dafne_fraser, posts by tag: brewing - LiveJournal

My home currently smells wonderful; that is, if you like the smell of freshly fermenting fruit beverages!  I started a 6 gallons batch of blackberry melomel 2 days ago and my oh my does my home smell yummy!  Some of the berries were hand-picked by me and the others were purchased Saturday from an organic farmer at the market.  The honey is a blackberry honey, also purchased Saturday from an organic apiary. 

My intentions are to split the batch into 2 batches at first racking: one will continue on its dry path while the other will have more honey added to increase the Specific Gravity (SG), therefore making it a slightly stronger and sweeter mead/melomel.  The one gallon batch I did last year yielded a beautiful semi-sweet melomel, that has a dessert-red wine finish.  I will probably only make 2 gallons of the dry because I really like the dessert-red finish of the semi-sweet.   We shall have to wait and see how the dry turns out.

Yummy!

Just started the lemon melomel that I hope will be ready in time for West An Tir war!  Hopefully it will be a refreshing zesty beverage, slightly sweet and very lemony.  If it turns out right, I think it would be very good for spritzers!
My recipe:

Ingredients

• 4 lbs wildflower honey
• 6 lbs wild rassberry honey (4 years old; from the Mid-West)
• 10 large lemons
• Lalvin Yeast 71B-1122 (for sweet wines)
• enough water to equal a 3 gallon batch

Process
Brought 1.5 gallons of water and all the honey up to 130degrees F.
Added the juice of 10 lemons and the zest of 4 to the must.
Started the yeast in a sample of the above mixture, cooled to 85degrees.


As soon as the must cools to 90degrees, will pitch the yeast starter and aerate it like crazy; then I'll stopper it with an airlock and let it do its thing.

I'll keep updating this post with how everything is going.  After I pitch the yeast I'll take the Specific Gravity (SG) and first percentage and post it here.

SG: 1.136 (+5 for temp)= 1.141
Balling: 34
PA: 185