Cherry Mead / Melomel

[Rasp_Brewer]

Hi All,

I’m currently in a phase of experimenting and branching out in my knowledge of home brewing and wanted to try make a cherry mead. I was wondering if for this I could use cherry juice instead of the fruit?

If anyone has a recipe or could point me in the right direction or any advice it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Arcs]

Done a few of these earlier this year. Simple boil of the fruit should give you the wort you need. Obviously said fruit will need crushing/mincing. I tend to leave a few bits of the fruit in it during fermentation. Recipe, I used was, 1Kg honey (1 gallon batch) mixed in half of a gallon of water. Rest should be fruit juice. Add lemon rind if you wish for tannins or lemon juice (not too much just a tad) couple of cloves. Bakers yeast 10g. Fermentation should kick off in a day and finish within 5-6 around this time of year. 4 weeks during summer. Xfer to another gallon bottle. Let sit for another month and bottle. If you want more in depth mead recipes. Then your goto youtube channel has to be city steading brews. They give excellent advice and besides that, it's an entertaining channel. Good luck =)

 

[Rasp_Brewer]

How much fruit do you use for this recipe to achieve that much juice? And yeah I’ve seen CS one of my favourite channels I made their spiced metheglin not too long ago it’s still fermenting hoping to drink it at Christmas time next year

 

[Arcs]

Farmfoods ala Tesco etc, or any reputable supermarket. Use half of the frozen pack which should be at my old prices around £3 if not may be £3.50 to mark up inflationary differences. While you are doing this, consider brewing a Braggart. Which is my next project. Mmmmmm!!

 

[Rasp_Brewer]

I saw at Asda they do cherry juice I checked the ingredients and bought some to try tasted good so I used that as I wasn’t sure on how much fruit to use I made this the other day I know store bought cherry juice isnt 100% cherry but I thought I could bulk up the cherry flavour in secondary somehow I saw CS brews used cherry juice and then dried cherries in secondary when they made their Vikings blood mead (other name for cherry mead)

 

[Rasp_Brewer]

Farmfoods ala Tesco etc, or any reputable supermarket. Use half of the frozen pack which should be at my old prices around £3 if not may be £3.50 to mark up inflationary differences. While you are doing this, consider brewing a Braggart. Which is my next project. Mmmmmm!!

On the note of a Braggart I’ve heard of that but not too sure what it is?

 

[Berry454]

Just saying, I add natural flavourings to most of my fruit wines. It's just far more economical. Considering you need about 6-8lbs of cherries per gallon for a true cherry wine. We add natural flavourings to our jams, baked goods and cocktails. So why not our wines?

I made a 22L batch of cherry wine a while ago.i used 1 litre of red grape concentrate, 4 X 200g packs of black cherries and 15ml of natural black cherry flavouring.

Tasted amazing and cost about £0.80 per bottle.

Compared to making this with actual cherries. About £8 per bottle with shop bought cherries. They're not cheap with most packs being 200g in size.