
Just added the last chems today, now sit back and wait a bit to ferment dry. Then tastin' and back sweetenin' with honey to my taste...and potassium sorbate to stabilize it there.

[Shine0n]

I'm just soooo tired of losing almost half my mead to racking loss, they've been good and some very good but for the money I invest I just want more booze for my buck.
From my research and speaking with folks on other forums it's 100% fermentable so that makes me feel alot better. One fella said it's all he uses now and it doesn't taste fake which I hope not because it seems almost to good to be true.

Time will tell and if it's good I'll be getting alot of the flavors and making a ton more melomels.

[Yonder]

One thing to watch for is that you don't make a "one dimensional" flavor. When the basics are down kick up the flavor profiles with a little something extra. Orange blossom is good, orange blossom with muscat is great. Slip in a little kick once with ginger, lime, and red pepper or do a coffeehouse blend.

[Shine0n]

Thanks Yonder, I've been reading alot on culinary sites about pairing flavors and you're right on about not making something one dimensional.

I'll have a few weeks to come up with something as anything I add will go into secondary other than the boysenberry.
I also plan to age in the bourbon barrel so that's another profile I need to consider when making my decision.